Saturday, 21 June 2014

How to stay healthy during the World cup- Whether your team wins, loses or draws

Three things can happen in every world cup game – Your team may win, lose or draw. Whatever happens, these outcomes bring with them anxiety, excitement, headaches, or stress, all of which may negatively affect your health. Here are tips to make sure you stay healthy throughout the Brazil 2014 tournament.

Your current state
Problem: If you are faint-hearted or have hypertension (high blood pressure) and heart diseases, it is advisable that you do not watch matches involving teams you support. The anxiety is likely to raise your blood pressure and lead to serious implications.

Solution: a) Get busy and/or sleep during the match and get the score line of the match later or b) simply record and watch it later when you already know the scores.

Eating habits
Problem: Stress, anxiety, loss and or win may lead to an unhealthy increase or decrease in appetite for food. The increase in appetite can be for comfort foods, which are mostly high in sugar, fat and salt and/or eating more food than is needed. Whether it’s an unhealthy increase or decrease in appetite for food, they all carry risks to health.

Solutions: 
a) Do not stock your refrigerator or stores with foods high in sugar, fat and salt like fizzy drinks, sweets, crisps etc but rather with more fruits and vegetables. This will make you reach out for a fruit or vegetable instead of sweets, crisps etc.
b) Eat before your team plays. This way, you will have a good appetite and be able to check the amount of food being consumed.
c) Get around and talk with family and friends but make sure they are optimists:). This will help you to forget the pain from the loss of a match and not to seek comfort from foods.
d) Be conscious of the fact that eating habits might be affected by the tournament and hence will require an extra effort to eat healthily.


Physical activity levels
Problem: With at least three matches currently being played and telecasted each day interspersed with match analysis making at least eight hours of non-stop football, becoming sedentary is mostly likely to increase, affecting physical activity levels. That is, one is mostly likely to stay in the couch or bed or whatever it may be for close to eight hours. Sitting and/or lying down for extended periods pose risks to health.

Solution: Whether you will watch all the matches for the day or at least one a day, get up and get active (walk, dance (i.e. if your team is winning), skip, press up or whatever activity works for you) during the half-time breaks as well as the commercial breaks.

Alcohol consumption
Problem:Again stress, anxiety, loss and or win may lead to a start of drinking alcohol and/or an unhealthy increase in alcohol consumption, which poses risks to health.

Solution:Do not stock your refrigerator or stores with alcoholic beverages. Get more tips on using alcohol safely

Sleeping habits
Problem: Sleeping habits are most likely going to be affected due the fact that a) matches may be played in timezone different from yours and/or b) the desire to enjoy every single match.

Solution: For an adult, between 7 – 8 hours of sleep is required so take a nap before the match or record and watch a repeat telecast.


Smoking
Problem: Again strees and anxiety may lead to picking up smoking habits. Also depending on the anti-smoking regulations in your country, you might risk coming into contact with tobacco smoke-filled environment.

Solution: a) The healthy lifestyle guideline for smoking is no smoking. If you do, seek professional help from a health centre.
b) Avoid places, where smoking takes place as secondary smoking also poses risk

Things to remember

Do not drink and drive or drive and drink or both.

It takes 3 weeks to develop a habit (good or bad), the world cup is a month long. Let it end with developing a good habit.

 Your team has a health practitioner to make sure players are staying healthy, so why don't you also stay healthy :)?

 Any time your team is playing, they are keeping active. Why don’t you also keep active :)?

May the team that wants it most win the World Cup!

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Friday, 23 May 2014

10 Tips to use alcohol safely, simple Q& A

Are there risks associated with drinking alcohol?
Yes there are. Alcohol consumption is associated with liver problems, reduced fertility, high blood pressure, some cancers and heart attacks.

What amount of alcohol is safe for consumption to prevent these risks?
The truth is, there is no safe limit for drinking alcohol but there are recommendations, which will reduce the risks of the diseases mentioned herein but not prevent them.

What are the recommendations?
Recommendations vary from country to country. In some countries the recommendations are 3-4unit/day for men and 2-3units/day women.  Even with that, we recommend you do not take these amounts on regular basis.  Find out from the professionals in your country or your ministry of Health website. They often have such recommendation.

Wondering what a unit is? 

This picture from BBC News will give you an idea of what a unit of alcohol is


NB: The higher the strength (ABV %), the higher the unit and the larger the volume the higher the units.

Wow! I am exceeding my alcohol intake, are there tips to help me cut down?
Yes there are. Here are 9 tips
  1. As we like to achieve a target, setting a limit on the amount of alcohol one drinks, will push you to achieve it.  Remember to take small steps at a time
  2. We all need help at one point or other and who can better help us than our family and friends, so tell them about the target you set.
  3. Do not stock your fridge with too many alcoholic beverages and if possible not at all, to avoid the temptation of exceeding your limit.
  4. Drink a pint of water before you start to drink alcohol, this way you are less likely to drink above your targeted limits.
  5. Swap strong strength alcohol drinks (ABV %) with lower strength.
  6. Use small glass size for your alcoholic drink.
  7. When thirsty quench your thirst with water.
  8. Write down the places, events, which contribute to you drinking alcohol and cut down on going to these places.
  9. Avoid the company of binge drinkers and if they are your friends, show them this post and encourage one another to cut down on your alcohol drinking habit.

I cannot do this on my own/I know an alcoholic/I want to quit drinking alcohol entirely
10. Seek professional help. The best place is to contact your health service.

Note: Women should avoid alcohol when pregnant


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Tuesday, 19 November 2013

Celebrating a victory?



Days leading to the end of the year are demanding. Plans, strategies and timelines to achieve the following year’s objectives need to be drawn so one hits the ground running on the first day of the New Year. Yesterday was one of such days. I therefore came home very tired with supper on my mind. Just when I finished dinner, I heard my phone ringing, as though the person calling knew I was done with dinner. The truth is I had forgotten about my phone all day but not my packed lunch and snack. While I placed my lunch and snack at a place where I would easily see to remind me to re-fuel my system (body), I just left my phone unattended to in my bag. I got to my bag only after the call has dropped and realized it was from one of my girlfriends. Before I could call back, her message came through, this only required an SMS reply from me.


After replying her message, I switched on my laptop to check and reply the emails, Facebook messages and comments I have received. And it was in the process of doing these activities, I got reminded of the return leg of the World Cup 2014 Africa qualifiers between the Black stars of Ghana and the Pharaohs of Egypt through Newaccra. Who else but Newaccra to blog (Ghana vs Egypt),  and post on this match to remind me? And truly they tell the African story in a beautiful way. 


The Newaccra post however got me thinking of how supporters of each team will be celebrating should the victory go in their favour. If what I have seen in the past is anything to go by, then expect the drivers to be hooting their horns, music being played on the highest volume, the drinking spots (pubs) full with bottles of alcoholic drinks being empty among others. The drinking of alcohol, which is mostly exceeded by people in celebrating their team’s victory, got my public health nutrition head worried throughout the night; I could not sleep but to write this post to ask how you celebrate a happy event. Do you also empty bottles of alcoholic drinks exceeding your alcohol intake to celebrate an event?

A happy event might be once a while and exceeding your alcohol intake on such occasions should not be a big deal, many might say but I also know that, little drops of water make a mighty ocean. This therefore means developing a behaviour of regularly exceeding your alcohol intake will be in the pipeline (like it is mostly said in Ghana, just that this pipeline is likely to be short), putting an individual at risk of liver diseases, reduced fertility, high blood pressure, increased risk of various cancers and heart attack among others. 

These risks are not only associated with exceeding alcohol intake regularly as the recommended amount of drinking alcohol by a person does not imply, an individual is safe from alcohol-related problems. Drinking the recommended amount of alcohol only put you at a lower risk of the alcohol-related problems mentioned in the previous paragraph as drinking alcohol is never completely safe. Drinking the recommended amount of alcohol only minimize your risk of alcohol-related problems. As I mentioned the recommended alcohol intake in my previous post on alcohol, I will not bore you with a repetition of it. If this your first visit to this blog or you might have forgotten, click on this "I watched him the entire night" to read. 

The harmful effects of alcohol are often hidden and only emerge after some years. Unfortunately by then, serious health problems could be developed, which is most likely going to prevent you from enjoying life to the fullest, living it to the longest as well as preventing you from contributing effectively to the economy of your society. 

Let’s cut down on our alcohol consumption and if possible avoid it, as the harmful effect of alcohol depends on how much we drink.

May the best team win.

Wednesday, 6 November 2013

I watched him the entire night

dinner-party-games-girls-1.1-800x800I could not take my eyes off him, the moment the girls and I entered this classy restaurant to celebrate my birthday. Yeah, I had to mention the classy bit to let you know how my purse was crying that evening. How I comforted the purse for the rest of the month is another story all together. Now where was I? Aha! So like I was saying, I had been watching this young man since the time I sat for dinner. It was not only his good looks, charming smile or…errrmmm I will end the list here, just know looks and smile are dependent on a person’s taste, but also the bottles on his table.

Those bottles which I believe was a litre in volume each, containing a percentage of alcohol,  my not very good eagle eyes could capture were all nearly empty. It got me wondering if this good looking gentleman with a charming smile knows there is a daily alcohol intake stipulated by the experts for him or he just can’t be bothered.

Hmmm, I would have loved to use his alcohol intake as an opportunity to get to know him ;) but for this equally beautiful and charming young lady he sat at the table with to share those bottles I just sat down and watched them both but him more. Obviously, unlike poles attract :) . For this lady I guess her alcohol intake on this occassion clearly indicates she really understands and appreciate the Beijing Conference.

The least I could do was to take a leaf of my sweet scented notepad and write this http://www.nhs.uk/LiveWell/Alcohol/Pages/Alcoholhome.aspx  with my equally sweet scented pen. So pleasant was the fragrance, the lady with whom he shared his table gave me ‘the stay off my man’ look when the waiter gave him my note. Knowing what I wrote in the note, I was the least perturbed.

As we passed by his table after paying for that expensive dinner, he gently grabbed my hand, gave me his charming smile and said “Meet my sister  (with an emphasis )and can I have your number as we especially me, would love to talk more about this note”. I couldn’t believe my blessing as I pulled out  my business card and it was in pulling out my business card did it dawn on me that, he is now a client :( , so….too bad yeah? I know.

Anyway, what can I say, there is a risk with every job but that shouldn’t stop us from doing it. And as you love your job like  i do mine, I know you will understand why I look forward to hearing from them to talk about alcohol intake.

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