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Exercise should be looked at in context to the varying ages of your workforce as well. Within me, we have a very high post-40 year group.
For men and women alike, the 40s bring the first great opportunity to reassess, take charge, repair neglect, and remake the rest of your life. However, thanks to breakthroughs in medicine, health, exercise, and nutrition, a fortysomething today has a chance to live longer, stronger and leaner – to remake his body into a sleeker, fitter, stronger version of its younger self. However, it isn’t necessarily easy.
The most typical problems attributed to aging have less to do with actual ageing than with the sedentary way more than 70% of the population choose to spend their lives. Its never to late to build muscle. It’s just different. When we were 20, our bodies could do anything to shape up. Form 40 onward, we have to be a lot smarter about it. Exercise physiologist, nutritionist and gerontologists now agree that during the decade of your 40s, men and women still have enormous potential for getting leaner and stronger, improving energy level and brain function, and transforming decades of bad habits into healthier lifestyle that will prime them for smooth sailing the rest of their lives.
The 10-year span between the ages 40 and 50 is critically important because the habits formed during this decade will chart the course for all those that follow. In your twenties and thirties, you had the luxury of time. You could eat badly, stay our late, work out when the spirit moved you. You could let yourself of without worrying much about your health. Frankly, that’s no longer the case. At the very least, living like that will pile on the pounds. More likely, your health will suffer. Heart disease and diabetes can hunt you down if you’re not vigilant.
A good offence, as the saying goes, is the best defence. So, to avoid medical problems, schedule regular physical exams. Men can tend to adopt the “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality toward health care, general seeing a doctor only when something’s wrong.
If you doctor is on the ball, they should have given you a major baseline physical exam around the age of 30. If you haven’t had one yet, ask for it. It should include routine stuff such as a head-to-toe physical examination, urinalysis, hearing and vision tests, a neurological exam, urinalysis, pulmonary-function test, skin cancer check, throat check, and a review of your family health history. But it should also involve more advanced screens such as a complete blood count, body-fat test, bone-density screen, chest x-ray, stress test, kidney and liver function tests, and thyroid function test.
That’s a solid baseline checkups for the 30-year old and a general guideline for future check-ups. You should add a baseline Electrocardiograph/Elektrokardiogramm (ECG/EKG) to check for heart rhythm abnormalities to check for heart abnormalities – and to add to your doctor’s file. Do this in your early 40s if you haven’t done so already./ Now, do yourself a favour and ask your doctor’s office to pre-schedule you for a annual physical near you birthday. Each passing year’s celebration of your birth is a reminder to give yourself the best birthday present of all – a clean bill health.
Naturally, the problem will be how you engage your workforce in reengaging themselves. I would suggest getting some base-line OH work done to assess the overall health/fitness of the workforce. Non-invasive stuff. If you were able to get a cross section of your staff to be given health checks then you could use that as base line stats, which should be anonymous:
• Gender
• Age
• Height
• Weight
• Ethnicity (as some health issues are increased within certain ethic group)
• BMI
• Blood pressure
• Lifestyle habits (diet, drinking and smoking)
• Hours of exercise per week
• Pre-existing health conditions
NB: this is beyond health surveillance and you should approach doing this with your workforce with complete transparency. It is also important to note that the data is Health Data which can only be managed by those defined by the Health Professions Order – which we don’t fit (although some comments have been made alluding to indifference, case law is there and not following this is simply criminal. In our trade we cannot live by one rule for one and one rule for the other).
All this should then give you the indication of what intervention programmes you should implement. You have to remember that one-regime doesn’t fit all. You should also bear in mind that simply by offer reduced gym membership will not mean that this is taken. The best method is to then employ the services of a PTI to come up with some gym-free techniques which can be adopted and promoted within your organization. Especially doing things in the office.
A couple of good links for this would be:
‘The gym-free strength workout’ http://www.menshealth.co...ym-free-strength-workout
‘The no-gym workout’ http://www.menshealth.co.../the-no-gym-workout-9577
‘The urban gym workout’ http://www.menshealth.co...rcises/urban-gym-workout (with some nice illustrations)
‘5 Office Exercises’ http://www.foxnews.com/h.../08/04/office-exercises/
Andrew Böber CMSIOH FRPSH FRGS
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