In recognition of National Dog Week I would like to honor the furry ‘physicians’ of our society – therapy dogs. Therapy dogs positively impact the quality of life for millions of children and adults. Via the unique human-animal bond, therapy dogs can ease physical and emotional pain beyond what traditional medical treatment and rehabilitation can do.
Therapy dogs are trained to provide affection and comfort to people in hospitals, rehabilitation and hospice centers, schools, nursing homes, retirement communities, homeless shelters, youth at-risk centers and families with emotionally or physically impaired individuals. Therapy dogs are not service dogs. Service dogs directly assist humans by performing tasks the individual cannot do on their own and are legally protected at the federal level by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Therapy dogs provide a calming influence, companionship, trust and unconditional love for individuals with the following conditions:
According to the 4 Paws For Ability organization, children with FASD, ADHD or autism experience sensory overload causing involuntary, repetitive movements or behaviors. Therapy dogs are trained to disrupt this behavior by cueing the child with a gentle nuzzle or putting their paw on the child. Some children require deep pressure to still an over stimulated regulatory system. Modern medicine uses weighted blankets but therapy dogs trained to lie on top of the child provide ‘contact comfort’ that medical equipment simply cannot provide.
Other documented benefits the organization has seen from the use of therapy dogs include improved social skills, an increase in the length of attention span, improved ability to focus, advancement in abstract and concrete thinking, improved self confidence, greater independence and empathy for others.
Even more amazing is a dog’s response to seizures. According to Right Health a dog can be trained to summon help, activate a medical alert device, pull potentially dangerous objects away from the person having a seizure and perform ‘blocking’ tasks. Blocking refers to the dog keeping the individual from walking into streets or other dangerous areas or the act of the dog cushioning the fall of the individual with his own body. The Epilepsy Foundation describes these highly trained dogs as ‘alarm systems’ as they have the ability to predict in advance when seizures will occur in someone they are close to. Once again, something that modern medicine cannot do with such accuracy.
Not just any Fido or Spot will do. Therapy dogs must be accredited through training and tested in the environments in which they will be working. While large dogs are more suited for service tasks like blocking for seizures or providing deep pressure to the over stimulated, ‘pet therapy’ or ‘animal assisted therapy’ are the terms used when other species like cats, rabbits, birds or other animals are used for comfort and companionship as rehabilitation for the abused, disabled, depressed or injured.
I agree with Roger Caras who said “Dogs are not your whole life, but they make your life whole”.
photo by: Ed Yourdon
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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.
As you may have read in my first post, I joined the bodybugg revolution about 6 weeks ago, and I am a huge fan of the real-time feedback that it provides. I think this is the reason that the program is working so well for me.
We live in a time where instant feedback is readily available in many industries and formats. We see constant Twitter streams and Facebook updates to see what our friends, colleagues, and acquaintances are up to and thinking about, and we get our news through RSS feeds that constantly push the latest and greatest information right to us…
…but where is the real-time feedback on my health? How am I supposed to figure out how the things I do today affect my body (both today and in the future)?
Enter the BodyBugg, which helps me see the impact of the foods I eat and the movements I make on a daily basis. This isn’t just a tool for weight loss. It also has programs for people who want to gain weight or maintain their current weight. It’s all about the balance of calories consumed vs. calories burned. If you want to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you consume. Want to gain weight? Eat and drink more calories than you burn (which is what I was doing before…although unintentionally).
It’s been about 6 weeks since I began the program, and I am still going strong. To date, I’ve lost 9 pounds, and am still vigilant about logging my food entries every single day (even though I must admit that I was a bit skeptical at first about the time commitment that it would take to do this). While logging food and drink is not mandatory, I think refusing to do so would cause you to miss out on one of the main benefits of the program: learning the tools you need to sustain a lifestyle change. I could go on for several paragraphs about this topic, so I will save that one for another post.
For now, I want to go back to the importance of real-time feedback on my own body and my own health. I can’t help but think if we really saw the dangerous effects of smoking that cigarette or eating that jelly doughnut every morning, we would stop doing those things (or at least stop doing them as often). Can you imagine the impact watching your lungs get darker with every drag or watching your arteries clog with every bite of that jelly doughnut?
I think visualizing the effects of what we do to our bodies is what it will take before some of us will actually get it. We know smoking and consistently eating fatty foods is bad for us, but we still do it every single day. Why? I would argue that since we don’t see the effects of these unhealthy behaviors today (or even tomorrow or next week), we are content to remain blissfully ignorant. “I’m 30 and I smoke a pack a day, but I’m not really affected besides the occasional coughing fit. So what if I get lung cancer at 65 – I’ll deal with it then.”
Thankfully, visualization doesn’t have to be as drastic as the blackened lung or the clogged artery (although it may take these types of scare tactics to finally convince some people). The bodybugg visually shows me my own personal teeter totter of how many more calories I need to burn to help offset my food intake on any given day – based upon that day’s food log. For now, this seems to be all the real-time feedback I need to help me stay on target with my weight loss goals. The real test will be to see if I continue to sustain my current habits and stick with the program over the long term…but again, that’s for another post.
Photo by: bardgabbard
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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.
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Several weeks ago, I was spending a normal evening at home with my dogs, waiting for my husband to get home from class. It must have been a Tuesday night, because I was watching The Biggest Loser (hello my name is Laura and I am a reality TV junkie). During the show, Bob (one of the trainers), was shown at a computer with one of the contestants, talking about how the contestant was tracking calories with something called the BodyBugg. Unlike other product placement bits on the show, nobody really went into the details of the BodyBugg infomercial-style. They just mentioned it briefly and went on with the show.
Since I work in the healthcare industry and am easily awed by new gadgets, I was intrigued enough to do a little research on this device. Videos on the site explain that the BodyBugg has sensor technology that gives you real-time feedback on how many calories you’ve burned and also lets you track how many calories you consume. The program also allows you to set weight loss goals and at any given time it can tell you how many calories you need to burn and how many calories you can still consume in order to reach your weight loss goals. As it says on the video, “You decide – move more, eat less, or both!”
The compelling thing about this system is that it really plays on the idea of trade-offs. Realistically, not very many people are willing to give up on all of their "vices" (smoking, drinking, eating fatty foods, etc.), but wouldn’t it be great to know how much improvement you could make by giving up just 1 of those vices? Or maybe not entirely giving up a vice, but just using more moderation. I think this idea of trade-offs can be a big key to weight loss because people don’t have to necessarily commit to a certain diet. By using the idea of trade-offs and having real-time feedback at your fingertips, you know that if you choose to eat that extra piece of pizza, you’re going to need to make up for it by burning x number of additional calories. On the flip side, if you’ve had a good day of calorie burning, it’s ok to eat some dessert as a reward.
I think people would be much more likely to stick with this type of weight loss plan rather than one of unrealistic diets or food deprivation, which we all know is not really sustainable across time. Research proves that lifestyle changes are much more sustainable than going on the “I can only eat grapefruit and chicken broth” diet (ok I totally made that up, but you get the idea).
So…I bought a BodyBugg, and have been extremely pleased with the results so far. I could tell that my clothes were fitting more loosely within the first 2 weeks of using it, and have already lost 6 pounds as I am finishing up my 3rd week in the program.
Yay – more real-time feedback!
Since I think feedback loops are so important, I am going to continue blogging through my BodyBugg journey (hence the volume 1 in the title). I also want to hear from you. Is anyone else out there on the BodyBugg bandwagon? What other weight loss strategies / techniques / solutions have worked for you?
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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.
