Create a Healthy (mens health) Workplace with the Help of Alternative Therapies
No commentsBy Dave Turo-Shields
In Chinese, the word for crisis has two characters. One character is for “problem,” the other for “opportunity.” As absenteeism, disability claims and employee turnover increase, we find ourselves in a workplace health-care crisis.
In a 2001 study entitled, Increasing Participation in Corporate Wellness Programs: A Segmentation Study of Employee Differences, Paula Haynes of the University of Tennessee underlines how important it is to provide a wide variety of services in corporate health and wellness programs to address our healthy workplace crisis.
Although some people still do not buy into alternative or “ethnic” medicine and therapies, many people do, and it’s not just individuals. The Government of Canada and major businesses like the Royal Bank of Canada are acknowledging the effectiveness of various massage therapies, acupuncture and acupressure, among others. Empirical testing has proven many of these therapies work, so government, business and employee assistance programs are incorporating them into their approved service listings.
These alternative therapies often focus on health prevention, promotion and maintenance, unlike traditional western medicine where we only treat patients who are already sick. This is good news for corporations who have to foot the bill for workplace injuries, decreased productivity, higher insurance costs, etc.
Several of these alternative therapies target muscles and joints where problems can occur, for example, stiffness from sitting still and pain due to repetitive activity. If you’re sitting at your desk, slouching at the end of a tiring day, stressed about deadlines and staring at a computer screen, but focusing instead on your headache, stiff neck, sore hands, or aching back, you are not alone.
This situation is a common one for many. In fact, according to a 2000 Integra Survey, a random telephone survey of 1,305 working adults in the United States, 62 percent of respondents routinely ended their day with work-related neck pain, 44 percent reported sore eyes, 38 percent complained of aching hands, and 34 percent reported difficulty in sleeping because they felt too stressed.
You could suffer until your next holiday or you could quit your job, but neither of these options is likely suitable. Happily, wellness practices, such as those employed in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) can be instrumental in helping to cope with the stresses at work.
Decompress the Stress
TCM identifies seven emotions as injurious to our health: extreme anger, joy, worry, pensiveness, sadness, fear, and shock. While it is important to feel each of these emotions at appropriate times, when the emotion is especially intense or is felt over a prolonged period of time, particularly if it is not expressed, it can cause illness.
Be aware of your stress level when you eat. When the body is under stress, it tends to act like an overheated engine, so it is best to avoid spicy, hot foods. Stay away from greasy, heavy, fatty, and sugary foods, which are also difficult to digest. Eat regular meals instead, away from your desk.
Be Alert, Don’t Overexert
You might not think that sitting at your desk all day is overexerting yourself, but it can, in fact, cause many physiological problems. Some muscles are underused, while others may be used too much.
A classic TCM book, “The Yellow Emperor’s Canon of Medicine” (Dolphin Books, 1977) states that excessive use of the eyes injures the blood (which nourishes and supports mental activity), excessive sitting injures the muscles, and excessive standing injures the bones. Thus, if you stare at a computer all day, you should consciously blink more often and look away periodically. If you sit all day, be sure to get up and move. If you stand all day, sit whenever you can, if only for a couple of minutes at a time to create a healthy workplace for yourself.
Relieve the Pressure
If you feel pain and discomfort during the day, acupressure can be used to help relieve the tension. Try massaging sore shoulders and neck. For your lower back, try making a loose fist and lightly knocking on the muscles beside the spine.
More Help
When these solutions are not enough, seek treatment from a professional. Acupuncture has been used for thousands of years to treat pain and other illnesses. Chinese herbs, nutrition, tui na massage, and other TCM treatments can be used as well for pain and stress management.
Your Heavy Head
If you don’t believe that office work can be physically demanding, think about the amount of work that your neck muscles must do while you sit at your desk looking down at your papers or toward a poorly placed computer screen. The average head weighs about the same as a light bowling ball (about 12 pounds) and comprises approximately eight percent of your total body weight. Try holding that weight in an extended hand all day! Posture is the key: your head is meant to be in alignment with your spine so your neck muscles do not need to be continually active.
The crisis in health-care can be an “opportunity” to maintain our health better and prevent problems before they occur. Healthy workplace providers like Exan Wellness and businesses like the Royal Bank are finding ways to invest in our most precious commodity, our health, using a variety of medicines, therapies and healthy lifestyle choices. The return on this investment cannot be underestimated - a longer, healthier and more productive life.
Exan Wellness, Inc. is a provider of corporate wellness programs that maximize the efficiency of internet tools with personal health coaching and worksite programs. http://www.exanwellness.com
Weight Gain Due to Hormonal Changes and Menopause
By Paul Hata
Menopausal weight gain seems to be a great concern for women as they age. It seems that gaining some weight during this period in life seems inevitable. Some women may even be puzzled as to why they seem to pile up weight even though they eat the same amount of food. There are many reasons for this.
Women go through menopausal weight gain because their body is going through changes during menopause. The reason for the weight gain may stem fro the hormones themselves. During menopause, normal estrogen levels in the body seem to go down. Estrogen is the female sex hormone that is responsible for a woman’s monthly ovulation.
Low estrogen levels during menopause causes the female body to stop ovulating. As the ovaries of the woman produce less estrogen, her body tries to look for other means to get its estrogen supply. One of the means that the body can be supplied with the estrogen hormone is through the fat cells. So the body tries to convert as much of the calories it is supplied with into fat to be able to produce the much needed estrogen. Unfortunately, the fat cells are not as effective in burning calories as much as muscles do. This causes women to pack up additional pounds.
Progesterone is another hormone that may be the cause of weight gain during menopause. Just like estrogen, women undergoing menopause also experience their body’s progesterone levels go down. This causes weight gain on women on a different way. Low levels of progesterone in the body are associated with water retention and bloating, giving one the appearance of getting bigger and heavier. But this effect usually only happens for a short time and will disappear in just a few months.
Another hormone that may be responsible for weight gain during menopause is the male sex hormone androgen. Menopause brings about an increase of androgen levels in women. This hormone becomes responsible for sending the gained weight into the abdominal area or the middle section of the body. This is the reason why weight gain during menopause is also referred to as the “middle age spread”.
Another hormone that may be responsible for weight gain during menopause is testosterone. This hormone helps the body to create lean muscle mass out of the calories that the body takes in. Muscle cells are better at burning calories than fat cells and helps in increasing the body’s metabolism. During menopause, the level of this hormone drops which then results in a gradual loss of muscle. This also means that metabolism in the body slows down, causing the body to burn calories slower.
Women become frustrated and concerned when they suddenly find themselves gaining weight during menopause. No matter how careful they are on maintaining their eating habits and even adding up a dose of exercise into their daily habit, they still can’t seem to maintain their weight. Women must understand that it is because of the changes in the body during menopause that makes maintaining their weight even more difficult. Losing weight even becomes a more challenging undertaking than ever before.
Women must remember that it is not entirely their fault that they are gaining weight during this stage in their life. Menopausal weight gain is a normal occurrence due to the fluctuations in the hormone levels in the body. These hormones will also have a big impact on one’s appetite and the body’s ability to metabolize calories and store fats.
The better that women understand what goes on with their bodies during menopause, the less frustrated they can become when faced with weight gain.
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What Women Should Know About Uterine Fibroids
By Ben Needles
Fibroids affect four out of every five women and so are an issue of grave concern. Luckily, there is a new non-surgical treatment which might help with this problem. Fibroids usually occur as multiple tumors that tend to grow very slowly. Sometimes, however, a woman may have a single fibroid the size of a grapefruit or even one so large that it fills the entire abdomen.
They are non-cancerous tumors that evolved from the muscle of the uterus. I ended up being excluded from the study for another reason, and attempted to go for follow-up like the head researcher had recommended.
They can be very frustrating, I have been struggling with mine for several years. I hope that the information I post here can help other women. Fibroids spontaneously infarct after childbirth. Because the postpartum cervix is patulous, infarcted fibroids that fall into this symptom.
The growth among women is very common and at least a fifth of all women will report this condition while this percentage rises to eighty percent when they attain the age of fifty or more. They are really growths or tumors comprising muscle cells as well as tissues along the walls of the uterus.
Many can grow as a single growth or in clusters (or groups). Their size can vary from small, like an apple seed (or less than one inch), to even larger than a grapefruit, or eight inches across or more. Fibroids are muscular tumors that are almost always benign.
They can grow on the inside, outside or within the walls of the uterus. Fibroids may also cause spotting between periods, dull pain or feelings of fullness or pressure in your lower abdomen or back. If they press on your bladder or rectum, you might develop urinary or bowel symptoms.
They are a condition of growth(s) on a females uterus which is non cancerous. Many many women have fibroids today and dont know it. They are not a disease, they are your genetic blueprint. If you can live with the symptoms it would probably be better than unnecessary intervention of any kind.
They generally shrink after menopause and stop causing symptoms. Or the symptoms may be mild, smaller periods that are a little heavier than normal.
They are an extremely common complaint although we rarely talk about them. Once you do open up and bring the topic up you will be amazed how many women you know who have had, or know someone who has had, fibroids. Many come about because the estrogen receptors are stimulated too much, regardless of your periods and usual hormonal flows.
So make your emotional peace and that will be the start of healing. Fibroids or polyps may affect fertility if they involve the uterine .
They will often cause no symptoms and need no treatment, and they usually shrink after menopause. But sometimes fibroids cause heavy bleeding or pain, and require treatment. Fibroids increase in size during pregnancy, when progesterone production is high, and atrophy after menopause, when progesterone levels decrease.
Whichever side is right, eating more whole grains and beans usually changes estrogen/progesterone ratio for the better and shrinks fibroids. They are fueled by estrogen. By taking a B complex you will greatly improve the odds of bothering with fibroids.
They normally arent problematic, but if they do cause heavy or painful periods, abdominal discomfort or bloating, back ache, urinary frequency or retention etc, then there are surgical and non-surgical methods to remove it (depending on size and location). Fibroids thrive by a blood supply that makes them grow .
About the Author (text)
Gregory Wadel
Shrink Uterine Fibroids By Up To 86%
http://wadeshealthmatters.com
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Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 6:40 am and is filed under health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
