The health and well being challenge

Today (17/03/08) it has been announced that work sickness bill in the UK is a £100 billion cost to the economy per annum, or more than the budget of the entire National Health Service!

How strange it is that society has the means to make us healthier than ever, with much longer life expectancy, yet the epidemics facing much of ‘developed’ society are ill health, obesity and mental breakdown.

It is not easy for us now, we work long hours, but not on physical toil which would have at least burnt off much of the adrenaline and cortisone circulating around our systems. We spend much of the day staring at flickering computer screens or intense pressured phone conversations or meetings. Email can now follow us anywhere. A blackberry to us is a luscious fruit from an autumn hedgerow not a gadget that bleeps at you constantly so that you have to take out its battery to shut it up.

It sure doesn’t need a medical practitioner to see why we are all getting sicker, both in body and mind.

We don’t suggest, like some, that we go back to some idealised rural past. Life then was back breakingly hard and people got sick and died young. But we don’t see how sitting in meetings or in an office all day is right for our wellbeing either.

When we sit all day we find we need more food, rather than less, we are often cold, and feel sluggish of mind. If we get up and go for a walk, we warm up quickly as the blood circulates, we feel less hungry, we get fresh air and our minds clears. We relax, feel less tense and work better.

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