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Important information for business people and corporate executives: The United States spends $1 trillion annually on health care, far more than any other country in the world.
According to the Wellness Councils of America, "the average annual health care cost per person in the United States far exceeds $3,000 - lifetime costs per person are somewhere in the neighborhood of $225,000."
The alarming part is that these costs are avoidable. Today's business environment requires a high-level performance from both employee and employer. But the strive for corporate achievement sometimes translates to an unenviable comeuppance of physical, emotional, and mental stress. And it does not do justice when one falls ill with work-related symptoms.
Most health experts would suggest providing a fitness-based work environment to minimize work-related illnesses. Considering economies of scale, a healthy worksite program befalls practically for corporations with a huge employee base. Thousands of dollars can be saved by the mere inclusion of personal wellness in the corporate culture. Maintaining a work environment of this kind could increase productivity, thus, place the company even closer to attaining its goals.
What business people themselves can do to improve their health
To be able to establish a health-based work culture, an entrepreneur should be able to start with his/her self. According to CEO of the Manoa Natural Wellness Center, Dr. Ryan Ferchoff, a daily 30-minute exercise is required to maintain a balanced physical condition. A walk in the park during the day or a visit to the gym before or after work is enough for the body's dose of physical activity. Topped with a strict diet of fruits, vegetables and proteins may further improve wellness.
"Make sure that you are exercising at least half an hour a day, either doing it in the morning or at night or even if you have a lunch break, going out and getting a quick half hour, even if it's a simple walk," Dr. Ferchoff said. "As for diet, if you are going out for your meals, just stick to the basics; good fruits, good vegetables like a salad and stick to some good proteins like fish and chicken."
"If you stick to those things, within a week you're going to see and feel some changes in your body." he added.
However, it is a challenge especially for busy people to religiously abide by these basic rules of fitness. Starting a healthy diet and maintaining a workout regimen involves dedication, commitment and sometimes support from peers. This is where Wellness Centers come to the fore.
Wellness Centers and Naturopathic Treatment
Wellness Centers provide several options to keep clients' overall personal well-being. Moreover, wellness programs are custom-designed to fit the health requirements of each individual, which enables flexible participation in one's health improvement with a support system catering to personal requirements.
According to Dr. Ferchoff, "What happens is they (business people) get back to work and then they start sliding back to there old habits and all of a sudden a month or a year down the road they say, "Oh yeah! I was losing weight, I was doing good, I was eating good although I'm back or even worse than I was before". Where as with me they actually come in every week for a quick half hour visit and for me, being like a health coach; health facilitator helping them through the process to get the results that they want, as well as keeping them on track with their goals and keeping them focused."
The Manoa Natural Wellness Center offers a program specifically designed to meet individual health requirements particularly in the dietary aspect. The Ultra Light Program offers a time-based approach to personal diet.
"Through the Ultra Light Program I'm actually monitoring them and fine tuning or modifying their program specific for them," Dr. Ferchoff said. "I go over their life, their day and figure out what they are going to have for breakfast, this is what you're going to have for lunch and dinner and work with them through that process and if we need to change or fine tune things, we'll modify it for them to get the results that they're looking for."
The program aims to prevent the onset of illness through proper diet. But according to Dr. Ferchoff, natural treatments are also available to patients who already have certain ailments. Naturopathic treatment is a cheaper alternative to widely accepted medical practices because it requires no surgery, which could sometimes run to the hundreds of thousands.
"I had a patient come in and he had been diagnosed with heart disease. He went to the cardiologist who wanted to do a bypass. He came over to me, we put him on this program with chelation and plaque-x formula and after a couple of months he was pain free as in chest pain, blood pressure went down, cholesterol went down. He went to his cardiologist who said to him, "Keep doing what you're doing. I don't need to see you for a while."
Naturopathy as a Cheap Alternative
Natural Wellness centers are based on naturopathic treatment which revolves around the notion that "nature and the body heals itself." Naturopathy utilizes natural-based products to stimulate self-healing processes as opposed to artificial drugs which only masks symptoms.
Asked why medical doctors do not use these types of treatments and therapies, Dr. Ferchoff replied, "One of the reasons is, it's not a pharmaceutical drug, you can't get a patent on it so the drug companies are not pushing it because there's no money in it for them."
"And if I was a cardiologist, I would want patients to come in and do heart surgery because a cardiologist get fifty to a hundred thousand dollars per surgery where as going through an alternative process like this, it's only talking about a few thousand dollars," he added.
Naturopathic medicine includes a variety of practices aiming to improve health and treat disease by assisting the body's natural healing. It includes nutrition, exercise, and application of heat and cold therapy. There are few reports of evidence based medicine trials for naturopathy thus few of its techniques have scientific support.
Licensing laws giving naturopathic physicians the right to practice were passed in several states, including Hawaii in 1925.
References
www.wikipedia.org
www.24hourfitness.org
www.healingmountainpublishing.com
For the full audio interview and transcript please visit greatergoodradio.com. Greater Good Radio airs every Saturday morning and Wednesday night on 1420 AM and online at www.greatergoodradio.com.
