We all dread the annual winter sickness. It comes, usually without warning, and stays longer than we want. We’re sniffly, sneezy, achey and in general malaise for much longer than we can afford to be. Even when things start to clear up, we still don’t feel quite 100 percent. The thing is, all that can be avoided if we keep our immune system running to its fullest potential. In addition to regular, and I do mean regular exercise, the best way to stave off sickness is by making sure your body is running on the best fuel possible for the dark days and long nights of winter.
You don’t need 10 steps or 20 or even five to make sure you are eating the right things at the right times. Over at HealthCastle.com they narrowed it down to four simple, easy-to-remember tips to help you get properly fueled and free of colds, flus and all other annoying and clingy winter ailments. Please head over and check out their full article, but for now here are their four steps to eating properly this winter. Take special note of number three, and remember that we just did a post about exactly that! Here we go:
- Eat high-quality carbs: Listen to your cravings. There is a reason for them! In the winter, with fewer sunny hours, your stored serotonin (the “feel-good” brain chemical) starts to decline. Your cravings for carbohydrate-loaded comfort foods are your body crying for more serotonin. But be careful when choosing carbohydrates to boost serotonin! Opt for nutritious whole grains and choose high-quality carbs, such as sweet potatoes, pumpkins and squashes.
- Love seasonal produce: Winter produce may not be as exciting and colorful as summer berries, but there are still many healthy choices available. Work seasonal produce, including pomegranates, cranberries, citrus fruits, purple grapes and orange root vegetables, into your meals. You’ll not only add color to your plate, you’ll pack in some serious nutrition punch.
- Consider Vitamin D supplements: If you live in the northern hemisphere, consider taking vitamin D supplements. Numerous studies have shown that oral intake of vitamin D can reduce the risk of colon, breast and ovarian cancers by as much as 50 percent. Vitamin D can be found in fortified dairy products, fatty fish and egg yolks. But reaching the recommended level through food alone is rather difficult. Therefore, the Canadian Cancer Society recommends that all adults take vitamin D supplements every day during the fall and winter seasons. Be sure to speak to your doctor before starting any supplementation.
- Nourish your cold: No diet remedy or supplement has been scientifically proven to prevent cold and flu. However, studies have shown that vitamin C supplements may make your cold milder and shorten it by half a day. In addition, there’s a promising perk for yogurt lovers! A German study found that probiotics (as found in yogurt with active culture) may shorten your cold episode by almost two days. So keep on eating those “friendly bugs!”
It’s winter but it doesn’t have to be miserable. Before you know it, we’ll be posting about the glory of warm spring weather and how to avoid sunburn!
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
Anybody who has ever made an effort to be healthier knows that “health” is an elusive concept that isn’t easily achieved. Unhealthy habits and routines are hard to break.
Our consumer innovation team has been focused for the last two years on “making fun healthy.” The most successful “changes” are ones that fit naturally into a person’s life. They’re fun. They incorporate health into something people already enjoy doing. You can read more about our wellness philosophy here. Even in our own lives, we look for ways to take our normal “life-flow” and inject some health into it (like having walkstations on the floor, and having bikesharing to get from place to place downtown). I like to think about health-injected lifeflows as “micro-enablers” of good health.
But everyone’s lives have obstacles to health, too. For example, it tends to be both difficult and expensive to buy healthy food and prepare it. It is cheaper and easier to eat unhealthy food.
There are a lot of companies that have recognized the value of a healthier work force (Pitney Bowes is a great example), and are trying to make it easier for their employees to be healthy. Humana has an on-site health club that offers cheaper membership for people that go a lot (but not free – that’s another premise that’s worthy of a separate blog post). Our cafeteria always offers healthy choices, and sometimes they’re subsidized.
But in addition to enabling good health, lots of companies put up obstacles, too. I’m co-leading a “tweetchat” focused on workplace wellness, and it’s caused me to want to find a way to shine a light on the obstacles companies put up – and to tear them down.
A lot of corporate cultures frown on taking time out to do ANYTHING – even exercise, except maybe at lunch. A lot of corporate cultures emphasize clock-punching. Employees are expected to come in early, stay late and be on call at all times.
A lot of times the salad bar is one of the most expensive ways to eat in the cafeteria. That makes sense because fresh fruit and vegetables are expensive and perishable. But if you really want to encourage employees to eat better, you have to tip the scales financially in favor of veggies.
There are wellness programs, but they are almost always uninspired (payroll stuffers, anyone?) and difficult to find and use.
Wellness programs and incentives often aren’t connected to one another.
None of these problems are insurmountable. But they can aggregate into some pretty serious obstacles. I’m convinced that if companies got really serious about identifying and obliterating their micro-obstacles, they’d make giant strides in enabling – and even encouraging – a healthier and more engaged work force. The first step is identification. I’ve thought of a few things that I consider to be micro-obstacles to workplace wellness. What did I miss? What are the obstacles you’ve seen in your own work force? And what innovative things have you seen that overcome the obstacles? What would you like to see?
Photo by sokisoy
[Editor's note: The concept of "Micro-Obstacles" will be one of the topics on this month's CoHealth tweetchat on Wednesday, February 17th. CoHealth is a "workplace wellness cooperative" focused on health at work.]
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
In the world of fitness, you hear a lot of confusing terms being tossed around. One pair that gets used more than most is aerobic and anaerobic exercise. Trainers love to say them and health magazines drop little reminders of them everywhere. The truth of the matter is most people don’t really know the difference or how the difference affects their workout. Until now.
We’re going to give you a super basic primer on the differences, and a bit of insight on how the two can help you achieve your winter workout goals and keep them sailing smoothly into the spring, summer and onto next fall.
Aerobic exercise refers to any and all exercises that use oxygen to create the energy required to break down glucose to use as a fuel. Aerobic exercises help build endurance and strengthen your heart. Common examples of aerobic exercises are as follows:
- Dancing to music or step dancing (fast movements)
- Treadmills
- Exercise bicycles
- Ski machines
- Air gliders
- Jogging
- Sports such as racquetball and handball
On the other hand, anaerobic exercise refers to exercise where your body must create its own energy. Anaerobic exercises are usually things that can only be done in short bursts, and not maintained for longer than a minute or two. Because of the intensity, anaerobic exercise not only strengthens your heart, but also your muscles and bones much more so than aerobic. Some examples are:
- Weightlifting
- Resistance Machines
- Dumbbells
- Resistance Bands
So which do you do? Simple … both. By combining both into your workout routines, you’re ensuring that you get the best of both worlds when it comes to endurance, strength and muscle. You’re making sure that your cardiovascular system as well as your muscles reap the benefits of your hard work. How much of each should you do? Talk to your doctor or trainer first to make sure that whatever plan you follow is custom suited to you, and you alone. Get out there and start going!
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
I have a problem with going to bed at night, which means I’m usually pretty interested in any sleep-realted study.
So I was all over an article that Anahad O’Connor at The New York Times recently wrote about the connection between activity and sleep latency in children, Really? The Claim: Exercise More During the Day, and You Will Sleep Better at Night.
Apparently a longitudnal study was published this year that shows a correlation between a child’s activity during the day and how long it takes to fall asleep at night.
The findings: It takes an extra three minutes for kids to fall asleep, per every hour of sedentary activity during the day. This can lead us to believe that physical activity leads to better sleep.
So how do you get more physical activity? Here are some things I’ve started doing:
Walk more — Walking is easy and free. When it’s nice outside, I walk around the neighborhood with my kids. When I go to work everyday, I walk from my car to the office. I even like to get up and just wonder around the office throughout the day. The point is to just get up move around.
Play more — My daughter is three now and can play games inside like hide and seek and tag. We also like to play loud music and dance around together. Follow the leader is an easy game to play, and we can end up spending a good half hour marching around the kitchen table together to the funky beat.
Exercise more — This may sound offputting but it doesn’t have to be hard work. I now spend 30-45 minutes three times a week watching TV on an eliptical machine. I’ve found that watching football, basketball or even MMA while being active makes it easy to keep going psycologically.
Those are my tips. What are yours? How do you stay active during the day to fall asleep easier at night?
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
Let’s face facts for a moment here: We live in a world where the focus every day is trying to shift back to a healthy lifestyle. With heart disease running rampant, obesity on the rise and diabetes taking over, people everywhere are learning the hard way just how important it is to stay healthy, stay fit and stay on top of their diets. This Web site itself is proof positive that people care, people want to learn and people want to help. That said, there’s a lot of advice floating around about the need for proper diets, new types of dieting, fad diets, crash diets and a whole slew of other diet-related things. There’s one question, however, that many doctors around the country are hoping you’re asking yourself: Are You Getting Enough Protein?
The reason this question needs to be asked, and the reason it’s such a tough one to answer, is that the answer is different for everyone. Based on your height, weight, activity level, age and health, the number could be vastly different between people who are otherwise remarkably similar. As a rule of thumb, the more you exercise, the more protein you’re going to need. But there are exceptions. Pregnant women, for instance, usually need more protein. The bottom line is many of us are not getting enough protein, and if we were, we’d quickly find out that the right amounts of the right kinds of protein can help curb appetite, improve weight loss and stave off chronic illnesses. Now, before you go out and start chewing on a fat steak, you should realize that it’s the right kind of proteins that make all the difference, and getting the right amounts.
For starters, why don’t you take the Protein Quiz? Simply enter your age, height and frame size. A second page will ask about your physical activity. Simply click to the next page for details about how many grams of protein you need each day to fuel your body to its optimal level. Not only that, there’s a helpful little protein calculator that gives you the protein amounts of common foods. Handy, no?
So, step right up and figure out if you’re getting what you need to stay properly fueled. Remember, research is pouring in that proves that healthy amounts of protein might just change everything in your healthy lifestyle. What do you have to lose . . . except that holiday weight?
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
