De-stress for Your Health

Everyone experiences stress from time to time. In fact, stress is a fundamental part of life that we could not live without. The right amount of stress provides the stimulation to keep us moving forward and keeps us safe in certain situations.

In our fast-paced world, however, many people feel like they are in a constant state of stress, and this chronic stress can negatively impact our health. When you are in a stressful situation the nervous system sends a message to the amygdala, the part of your brain that handles decision-making and emotions. The nervous system will start to release adrenaline and cortisol. This is your body’s fight or flight response. 

While this stress can be beneficial in certain situations, experiencing this reaction multiple times per day can quickly burn up energy, leaving you feeling less focused and productive. Chronic stress can cause the body to constantly activate the stress response, leaving the body and brain unable to reset hormones and inflammatory chemicals to normal levels, which leads to a strain on your immune system. 

Figuring out ways to better manage stress is a very key piece of self-care. Try these techniques the next time you are dealing with a stressor.

For stressors that are uncontrollable, try to adapt your response to the situation:

1. Remind yourself that you have successfully handled a similar situation before. 
2. Reward yourself after the situation is over. 
3. Make a list of similar situations and how you successfully handled them in the past. 
4. Reassure yourself that you will be fine regardless of the outcome.
5. Use relaxation breathing to control your physical response.

Manage stressors with a problem-solving approach:

1. Keep a detailed stress journal to identify your daily stressors. 
2. Brainstorm solutions to your stressors. 
3. Make a plan to deal with one stressor at a time. 
4. Execute the plan. 
5. Reflect on the results and start over if necessary.

Bottom Line: You do not have to live with chronic stress and ignoring it can severely impact your health. Activities such as yoga, meditation, relaxation breathing and exercise have been proven to help manage stress. If you are having difficulty managing your stress, speak with your doctor.

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Heart Healthy Holidays

Tis’ the season for office cookie trays, after work gatherings and holiday parties! However, the holidays don’t have to tip the scales or your blood pressure in the wrong direction. Enjoy the holiday season while keeping these heart healthy tips in mind.

Check the salt. Bread, rolls, poultry and canned ingredients are some of the top sodium culprits. When grocery shopping for your holiday meals, compare the sodium content on the nutrition label using the % Daily Value column. Look for products labeled low in sodium or reduced sodium. You can rinse away excess sodium in canned goods by straining with water in a colander.

Mind the bird. Opt for lighter pieces of poultry and skip the skin to cut calories and saturated fat. When plating, keep in mind that a portion of meat is three ounces, roughly the size of a deck of cards. Before reaching for seconds, fill up on a serving of roasted veggies or salad.

Go light on the casserole. That holiday vegetable casserole is not so innocent. Let’s be honest, green beans don’t taste like green bean casserole and maintain the same nutritional benefits. One cup of standard green bean casserole contains 200 calories and 11 grams of fat. Make your own healthier version using milk instead of cream and spices in place of salt.

Make veggies shine. Veggies do not have to be the boring side dish that everyone skips over. Roasting vegetables caramelizes natural sugars and accentuates their delicious flavor. Roast winter root vegetables with rosemary, thyme and olive oil, winter squash with cinnamon and a dash of maple syrup, or carrots with cardamom and ginger.

Be selective with sweets. Savor a few bites of your favorite desserts and stop there. Add sweetness without the calories by using extracts like vanilla, almond or peppermint, or spices such as cinnamon or cloves.

Sip wisely. Both hot chocolate and eggnog fly off the shelves this time of year -- but beware of the sky high sugar and fat content in these beverages. Just one half cup serving of standard eggnog contains 160 calories, 8.5 grams of fat and 18 grams of sugar. Opt for the low-fat version to save 40 calories and 6 grams of fat per serving. For a lighter treat, try making your own cocoa using a low-sugar recipe.

Bottom Line: This season, savor your favorite holiday dishes while keeping heart healthy modifications in mind. Before adding items to your grocery cart, take a good look at the nutrition facts panel. Compare products and leave behind those that are noticeably high in sodium, salt or saturated fat.

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Get Your Kids to Eat Their Veggies

Trying to get kids to eat vegetables can be like a game of tug-of-war, one that the parent rarely wins. Marketing plays a huge role in persuading healthy or unhealthy food choices. With almost all advertising associated with less healthy choices, it’s no wonder that kids tend to prefer a colorful bowl of Trix cereal over a colorful plate of salad vegetables.

Thankfully, there are several tactics parents can use to get kids interested in trying new foods and excited to eat their vegetables. If you can relate to this common parenting struggle, consider these tips and strategies:

-Have kids take part in a coloring contest to design the next “Super-Veggie.”
-Allow kids to participate in the prepping and cooking process at mealtime.
-Offer kids two choices for the vegetable they would like to see in their lunch box or at the dinner table.
-Be a good role model and eat your vegetables too!
-Provide fruits and vegetables as snacks and during celebrations to create positive associations.
-Sneak veggies into dishes; consider trying fruit and vegetable blended smoothies, popsicles, muffins or quesadillas.
-Make a garden or set up small planters where kids can grow their own produce and herbs.
-When a child doesn’t like a vegetable, try cooking or incorporating it in a new way; you can even try presenting it with their favorite food (such as macaroni and cheese with broccoli).

Bottom Line: Encouraging kids to eat their vegetables can be difficult, but it’s not impossible. The key is to stick to your efforts, keep a positive attitude and continue to try different strategies. Above all, remember that eating should be a pleasant experience; aim to make trying new vegetables fun and positive.

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Do Artificial Sweeteners Increase Hunger?

Artificial sweeteners have been an increasingly popular diet aid over the past few decades, but recent studies suggest that consuming “fake sugars” may cause an increase in hunger. Now, a study co-led by the University of Sydney has revealed the potential mechanism behind artificial sweeteners and appetite stimulation in the brain.

The artificial sweetener studied, sucralose, is one of the most commonly used on the market—found in products such as Splenda, diet sodas and other low-calorie foods. When sucralose was fed to fruit flies and lab mice for more than a week, researchers noticed that they began eating more calories when given naturally sweetened foods afterwards—specifically, 30 percent more for the fruit flies.

The mechanism was found in the brain’s reward center; the artificial sweetener was tricking the brain into starvation mode. The chronic consumption of sucralose increased the sweetness of naturally-sweetened foods, such as fruit. This, in turn, led the brain to think it needed to consume more food because it was not consuming enough calories from the artificially sweetened foods. The researchers also noticed that the fruit flies experienced an increase in hyperactivity and insomnia as well as decreased sleep quality.

Bottom line: This study revealed yet another “red flag” involving artificial sweeteners. Although they may prove to be an effective short-term fix for sweet cravings, be cautious about using them over longer periods of time. What you think may be helping you reduce your sugar intake may be causing you to crave more calories the next time you eat naturally-sweetened foods. For now, try reducing sugar intake gradually and over time your body’s cravings will adapt.

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Higher Well-Being Increases Employee Engagement

A valuable relationship between employee well-being and employee engagement was recently measured in a research report on workplace wellness. The study found that when employees feel they have higher well-being they’re more likely to be engaged at work.

Let’s start with a quick definition of each term. Employee well-being is a state of optimal health and sense of purpose while employee engagement is the emotional connection employees have with their work, team, company and higher purpose.

The survey questioned more than 1,250 employees across 45 US markets and found that 88 percent of employees who cited feelings of high well-being (i.e., access to healthy options, the flexibility and freedom to pursue healthy programs, the ability to achieve work/life balance, and/or a sense of belonging and value to their employer), also reported feeling engaged at work. For those employees reporting lower well-being, only 50 percent felt engaged at work. Furthermore, for employees in the higher well-being category, 83 percent said they enjoy their work versus 41 percent in the lower well-being group; and 84 percent of employees who reported higher well-being felt loyal to their office co-workers, versus 54 percent of employees who reported feelings of low well-being.

While this connection may seem intuitive, little research has been conducted on the relationship between employee well-being and employee engagement. Employers can use the findings from this study to take steps to make positive organizational changes that will increase employee well-being and drive up engagement rates.

It was discovered in this study that managers, not executive officers, are the primary source of support, or non-support, in organizations. As perceptions of organizational support diminish, so do perceptions of well-being. The study found 72 percent of people who felt their employer cared about their well-being also reported having higher organizational support, whereas only seven percent of employees with lower organizational support reported feeling higher well-being. Employers should educate managers about the impact of well-being on employee engagement and provide the necessary tools, training and support to make it a priority.

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A Higher BMI Can Mean More Workplace Injuries

It’s common knowledge that overweight and obese individuals have an increased risk of chronic health conditions, including high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes. Interestingly, research has also found a correlation between being overweight or obese and an increased risk of work-related injuries.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Injury Research and Policy published a study showing that a body mass index (BMI) in the overweight or obese range increased a worker’s risk of traumatic workplace injury. The study looked at more than 7,600 workers in eight different aluminum manufacturing plants over a two-year period. About 85 percent of the workers were overweight or obese and 34 percent were in the “most obese” category. About 29 percent of the factory workers suffered an injury during the study period, and 92 percent of the injuries happened to workers who were overweight or obese, with the risk increasing as BMI rose.

Another study, conducted by researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin, found that obese men and women were more likely to suffer serious traumatic injury in front-end vehicle collisions than those who had a lower BMI. Other studies have shown that nurses with the highest BMIs have injury claim rates twice those of normal-weight nurses and that firefighters with a higher BMI suffer higher rates of lost-time injuries.

The latest research from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) looked at a representative sample of U.S. workers. The previously mentioned studies tended to focus on a single industry or profession. NIOSH looked at over 1,000 workers who suffered a work-related injury between 2004 and 2012. Compared to normal-weight workers, overweight and obese workers were 25 to 68 percent more likely to experience injuries.  

As a result of its research, NIOSH recommends that employers implement weight management programs and weight reduction policies targeted at overweight and obese workers as part of their initiatives to prevent or reduce workplace injuries. 

Keep in mind that many wellness programs are well promoted and well supported among management, but less effectively communicated to rank-and-file workers. Employers should use a multi-level communications approach to get the word out about company-sponsored weight-loss programs – e-mail, text messages, phone calls, in-person meetings and flyers posted in common areas. It’s also important to make the program accessible. On-site options for exercise improve participation in weight loss and wellness programs and make it easier for employees to fit well-being programs within their day. Taking simple steps such as marking walking paths or stairwells that workers can use during breaks, and making exercise equipment available where drivers report at the beginning and end of their shifts, can encourage employees to move more. Employers can also provide convenient, healthy food options on-site, which makes it easy for employees to fuel up on nutritious food. Be sure to keep third shift workers in mind when you roll out your program – these individuals often have the hardest time keeping fit and eating well.

At Wellness Workdays, we work with a wide variety of companies -- from financial firms and universities to lumber yards and manufacturing companies. We know what it takes to engage a diverse range of employees in a wellness program. Contact us to learn more.

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The Anti-Diet Movement

Have you noticed that many dietitians and fellow health professionals are moving away from the term “diet”? This is due to the realization that the diet and exercise culture that has evolved is doing more harm than good. Recent research indicates the key to lifelong health is to avoid dieting.

Researchers analyzed the results of a survey given to 147 healthy-weight adults. According to the study’s co-author, Brian Wansink, PhD and Director of the Food and Brand Lab, “Most slim people don’t employ restrictive diets or intense health regimes to stay at a healthy weight. Instead, they practice easy habits…”. The study noted that 96 percent of participants always eat breakfast, 90 percent exercise, and 92 percent claim to be “conscious of what they ate.” Half of the participants claimed that they don’t diet.

What about exercise? Consider the evolution of mankind. Humans started out in an environment that kept them moving at low-intensity every 20 minutes or so rather than sitting all day and jumping up for a 60-minute workout. Physical activity should be natural and recreational rather than strenuous and dutiful. Instead of doing jumping jacks and high knees, small bursts of physical activity all day long may be the key.

Bottom line: Join the anti-diet community and banish ‘the four-letter word’ from your vocabulary. Instead of focusing on what you ‘shouldn’t’ be eating, focus on what you can add to your meals to nourish your body and stay energized throughout the day. When considering exercise, think about how you can move more throughout the day, rather than relying solely on one hour of planned exercise. By incorporating small bursts of activity throughout the day, you will likely end up spending more time moving.

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Are Supplements Safe?

Plant-based remedies are often thought of as “safer” alternatives to modern medicine based on their vast use by our ancestors and, most notably, in Chinese medicine. While research on many herbs shows promise in alleviating pain or improving specific health aspects, these are rarely taken in their natural form today. Most often these herbs are taken in supplement form, manufactured in labs by companies not necessarily regulated by any agency.

So how do you know what is actually in these pills? Despite the perceived safety of these supplements, consumers may not realize there is no guarantee they are actually ingesting what is on the label – either in the amount or the form.

Although herbal and dietary supplements fall under the responsibility of the Food and Drug Administration, they are under separate regulations from conventional drugs or food. Unlike drugs, which require strict trials and testing before being released to consumers, the FDA is only responsible for the safety and efficacy of supplements after they are on the market. This means companies largely operate on an “honor system” when reporting their own testing. Unfortunately, action is only taken after reports by consumers or third party investigators are made indicating negative reactions or false labeling.

In 2015, the New York Attorney General’s Office performed their own investigation and reported the widespread practice of falsely labeled ingredients in the products of four major retailers. Testing revealed that not only were the ingredients listed often not actually present, but also various hidden ingredients and unlisted fillers were found, many of which are major allergens (think: legumes, gluten). These results came as a shock to most and highlight the need for large improvements in our regulatory systems for these products and companies.

For now, consumers can protect themselves by using careful scrutiny when selecting herbal or dietary supplements. The best advice is to look for seals of approval on products to ensure they have been tested by a third party and actually contain the ingredients listed and are without contaminants. Reputable third party seals include: USP, NSF, and ConsumerLab. However, still use caution, as this testing does not mean the product is safe or effective for the specific health claims listed.

Bottom line: What is the safest rule? Real food! Remember, supplements made in a lab are not in their natural state, so you are always better off adding fresh or dried herbs to your diet and getting nutrients from real food.

Source 1, Source 2, Source 3

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