Trends in Healthcare
Today I attended the Employee Benefits Connect event to find out about the latest trends in employee benefits. Quite a few speakers identified the growth of onsite well-being services like the Vitality Breaks services I provide, as the number one healthcare issue in companies right now and for the next few years.
The key conditions that are driving the growth of well-being services are:
- Diabetes
- Heart Disease
- High Blood Pressure
- Back Pain
We all know that back pains is common, episodic, often recurrent and generally self limiting. Long term absence form work is greatest amongst the minority of employees whose conditions is chronic (if the pains lasts for more than 12 weeks) or is recurrent (if there are several episodes of pain in one year lasting less than 6 months). Most people who are effected by back pain either remain in work or return to work promptly. About 85% of people with back pain take less than seven days off work.
In a survey reported by the London Work Foundation it identified that 9.6 million workers are regularly affected by back pain. In addition the London Work Foundation has identified that musculoskeletal conditions comprise about 55 %of all work-related illness throughout the UK compared to stress being responsible for 30 per cent of work-related illness, that figure drops to 31% when you focus only non-manual workers. This makes musculoskeletal conditions the top reason for long term absence from work in the UK for non-manual workers.
So why am I quoting all these statistics, because despite speakers talking about trends in healthcare being driven by amongst other things back pain and clear evidence that musculoskeletal conditions are the number one reason for absence there was no mention of solutions. Go figure!!!!
Related Posts
Heat
Last time, I discussed the use of Cryotherapy to aid healing, today I would like to discuss the use of heat. As many of you will know who have had a full body massage treatment with me, I often incorporate hot stones into my treatment. And some of my readers will have heard me say they should use a wheat bag or cherry stone bag or some other type of hot pack. The simple reason why I do this is that most people I treat have one or more knots. A knot is created when a muscle contracts for a sustained period of time and looses its ability to stretch or relax. A simple "muscle knot" will deprive an area of blood, oxygen, nutrients and a thyroid hormone called T3. When a muscle has been deprived of T3 even for a few minutes it will lose its ability to relax, creating the perfect conditions for inflammation and fibrosis (the creation of adhesions). A reduction in the partial pressure of oxygen (to 55 mm of Hg) due to restriction of blood to an area in that muscle will start the inflammatory process that causes the fibrotic condition (adhesion) to proliferate. In the hands of a skilled massage practitioner the knot and any adhesions are located and ideally removed but at least reduced. With the restoration of normal muscle motion, pain is decreased or eliminated, joint motion improves, and normal or near normal activities can be resumed. So heat is often incorporated into a massage treatment treatment because it
- Increases blood supply to an area of the body
- It warms up the muscle tissues to allow them to stretch (relax)
- It reduces muscle spasm
Hypertension – Dietary Factors
Following on from my introduction to hypertension and lifestyle factors, I want to explore the link between diet and hypertension in this blog. Optimise your Gut Flora Compared to a placebo, people with high blood pressure who consumed probiotics lowered systolic blood pressure (the top number) by 3.56 mm Hg and diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) by 2.38 mm Hg1. Including taking probiotics, its is helpful to avoid sugar and processed foods. I should mention that naturally fermented foods in your diet, may contain about 100 times the amount of bacteria than found in a bottle of high potency probiotics. But I appreciate form a practical point of view, buying probiotics is much easier! Eat a Healthy Diet I appreciate this is very common advice. In 1998 in the journal of Diabetes reported that nearly two-thirds of the test subjects who were insulin resistant also high high blood pressure. Insulin resistance is directly attributed to a high sugar, high carbohydrate diet especially if combined with inadequate exercise. Avoiding processed foods (due to their being high in sugar/fructose, grains, trans fat, and other damaged fats) is my number one recommendation if you have high blood pressure2. Instead, make whole, ideally organic, foods the focus of your diet. As you reduce processed foods, and other sources of non-vegetable carbs, from your diet, you’ll want to replace them with healthy fat. Read Part 4 References 1 Hypertension July 21, 2014 2 Metabolism. 2012 May;61(5):641-51.
Headaches – How to tell when they are serious
More than 10 million people in the UK get headaches regularly, making them one of the most common health complaints. The most common treatment is to take a pain killer. In previous blog posts I have explored other treatments including
Most headaches aren't serious and are easily treated. However it is important that anyone with a headache “that is out of the norm” should see their GP as soon as possible. Particularly if the headache is more likely to be serious i.e.:- it occurs suddenly and is very severe – often described as a blinding pain unlike anything experienced before
- it doesn't go away and gets worse over time
- it occurs after a severe head injury
- it's triggered suddenly by coughing, laughing, sneezing, changes in posture, or physical exertion
- you have symptoms suggesting a problem with your brain or nervous system, including weakness, slurred speech, confusion, memory loss, and drowsiness
- you have additional symptoms, such as a high temperature (fever), a stiff neck, a rash, jaw pain while chewing, vision problems, a sore scalp, or severe pain and redness in one of your eyes
