Tidbit Time: Week of February 8, 2016

Happy Heart Month! As in, happy Valentine’s. And, more importantly, Heart Health Awareness Month. Here’s our latest roundup of tidbits from our community and the worlds of academia, healthcare, and unions . . .

SUPPORTING FAMILIES and FRIENDS of WORCESTER PATIENTS

One former SHARE member, Nancy Whalen, the President of Healing Heart Hospitality House, has just let us know about an upcoming dinner with real heart. And you’re invited! “Our mission is to help families of patients traveling more than 30 miles to be with their loved ones hospitalized in the Worcester area by providing a suite of services that offers emotional and spiritual support and comfort,” Nancy writes. “Just recently a very generous person has offered to buy us a house. After 10 years of working towards this goal, we are excited beyond words. Pub 99 is sponsoring our fundraiser by donating 15% of food purchased on Tuesday, February 9th when anyone presents the voucher from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.”

You can print your own voucher by right-clicking the above image. Save it to your computer, and you can print it from there.

GOING RED for HEART HEALTH

Heart disease and stroke cause 1 in 3 deaths among women each year, killing approximately one woman every 80 seconds.  Fortunately, we can change that because 80 percent of cardiac and stroke events may be prevented with education and action. On Friday, February 5th, many SHARE members participated in National Wear Red Day, wearing red and working to raise research funds and awareness about women's heart health. 

Go Red Raffle in the University Cafeteria

The American Heart Association provides this guide to Well-Woman Visits so that you can schedule, prepare for, and understand the kinds of physician visits that will help you protect your own heart health, and encourage other women to do the same.

SOME GOOD NEWS for the MIDDLE CLASS

The number of union members in the US held steady from 2014 to 2015, according to the annual Department of Labor report on the subject.  Studies show that increased union membership strengthens the middle class.

HEARTS ARE AMAZING

Did you know that the blue whale has the largest heart, weighing in at 1,500 pounds? Or that your heart will beat about 100,000 times today? That will add up to over a million barrels of blood during an average lifetime.

NOT GETTING UPDATES? A TIP for KEEPING on TOP of SHARE NEWS

If you haven't already signed up to receive blog updates by email, you can do so by entering your address in the box in the top right corner of this screen. Also: for those of you who have signed up, but aren't getting updates, make sure to check your inbox--or your spam filter--for a verification email. When you sign up, you'll get an email from "Feedburner Email Subscriptions" asking you to click on the included link; this will activate your email subscription. If you have difficulties, please email kirk.davis@theshareunion.org.

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend, and that things are off to a very good start for you this week. See you here next time . . .

Tidbit Time: Week of January 25, 2016

Welcome back! These tidbits are starting to add up. Speaking of adding up . . .

MORE PARTICIPANTS, EASIER WORK

“Many hands make light work” has become a fairly well-known aphorism. The phrase can be attributed to the English playwright John Heywood, who wrote during the sixteenth century. The idea can also be found in many other languages around the world. A related Tanzanian proverb says, “Two ants do not fail to pull one grasshopper.”

ONE BILLION ACTS of PEACE

Here, Chade-Meng Tan explains how cooperation can change the world, in describing a project undertaken by Tibetan students in India that is doing just that.

JANUARY IS NATIONAL BLOOD-DONOR MONTH

The Blood Donor Center at UMass Memorial accepts the important gift of blood year-round, and January is a great time to resolve to give. Blood is required for a number of medical conditions, including, of course, transplants, cancers, and traumatic injuries. UMass Memorial uses about 31,000 blood products each year to meet the needs of patients. The Blood Donor Center is located on the University Campus, downstairs from the Emergency Department. Walk-ins are welcome for whole-blood donations, or to schedule an appointment, please call 508-421-1950. To find other locations to give, visit the Red Cross website.  

LEARN IT and KEEP IT

In his book Outliers, writer Malcolm Gladwell develops the idea that it takes roughly ten thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. Many critics and studies have worked to debunk this theory. Author and podcaster Tim Ferriss aspires to teach readers how to be world-class performers in a fraction of that time. But how long does it take to lose a skill? HopesandDreams recently spoke with several leading experts to find out the answer.

BUT HOW MANY LICKS DOES IT TAKE to GET to the CENTER of a TIDBIT?

A tidbit is, as Merrium-Webster tells us, “a choice or interesting bit (as of information),” or “a small piece of news or information.” Outside of the US and Canada, the preferred spelling is “titbit.” Obviously the word also often refers to a select little piece of food, and grammarist.com tells us that “the first syllable likely comes from the archaic colloquialism tid, meaning tender.”

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend, and that things are off to a very good start for you this week. See you here next time . . .

Five-Tidbit Friday: November 20, 2015

GRATITUDE IS GOOD for YOU

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving may only come once a year, but there's mounting scientific evidence about the benefits of developing thankful habits. Researcher Glenn Fox at the University of Southern California has been researching how gratitude alters the brain. “A lot of people conflate gratitude with the simple emotion of receiving a nice thing. What we found was something a little more interesting,” says Fox. “The pattern of [brain] activity we see shows that gratitude is a complex social emotion that is really built around how others seek to benefit us.” As you gear up for the big feast, here is some advice to help you and your family be truly thankful at Thanksgiving.

HAVE YOU ORDERED YOUR BUSTARD YET?

Although copyrighted by celebrity chef Paul Prudhomme in 1986, the Turducken (a kind of “Russian Doll Roast”) traces its roots back to at least medieval times, when animals might be stuffed within other animals for the sake of spectacle. (See also,  “illusion foods,” or “incredible foods.”)

Schott’s Food & Drink Miscellany includes this example of a Russian Doll Roast involving way too many birds: “stuff a large OLIVE with CAPERS and a CLOVE,” and so on, it says. The directions continue stuffing birds, including a bec-figue, ortolan, lark, thrush, quail, plover, lapwing, partridge, woodcock, teal, fowl, duck, chicken, pheasant, goose, and turkey, until ultimately we’re told to “place the TURKEY inside an enormous BUSTARD.”

An EATER’S HISTORY of THANKSGIVING: AMERICA’S MOST IMPORTANT HOLIDAY

According to Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Food, at Sea and Ashore, in the Nineteenth Century, Thanksgiving used to be a bigger deal. For roughly the first half of our nation’s history, Thanksgiving reigned as the premier holiday among the Europeans who came to America, and their descendents. (Celebrating Christmas was too “churchy” for the Puritans.) For a fascinating tour of Thanksgiving meals through the ages, including the "Turducken," be sure to check out foodtimeline.org.

JINGLE BELLS, the THANKSGIVING DAY CLASSIC

Did you know that Jingle Bells was originally written as a song to celebrate Thanksgiving Day? James Lord Pierpont wrote it, quite possibly right here in Massachusetts, some time in the 1850’s, almost certainly at a time when one might expect the heavy snows to begin as early as November.

Placard Commemorating the composition of  "Jingle Bells" in Medford, Massachusetts

HELP CREATE a HUNGER-FREE COMMUNITY

Probably all of us have driven along Route 9 in Shrewsbury, past the Worcester County Food Bank. On their website, you can quickly identify the nearest food pantry, learn where to donate funds and food for the hungry, volunteer to help with the distribution process, and learn how to advocate for the hungry in your community.

See you here in two weeks. Hope you have a decent weekend, and a very wonderful Thanksgiving!

Five-Tidbit Frightday: October 30, 2015

Happy Halloween! This week's random roundup has a bit of a theme . . .

WHAT IS a HEALTHY DIET?

Halloween candy is bad for you. Vegetables, on the other hand, are good for you. Beyond these generally accepted facts, there’s a lot of conflicting dietary information out there. This week, the World Health Organization released a report saying definitively that processed meats cause cancer, and that, probably, red meat does, too. Related reports argue that you don’t need to give up those meats altogether. Fortunately, when you’re trying to figure out how to make sense of the varying and contradictory information, the Harvard School of Public Health offers this guide to deciphering media stories about diet.

NOT HEALTHY, BUT SAFE?

You know those stories about random, unsuspecting trick-or-treaters being poisoned (or worse) by tainted Halloween goodies? They’re all urban legends, every single one. Or so contends Dr. Joel Best, the world's leading expert on Halloween hostility, in this podcast.  

MAKING HALLOWEEN SAFER

Need ideas for getting creative to make your kids visible to car traffic? Also, if you plan to offer candies that are free of allergens and cross-contamination, don’t forget to review this year’s list of allergen-friendly candies, especially if you’re participating in the Teal-Pumpkin Project.

WHAT'S this CANDY WORTH?

This irreverent video guide to trading Halloween candy sums up the Halloween barter system pretty nicely.

HALLOWEEN AFTER-PARTY

And, finally, after you’ve applied the “Mom and Dad Tax” to the kids’ candy stash, and they’re tucked away in bed, you can consult this infographic for pairing candy and wine. (There are still a few studies that hold to the idea that the resveratrol in wine might be good for you, after all.)

See you here next Friday! Hope you have a great weekend.

Five-Tidbit Friday: September 25, 2015

Welcome to Fall! For SHARE-UMMS, Summer closed out in a lovely way. Altogether, over a thousand members of our community participated in last week’s Chocolate Day, including SHARE members, other hospital and university employees, medical students, senior administrators, and even a few children. But now, it is time for another Tidbit roundup. Here are five notable and timely items:

• This week, UMMHC and UMMS have been screening The Connection, a film about the science of mindfulness. UMass Medical School’s Center for Mindfulness has long been at the forefront of this research. The CFM provides an eight week stress-reduction program, which several SHARE members have attended. SHARE-UMMS Treasurer Kathy Bateman says she loved the program, and would attend again. “I learned ways to relieve stress right at my desk. I’d recommend it to anyone,” she says.
• Employers are starting to catch up with the value of the research being done at UMMS. Internet-search giant Google (considered by some to be the best employer in the country) has even developed its own in-house emotional intelligence training program called “Search Inside Yourself” (Get it? It’s Google, after all.)
• Any list of Tidbits would be insufficient to tackle an issue as serious as mental health. That said, please know that there are many free and low-cost mental health tools available. We recently came across this useful (if somewhat glib) resource list. The list begins with a series of apps, most of which are designed to help build grit and brain muscles, and moves through to a valuable collection of hotlines and support groups. For more local services, please see this list of mental health providers in Worcester.
• Mindfulness and self-care are only part of the equation toward improving what we do, of course. Right now, the work confronting almost every SHARE member is unnecessarily complicated, difficult, and frustrating. We want to eliminate needless headaches. We know that frontline employees need to be the ones to design work-systems. Too often our work requires heroic effort to do a good job, and there are too many pitfalls along the way. Our union is working to enable SHARE members to develop structures that minimize the likelihood of error, and make it easier at the end of the day to see more good outcomes coming from our hard work.
• On a lighter note, you might, given its popularity, have already seen this related talk by researcher Shawn Achor. But in case you’ve missed it, here’s a link to “The Happy Secret to Better Work.” It’s funny and smart, and only a little over twelve minutes long.

The weather report looks beautiful for the next few days. Good time to get outside and move around.  It’s not too late to register for The UMass Medicine Cancer Walk, which has been an effective fundraiser for cancer research at UMass, and a meaningful event for cancer patients, their friends, and their families, including many SHARE members. See you here next Friday. Hope you have a great weekend.  

Keep Moving!

Thank you to Janet Huehls, a Certified Wellness Coach and Registered Clinical Exercise Physiologist here at UMMS, for the following insightful advice. And to SHARE Treasurer Kathy Bateman for sending it in to be posted on the blog!

This weekly email, provided by the exercise program at UMass Memorial Weight Center, is also blog: www.keepmovingweekly.wordpress.com

  Please become a subscriber to the blog by clicking the link above and sign up using the icon on the right side of the home page.  Once you sign up, email me and let me know you can be removed from the email list.  Friends and family are welcome to sign up for the blog as well. 

Thank you!

The term “sitting is the new smoking” is not an exaggeration.

“Sitting is more dangerous than smoking, kills more people than HIV and is more treacherous than parachuting. We are sitting ourselves to death.” James Levine, MD, PhD. Researcher Mayo Clinic and founder of N.E.A.T.

The human body is amazingly designed to move.  Each system works better when we move and suffers when we are inactive.  Even if you exercise regularly, prolonged sitting still puts you at risk.

This is powerful knowledge because anyone can improve health in this way.  If you can move, even in a small way, you can improve health by moving often.

Our current environment provides us with many reasons to sit and has led us to the newer science of inactivity.  Like opposite sides of the same coin, exercise physiology studies what happens in the body when we move and inactivity physiology studies what happens when we are still.  It turns out both studies are critical for understanding health.

The physiology of inactivity has discovered that when we don’t move, things start to back up in the cells. The process to deal with sugar and fats in the blood slows down or halts.  Sugar and fats in the blood accumulate and are triggers for disease.

The good news is that it does not take much movement to get the system working again. Simply moving from sitting to standing, taking a short walk, stretching – all activate the muscles’ ability to manage these triggers for disease.

Standing desks are one attempt to fix this problem, but standing still is not much better.  Imagine stagnant water, things accumulate.  Inactivity or simply stillness is the root of the problem.  We need to move to get the system working.

If you exercise regularly no one would call you a couch potato. But…you can be an active couch potato. The chair does not care if you exercise regularly or not – stillness will cause these changes in the body despite your fitness level.

The term lifestyle activity is used to describe how much we move during the day. Getting 10,000 steps a day on a pedometer all at once  does not have the same benefit as taking 5000 steps in one shot and then spreading the other 5000 out during the rest of the day.

When you are trying to lose weight or maintain weight loss add a goal for lifestyle activity in addition to exercise goals.  Often, lifestyle activity is a great first step if you are not ready to exercise yet and a great addition if you are exercising but the scale is not budging.

Bottom line – how often we move during the day is as important as how often we exercise in a week.

Keep Moving, Be Well,

Janet

These weekly emails are general guidelines. These guidelines apply to patients who are cleared by a physician for the type of exercise described.  Please contact your physician with any concerns or questions. Always report any symptoms associated with exercise, such as pain, irregular heartbeats, and dizziness or fainting, to your physician.  

Janet Huehls, MA, RCEP, CYT, CWCRegistered Clinical Exercise Physiologist

Certified Wellness Coach UMass Memorial Weight Center 774-443-3886

EAP & Thought for the Day

“Don't let what you can't do stop you from doing what you can do.”  -John Wooden

Quotes like this one can land in your inbox on a weekly basis, along with a short motivational message. To get yourself some regular inspiration, simply sign up for the free "Thought of the Day" email on the Employee Assistance Program webpage.

We can't mention the Thought of the Day here without putting in a good word for the Employee Assistance Program itself. We consistently hear that the EAP counselors are thoughtful, wise, and helpful. And the SHARE organizing staff knows from personal experience that the EAP staff offers important support and guidance, regarding both workplace and personal issues, for employees of the UMass community. 

About the EAP: The UMass Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is a workplace-based program providing consultation, assessment, intervention, information and referral for employees and their household members. The EAP offers personal assistance to address a variety of issues, including individual, family and work-related concerns. The EAP is free and confidential  to the full extent of the law.  Employees and household members can obtain assessment, short-term problem-focused intervention, and referral and information for treatment or other assistance.We are conveniently located in Worcester, MA and serve all of Central Massachusetts.