Wellfie Wednesday Tip #148: Our Patriotic Duty

Happy #WellfieWednesday! And Happy Early Fourth of July!! This week’s post is a re-post brought to you by Aaron (@AaronPerezPT). Enjoy! 

     On the 4th, we often celebrate our Patriotism with brats, burgers, beers, and things that go BOOM! Tomorrow, I encourage us all to embrace another form of patriotism, Physical Activity. That’s right, #Activity4America, or if you’re a millennial you might prefer #Movement4Murica. It may seem strange to think of exercise in this way. But truth be told, being physically active and living a healthy lifestyle is incredibly patriotic. Our previous U.S. Surgeon General agrees. In a 2014 interview, Rear Admiral Dr. Boris Lushniak proclaimed, 

“I think we’re on the cusp of actually taking health and wellness seriously. I think for the longest time it’s been on the back burner. The time is right, right now. We have to treat health as a natural resource. We have to put it up on the same level as the economy. When the economy goes sour, all of a sudden there’s reaction. There’s the sense of somebody has to do something if the economy is bad. Guess what, folks? The economy doesn’t do anything without a healthy workforce. It doesn’t do anything without healthy people.”

  Indeed, the health of any nation is only as great as the health of its people.  Health is our greatest natural resource. Protect it. Nurture it. If for no other reason, it is our patriotic duty to do so. Wishing us all a happy and healthy 4th of July! 

     Thank you for all of the #WellfieWednesday support, be sure to post your pictures this week that demonstrate your active patriotism and tag the WW crew members in your post (@TheFuelPhysio, @Eric_in_AmERICa, @AaronPerezPT, @DianaKlatt) and keep the wave of healthy change going!

-WW Crew

Wellfie Wednesday Tip #140: Reflections from a Health Screening Event

Happy #WellfieWednesday! This week’s post is brought to you by Aaron Perez (@FreestylePhysio). Enjoy!

                  This past week I had the privilege of assisting at a health expo where Pro-Activity Tennessee, led by Alexis and Zac Morgan, conducted a health screening event and launched a year-long health and wellness initiative with a large employer. It was the largest and busiest health screening I had ever been a part of, and it was awesome! Given that I know most of our readers are PTs interested in health and wellness, I thought it may be useful and interesting to share a few takeaways from my experience. 

Importance of Planning 

I love that quote by Dwight D. Eisenhower, and feel it applies to my experience this past weekend well. I thought the team did an amazing job of preparing. Alexis put together an incredibly detailed, yet easy to follow master spreadsheet to keep us organized. We walked through the event virtually and then again when we all got together in person. I never felt overly anxious or panicked during the walkthroughs, and this may be because my role and responsibilities were small in comparison to others on the team, but nonetheless I think it speaks to how well prepared those leading the charge were. 

Look the Part 

The host company did an excellent job of branding their event and initiative. They created shirts for all of us to wear so that we could look like one team, even though the day of the event was the first time some of us had met in person. Further, even with it being the first health screening event for some of us in the group, I feel like we looked the part and had a great showcase, with eye catching handouts (kudos Alexis for being a design wizard), fun music (can’t go wrong with ACDC), and lots of equipment, including BP cuffs, hand grip dynamometers, body composition scales, assault bikes, and more. In fact, two of the biggest game changers in my opinion were not used in any part of the health screening, yet made the health screening a memorable event worth participating in and talking about. 

Building Comradery Through…Competition?

As hinted at above and in the main picture of this blog post, the Pro-Activity team utilized a “Live” scoring system that was continuously updated on a big screen TV as participants completed their screenings. This really seemed to add a “Wow” factor that not only brought people into the screening but also kept them around afterwards watching the leaderboard to see how their co-workers were doing. Not only was there a live leaderboard, but there was an awesome looking “WWE-esque” belt hanging over top of the leaderboard to be won by the overall champion of our screens. I found that addition to be powerful and it made it much simpler to persuade people to participate. I could simply say, “You want to participate in this because you want a chance at winning THAT!” **pointing to the belt hanging on top of the leaderboard*” Big shout out to Nick for creating the system that made the Live leaderboard possible, and to Zac for the championship belt. 

Energy is Contagious 

Lastly, I want to acknowledge the host company’s participants as I felt their energy throughout the event and even at the 6am workout the next day, it was tremendous! It made it much easier to stay excited during the event when I could feed off the participants energy. Health screenings can be difficult in that regard because they are by nature monotonous for the conductors. I’ve never had so much fun asking people what their age and height are for 3 hours straight 😊. Kudos to everyone involved, and I hope that same energy snowballs throughout the yearlong initiative.  

Thanks for all of the support, be sure to post your pictures this week and tag the WW crew members in your post (@TheFuelPhysio, @Eric_in_AmERICa, @FreestylePhysio, @DianaKlatt) and keep the wave of healthy change going!

- WW Crew

Wellness Wednesday Tip #54: GROUNDING BREAKING NEWS! #SCIENCE DISCOVERS #SECRET TO HEALTH & LONGEVITY

Happy Wellfie Wednesday! Welcome back!

That’s right! The cat is out of the bag. #Science has discovered 5 keys for health & longevity.

This is groundbreaking news! Ground breaking in the sense that we’re realizing this guy may have had it right long ago.

Hippocrates, Father of Medicine 460-370 B.C. 

And the major keys are *Drum Roll Please*

1.     Be physically active

a. “Walking is man’s best medicine” –Hippocrates.

b. The current physical activity recommendation for adults is 150 minutes of moderate activity, 75 minutes of vigorous activity, or a combination of both.

2.     Maintain a healthy weight

a. “Let Food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” –Hippocrates

b. It’s near impossible to outwork an unhealthy diet. While physical activity plays a role here, we cannot neglect nutrition.

c. What’s a healthy weight? In the study linked below, they measured waist circumference. Generally, the recommendation is for men to be less than 40 inches, and women less than 35 inches.

3.     Avoid tobacco use

a. “Smoking sucks for health.” –Not Hippocrates

b. Okay, I don’t have Hippocrates quote about smoking. I don’t think smoking tobacco was invented yet. We’ve known for some time though that smoking is bad for us. I did some searching and apparently U.S. physician Benjamin Rush wrote about the dangers of tobacco use in 1798. During the 1920s the first reports linking smoking to lung cancer appeared (link). 

4.     Limit alcohol consumption

a. “Everything in excess is opposed by nature.” –Hippocrates

b. In other words, drink responsibly. Maybe that’s not quite a direct translation. Nonetheless, many of us have probably experienced alcohol in excess being opposed by our bodies. Interestingly, moderate alcohol consumption (no more than 1 serving a day for women, and no more than 2 servings a day for men) may have some health benefits.

5.     Sleep well

a. “Sleep and watchfulness, both of them, when immoderate, constitute disease.” -Hippocrates

b. Keeping in line with the last quote, moderation is key.  I think it’s safe to say lack of sleep is more of a common problem than excessive sleep for most of our busy American lives. It is recommended adults get at least 7 hours of sleep per night.

     These 5 behaviors are really powerful. Together, they were able to prevent 80% of heart attacks in men (link). The effect was cumulative meaning each behavior was beneficial on its own, and together the benefits compounded. Unfortunately, only one percent of study participants engaged in all 5 behaviors.

     Therein lies the point. We know what the essential behaviors for health are. We’ve known some of them for quite some time (Shout out to Hippocrates). However, knowledge alone is not enough to change behavior. And behavior change is the name of the game. That’s the real secret. Stay tuned for more on that topic in future Wellfie Wednesdays!

As always, thanks for reading. Be well. And be sure to tag the WW crew members in your post (@PBernerSPT, @Eric_in_AmERICa, @AaronPerezPT, @DianaKlatt) and keep the wave of healthy change going!

-WW Crew