Category: WellnessIndustry
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Weight Watchers Continues To Spew Waste
No comments on Weight Watchers Continues To Spew WasteI probably don’t need to say I think WW’s app for kids is poised to mess up kids’ lives. That research shows dieting leads to long-term weight gain. Or that disordered eating is often dieting with a different name. But if you are looking for more info: EATER: Weight Watchers Debuts an App That Could Screw […]
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Workplace “Wellness” Programs
Slate has a good article on how “wellness” programs aren’t. There’s good details on why they tend not to actually improve health. But the money quote is: Under the ACA, wellness programs are a legal way to shift a significant portion of the cost of premiums onto employees deemed unhealthy. Wellness programs don’t save money […]
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QOTD: Workplace Wellness
Much criticism of “employer wellness programs” have been focused on privacy concerns and angering employees. But now we’re seeing more practical concerns (also known as “does this even work?”). Which leads me to this quote of the day, directed at CEOs: Suppose a vendor made you this proposal: “Pay us to take your employees off the […]
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Some Workplace Wellness Programs Work
I found it surprising too! A study of over 67,000 people who could join PepsiCo’s “Healthy Living” wellness program found that 7 years of participation in a “disease management” program resulted in a net savings — the cost of the program was less than the money saved by reduced healthcare costs. These sorts of programs are “aimed […]
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The Dose Makes The Poison
[A study], published in 2011, followed 28,800 subjects with high blood pressure aged 55 and older for 4.7 years and analyzed their sodium consumption by urinalysis. The researchers reported that the risks of heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure and death from heart disease increased significantly for those consuming more than 7,000 milligrams of sodium […]
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Women standing up against a society [that bastardizes] thin and athletic women
[Discussion of fat hate & discrimination] OK, I wanted to give people the benefit of the doubt. When Lesley Kinzel wrote about the Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a to stand up for “thin and athletic women” who are oppressed by society’s expectations, I wondered if: The author of the Kickstarter campaign thought that using […]
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Operation de-Dust Mite
In October I noticed I was having more anxiety about the whole “going to the doctor” thing. I ended up calling the asthma specialist I’d been referred to at least six months previously and going in on Monday. This was stressful in many ways. I’m freak-folks-the-hell-out fat. I’ve got the whole mental “You mean it’s asthma, […]
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Soda Ban?
I’m sorry if this offends anyone, but I don’t necessarily care about New York’s proposal to ban larger-than-16oz-sugary-sodas. Partly it’s because I’m not affected; I live in Seattle and haven’t even sampled non-diet pop* in years. I am skeptical that it would make fat people thin, naturally, but I think it would be more likely […]
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Proper Treatment
Knowing intellectually that people can die of asthma is a bit scary. Reading that a friend of a friend died of an asthma attack is another. Death from asthma is a relatively uncommon event, and most asthma deaths are preventable. It is very rare for a person who is receiving proper treatment to die of asthma. However, […]
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What’s Important?
My mother was fat, though she lost weight shortly before she died. My father, by contrast, was always thin and muscular. Yes, he drank like the Navy seaman he’d been and smoked 1-2 packs a day, but he was strong and healthy. He gained some weight when he retired and quit smoking, but not much. […]
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Medical Insurance Helps People Feel Better!?
On the one hand, it’s good to have actual research backing this up. On the other hand, it’s insane that this didn’t exist before. From the NY Times: When poor people are given medical insurance, they not only find regular doctors and see doctors more often but they also feel better, are less depressed and […]
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Things to Read
A review of the book Deadly Spin, which is an inside look at how for-profit insurance companies use PR to make their policies palatable. From a piece on why the L.A. public schools are not participating in a reality TV show: “Reality TV has a formula. You either have to have drama or create conflict to […]
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Science doesn’t understand? Or doesn’t ask?
A blog post on how exercise experiments that replicate on men don’t on women ends with the observation: [W]hen it comes to women, there’s a great deal that sports scientists “just don’t understand.” As if they’ve tried and tried and tried, but women are somehow outside the realms of understanding. Which is bullshit. As the […]
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Things Worth Reading: Epidemics and Safeway’s Wellness Incentives
From ABC Australia comes Australia’s disordered eating epidemic: [W]e are not in the midst of an obesity epidemic, as it is often claimed. We are in the midst of an epidemic of disordered eating. The solutions prescribed to combat obesity are often the same behaviours we as practitioners are diagnosing in those suffering from eating […]
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What would you put into a Fitness for Life class?
Everyone’s talking about Lincoln college requiring students with a BMI of 30 or larger to take a “Fitness for Life” class. What I’m wondering is, what would you like to see in such a class? Not what is usually in such classes, or what Lincoln is including — what would rock your socks to see? […]
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Repost: Wellness Prescription
A repost from January, inspired by Fillyjonk’s post quoting Three Men in a Boat. I got Connie Willis’ comedic time-travel novel To Say Nothing of the Dog from the library (and liked it enough to buy it). It starts off a little confusing but is pretty funny, and full of golden age mystery fiction references. It also […]
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Book Review: Ultimate Fitness by Gina Kolata
“Exercise is my obsession,” states Gina Kolata on page 3 of her book Ultimate Fitness. Why does Kolata love exercise? “I discovered that if I work out really hard and for at least forty minutes, I can sometimes reach an almost indescribable state of sheer exhilaration.” By the end of the book Kolata admits […]
Living ~400lbs 