The following article was published in The New York Times Well section on May 25, 2011:

Less Active at Work, Americans Have Packed on Pounds

Getty Images/SuperStockA worker operates a press at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, typical of the physical activity that was common in many workplaces in earlier decades.

Looking beyond poor eating habits and a couch-potato lifestyle, a group of researchers has found a new culprit in the obesity epidemic: the American workplace.

A sweeping review of shifts in the labor force since 1960 suggests that a sizable portion of the national weight gain can be explained by declining physical activity during the workday. Jobs requiring moderate physical activity, which accounted for 50 percent of the labor market in 1960, have plummeted to just 20 percent.

The remaining 80 percent of jobs, the researchers report, are sedentary or require only light activity. The shift translates to an average decline of about 120 to 140 calories a day in physical activity, closely matching the nation’s steady weight gain over the past five decades, according to the report, published Wednesday in the journal PLoS One.

Today, an estimated one in three Americans are obese. Researchers caution that workplace physical activity most likely accounts for only one piece of the obesity puzzle, and that diet, lifestyle and genetics all play an important role.

But the new emphasis on declining workplace activity also represents a major shift in thinking, and it suggests that health care professionals and others on the front lines against obesity, who for years have focused primarily on eating habits and physical activity at home and during leisure time, have missed a key contributor to America’s weight problem. The findings also put pressure on employers to step up workplace heath initiatives and pay more attention to physical activity at work.

“If we’re going to try to get to the root of what’s causing the obesity epidemic, work-related physical activity needs to be in the discussion,” said Dr. Timothy S. Church, a noted exercise researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., and the study’s lead author. “There are a lot of people who say it’s all about food. But the work environment has changed so much we have to rethink how we’re going to attack this problem.”

The report shows that in 1960, one out of two Americans had a job that was physically active. Now it is estimated that only one in five Americans achieves a relatively high level of physical activity at work. Dr. Church notes that because the research doesn’t factor in technological changes, like increasing reliance on the Internet and e-mail, many people in service and desk jobs that have always involved only light activity are now moving less than ever, meaning the findings probably understate how much physical activity has been lost during work hours.

While it has long been known that Americans are more sedentary at work compared with the farming and manufacturing workers of 50 years ago, the new study is believed to be the first in which anyone has estimated how much daily caloric expenditure has been lost in the workplace.

“It’s a light bulb, ‘aha’ moment,” said Barbara E. Ainsworth, the president-elect of the American College of Sports Medicine and an exercise researcher at Arizona State University. “I think occupational activity is part of that missing puzzle that is so difficult to measure, and is probably contributing to the inactivity and creeping obesity that we’re seeing over time.”

For years, the role that physical activity has played in the obesity problem has been uncertain. Numerous studies suggest there has been little change in the average amount of leisure-time physical activity, posing a conundrum for researchers trying to explain the country’s steady weight gain. As a result, much of the focus has been on the rise of fast-food and soft drink consumption.

Other studies have suggested that changing commuting habits, declining reliance on public transportation and even increased time in front of the television have played a role in the fattening of America. But none of those issues can fully explain the complex changes in nationwide weight-gain patterns.

Some earlier research has hinted at the fact that workplace physical activity is associated with weight and health. One seminal set of studies of London bus drivers and conductors showed that the sedentary bus drivers had higher rates of heart disease than the ticket-takers, who moved around during the workday.

Dr. Church said that during a talk on the country’s obesity patterns, he was struck by the fact that Mississippi and Wisconsin both have high rates of obesity, despite having little in common in terms of demographics, education or even weather. It occurred to him that both states have waning agricultural economies, prompting him to begin exploring the link between changes in the labor force and declines in workplace physical activity.

He quickly discovered that a decline in farming jobs alone could not explain increasing obesity around the country, and began exploring job shifts over several decades. Using computer models, Dr. Church and colleagues assigned metabolic equivalent values to various job categories and then calculated changes in caloric expenditure at work from 1960 to 2008.

“You see the manufacturing jobs plummet and realize that’s a lot of physical activity,” said Dr. Church. “It’s very obvious that the jobs that required a lot of physical activity have gone away.”

Ross C. Brownson, an epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis, said that both health professionals and the public needed to broaden the traditional definition of physical activity as something that occurs during planned exercise, like running or working out at the gym.

“We need to think about physical activity as a more robust concept than just recreational physical activity,” said Dr. Brownson, whose 2005 report on declining physical activity in the workplace is cited in the PLoS One report. “In many ways we’ve engineered physical activity out of our lives, so we’ve got to find ways to put it back into our lives, like taking walks during breaks or having opportunities for activity that are more routine to our daily lives, not just going to the health club.”

Researchers said it is unlikely that the lost physical activity can ever be fully restored to the workplace, but employers do have the power to increase the physical activity of their employees by offering subsidized gym memberships or incentives to use public transit. Some companies have set up standing workstations, and marketers now offer treadmill-style desks. Employers can also redesign offices to encourage walking, by placing printers away from desks and encouraging face-to-face communication, rather than e-mail.

“The activity we get at work has to be intentional,” said Dr. Ainsworth. “When people think of obesity they always think of food first, and that’s one side of it, but it’s high time to look at the amount of time we spend inactive at work.”

The following information is from The New York Times, Health section

Posted to this site on April 19, 2011

April 14, 2011, 2:35 PM
Medication-Related Injuries on the Rise
By TARA PARKER-POPE
The number of people treated in hospitals in the United States for problems related to medication errors has surged more than 50 percent in recent years.

In 2008, 1.9 million people became ill or injured from medication side effects or because they took or were given the wrong type or dose of medication, compared with 1.2 million injured in 2004, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Although several national reports in recent years have sounded the alarm about the toll of medication errors, the latest data show the problem continues to persist. The A.H.R.Q. data measure only patients treated in the hospital or emergency department as a result of a medication error. The data don’t distinguish between prescribing, dispensing or consumer errors. Some of the errors resulted from a physician prescribing the wrong drug or dose; others occurred because a pharmacist or nurse gave the wrong drug, or because a patient at home used the wrong type or dose of medication.

In 2006, the Institute of Medicine issued a report citing medication mistakes as the most common medical errors, resulting in an estimated $3.5 billion in added costs for lost wages, productivity and additional health care expenses.

The committee said the problem could be solved with improvements in communication between health care professionals and patients, as well as the creation of consumer-friendly information resources for patients to obtain drug information. The report called for more electronic prescriptions and said better naming, labeling and packaging of many drugs was needed to reduce confusion and prevent errors.

The A.H.R.Q. data showed that among patients who were admitted to the hospital after taking the wrong type or dose of a drug, the most common medications to cause side effects or injuries were corticosteroids. The drugs typically are used to treat asthma, ulcerative colitis or arthritis.

Other drugs that resulted in the highest number of patients admitted to the hospital were pain relievers, blood thinners, cancer drugs and heart and blood pressure medicines.

People older than 65 were most likely to be hospitalized for side effects or medication-related injuries. However, young people were also at risk. One in five emergency cases related to medication problems were children or teenagers.

The following information is from Wellness.com

Posted to this site on March 2, 2010

Chair Massage: Cutting Worker's Compensation Costs

If you sit in one position in your cubicle during your work day you understand the aches and pains that your body begins to feel after a while. Your wrists feel tight from typing, and your lower back is killing you. You wish someone could take your head and remove it from your body for a few minutes to relieve those aches and pains that have been shooting up from your tight shoulders.

Now imagine as an employer that all your employees are feeling the same way at work. Long hours in front of the same screen day in and day out.

 The problem with many jobs is that a large portion of time at work is spent in front of the computer. In many businesses that is simply the nature of the beast. However, it is important to remember that the body is made for mobility and an immobile body can cause repetitive stress injuries that are often expensive and time consuming to treat.

This becomes costly to companies, for many employees then seek worker's compensation to treat their ailments. Worker's compensation (often referred to as “worker's comp” ) is compensation that workers are able to receive for any injury that is received on the job, so almost all repetitive stress injuries apply.

Again if a large percentage of employees are hurt, this means big bills for the company for there will be many worker's compensation claims. In 2007, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 4 million people that filed workers compensations claims for some form of  injury or illness. 3.8 million (around 95%) were injury cases. Half of the cases reported required at least taking several days of from work, if not more severe rehabilitative measures.

  When worker's compensation claims are filed, if the claim passes the company has to pay the employee around 2/3 of their salary for the duration of the illness. This costs companies in America millions of dollars not to mention the lost productivity time!

 Yet there is a way to help prevent repetitive injury at work in turn reducing worker's compensation claims. Employees need to give their bodies a break during the work day in order to de-stress and prevent injury.

Many company's are implementing wellness programs and are putting some form of a corporate chair massage program into their regimen. Yes massage! During chair massage a therapist is able to come to the work-site and provide massage for employees.

Massages usually range from 5 – 20 minutes and allow employees to release tension, and rehab injuries that may become chronic if not given any attention. Having a massage therapist come in on a regular basis would prevent injury! In turn, regular chair massage would cut costs!

 Although this takes some investment, investing in chair massage in order to have healthy employees will in the long term create more productivity because employees are healthy. This leads to lower work related insurance costs, and an increased bottom line. You will have more successful company! So take the time to bring chair massage into the work place, so that your healthy employees can take care of you!

* information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics


The following information is from the blog, "Alter: An Alternative Viewpoint" by Kristin Kozlowski

Posted to this site on March 2, 2010


Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Massage to Help Your Workout
There are so many benefits of massage therapy, I hardly know where to begin blogging about them. I am starting with the benefits of massage therapy as an additive to a workout program because I think it's a benefit that a lot of people are aware of without really know why it's beneficial.

To understand how massage therapy can help your workout, it's helpful to understand the basic structure of your muscular system. When you think of your muscles, don't think of them as solid entities. Muscles are made up of lots of muscle fibers, or strands of muscle tissue. I describe them as a handful of uncooked spaghetti. When muscles contract, the muscle fibers slide alongside each other, pulling together to move your bones. In order for a muscle to extend, its opposing muscle needs to contract.

Knots, or adhesions, occur in the musculature for many reasons, the top being trauma or repetitive action. These adhesions bind the muscle fibers together, not allowing them to separate when the muscle extends. Adhesions in the musculature are like drops of glue on a rubber band, they stop movement and create tension on the areas around the adhesion. The areas around the knots become tense and strained, eventually causing pain and spasms. Furthermore, they keep the muscle at a shortened length, not allowing it to extend to its farthest resting length.

There are several techniques that a massage therapist can use to remove knots, or adhesions, from your muscles, depending on the therapist's training, experience and theories on massage therapy. However, once these knots are removed from your muscle structure, your muscle fibers are free to extend to their full resting length and contract through their full range of motion. This is a HUGE help during a workout. When your muscles move from a healthy resting length through their full range of motion, they are stronger and more powerful. Your workout will be more effective and you will build healthier, leaner and more powerful muscles than you could have otherwise.

It is important to remove these knots, or adhesions, from your musculature on a regular basis when you are engaged in a workout or strength training program in order to get the most out of your workouts and accomplish your fitness goals. You will feel a difference. Count on it.