Health Highlight
Your Weekly Wellness Update
Safety Tip
Additionally, lifestyle habits such as smoking, being sedentary, chronic psychological stress and sleep deprivation can increase susceptibility and decrease your immune system. Ways to reduce your risk include:
1. WASH. YOUR. HANDS. Wash your hands for at least 15 - 20 seconds. A good tool to measure if you've been scrubbing long enough is to sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" 3 times or "Happy Birthday" twice while washing your hands. Turn off the faucet with a paper towel, open the bathroom door with a paper towel and use hand sanitizer between washings. However, not all hand sanitizers are created equal. See the attached PowerPoint for more information.
2. Avoid close contact with anyone who is sick or has recently been sick.
3. Use a tissue when sneezing or coughing
4. Wash out your water bottle daily.
See what the CDC has to say here.
Fitness Focus
Have you heard the saying "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?" This saying holds true for the simple act of flossing! Properly flossing once a day removes the bacteria that builds up on your teeth overnight and throughout the day. If this bacteria is not removed it creates plaque build up which will turn into tartar. When plaque and tartar take residence underneath your gums, they can cause gingivitis (inflammation of gums), periodontal disease (loss of bone) and eventually tooth loss.
Moreover, many recent studies show a link between gum disease and serious medical issues like heart disease, stroke and low-birth weight in babies. That's because live bacteria get in through bleeding gums. Also, if you have diabetes you are at a greater risk of gum disease. Flossing makes sense financially too - $3 for dental floss or hundreds, possibly thousands, of dollars on dental work which could easily be prevented.
The biggest rule is to take your time! Flossing correctly once/day is better than flossing incorrectly several times a day.
- Tight teeth = use a floss made of Teflon
- Widely spaced teeth or for aching gums = floss tapes
- If you feel uncoordinated for regular floss = try interdental cleaners
Personal tip: Grab the floss, keep it by your bed and floss as you watch TV. Visual person? AND here is a handy-dandy video to make you an expert flosser! Love a neatly designed graphic? See this flyer for oral health!
Money Matters
Seem like a lot? Try setting up a short-term and a long-term emergency fund.
For example, put about $2000 in the short-term fund and 6 months' worth of expenses in the long-term fund.
- Your short-term emergency fund is your go-to place when you have an immediate emergency. It should be in an accessible account, which will probably bear little interest. The most important consideration is accessibility. You’ll want a debit card attached to this account and check-writing privileges as well. The purpose of your short-term emergency fund is for smaller emergencies, such as car repairs or replacing a major appliance that has broken. It can also be used as a bridge to get you through the few days until you can access your long-term emergency funds in case of a more extreme situation
- A long-term emergency fund allows you to save for large-scale emergencies, such as job loss major natural disaster like an earthquake or fire, and earn a slightly higher level of interest. Accessibility is still important here, but it’s okay to choose investments that take a few days to liquidate – as long as you have a short-term emergency fund to cover you in the interim.
More information here.
Perspective
(Okay, this one is long by TOTALLY worth it).
The experiment is as follows:
The researcher brings the child into a private room, sits him/her down in a chair and places a marshmallow in front of him/her. The researcher offers the child a deal - either eat one marshmallow right now OR the child could wait until the researcher returns and if the child waits, the researcher will then give the child another marshmallow.
The choice is simple: one treat now or two treats later.
The researcher left the room for 15 minutes.
Turns out, the children who were willing to delay gratification, i.e. practiced self-discipline, ended up having higher SAT scores, lower levels of substance abuse, better responses to chronic stress, better social skills and generally better scores in a range of other life measures (see follow-up studies here, here, and here).
The researchers followed each child for more than 40 years and time-and-again, the group who waited patiently for the 2nd marshmallow succeed in whatever capacity was being measured.
But we're not tied to this initial response.
Researchers at the University of Rochester decided to replicate the marshmallow experiment, but with an important twist. Before administering The Marshmallow Test, they divided the study group into 2 smaller groups.
The first group was exposed to a series of unreliable experiences. For example, the researcher gave a small box of crayons and promised to bring a bigger one, but never did. Then the researcher gave the child a small sticker and promised to bring a better selection of stickers, but never did.
The second group was exposed to a series of reliable experiences. They were promised better crayons and received them. They were told better stickers were on the way and the researchers delivered on that promise too.
Every time the researcher made a promise and then delivered on it, the child’s brain registered two things: 1) waiting for gratification is worth it and 2) I have the capability to wait. As a result, the second group waited an average of four times longer than the first group.
In other words, the child’s ability to delay gratification and display self-control was not a predetermined trait, but rather was impacted by the experiences and environment that surrounded them. In fact, the effects of the environment were almost instantaneous. Just a few minutes of reliable or unreliable experiences were enough to push the actions of each child in one direction or another.
The key takeaway here is that even if you don’t feel like you’re good at self-discipline now, you can train yourself to become better at self-discipline simply by giving yourself a small reward after putting in some work. Over and over again until your brain says, 1) yes, it’s worth it to wait and 2) yes, I have the capability to do this.
I couldn't write this without including some hilarious video of kids squirming for marshmallows. Click here!