At a recent NMBBC Health and Wellness quarterly meeting the NMBBC CEO, Kevin Hustler said; “There is no competition in Health and Wellness, so share your knowledge freely.”
Although business can be like a secret society sometimes we should actually share ALL knowledge and best practise freely as that will lead to us attaining a normal society much faster. Ja, I know that that goes against the grain for many but I would take a bet that those very same people do not plan for succession and are pretty distrustful of ‘subordinates’ as well.
Dr Margot de Kooker highlighted the present hot Health and Wellness topics as:
- HIV, STI’s and TB
- Telomere Research and
- Healthy Lifestyle.
Apparently Telomere Research is thought to hold the key to extending our life cycle. What occurs as we age is that the ends of our DNA ‘unravel’ and this leads to the aging lines and effects we experience.
After extensive and maddeningly confusing online research I can state categorically that Dr Margot de Kooker’s explanation; “Telomeres are like the plastic tips at the end of your shoelaces that prevent them from unravelling” was the best one. The official definition is; “A telomere is a region of repetitive DNA at the end of a chromosome, which protects the end of the chromosome from deterioration.”
Most of the research centres around Telomerase – an enzyme that adds DNA sequence repeats to the 3′ end of DNA strands in the telomere regions, which are found at the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes.
And that is where my pea brain started shutting down, although the video below may help you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJNoTmWsE0s
Evaluating population health risk is accomplished by DALY – Disability Adjusted Life Years with reference to the numerous risk factors that our population and caring employer workforces are exposed to and two of the pertinent ones that struck me were; Urban Air Pollution and Obesity.
Urban Air Pollution is seen as an ever greater contributor to a shortened lifespan and is pertinent in a Port Elizabeth context with the ongoing Manganese Ore saga in the harbour.
Obesity is a trend that South Africans seem to be embracing and not combating as studies show that 61% of South Africa’s citizens are obese. More frightening though is that the 22% of children aged 1 to 9 that are also obese. The top four SA cities for obesity are; Cape Town (72%), Pretoria (68%), Johannesburg (59%) and Durban (52%).
The average expected lifespan of a South African citizen has dropped into the 60 to 70 years of age range solely due to the rapid increase of obesity in our country.
The path to losing weight is now seen as:
- Reducing Sodium intake
- Increasing seafood consumption
- Increasing the consumption of whole carbohydrates and
- Reducing the consumption of solid fats
This years NMBBC Health and Wellness Awards will focus on schools, concentrating on:
- Health and Wellness initiatives
- Healthy lunches and tuckshop food
- Innovative life skills and health education
- Community involvement and projects and
- Staff wellness.
The 2010 Health and Wellness award winners were:
- NGO – Care Ministries
- SME – Veyance Technologies
- Micro Business – Kaylans Medical Supplies
Entries for the 2011 awards close on 20 June 2011 and the awards breakfast will be held at the City Hall on 22 July 2011.
Alan Straton
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