Wellness
[well-ness] n. healthful condition or state of wellbeing through diet, exercise and healthy behaviors.
Healthy Choices
Your life is filled with decisions. Each unhealthy choice you make has an impact on your overall wellness. Regardless of how you personally define wellness, the first step to achieving this sometimes elusive goal is to recognize the choices you make every day that shape your emotional and physical state of wellness.
Stress
There’s no shortage of the kinds and sources of stress today, and getting a handle on it can be challenging. After all, it goes where you go—it lives with you at home and goes with you to work.
You know in your mind when you’re under stress, but it's also evident in your stomach, heart, muscles and even your toes. Migraine headaches, sleep disorders, backaches, skin rashes, fatigue, irritability, headache, depression, worry, mood swings, chest pain, anxiety, upset stomach, ulcers and high blood pressure are common reactions to stress.
When you feel stressed, anxious or just plain overwhelmed your body produces various chemicals, including cortisol, an immune-suppressing hormone. The more cortisol produced, the weaker your immune cells become and the more susceptible you are to illness. Too much cortisol can lead to weight gain and craving for high-sugar foods. Excess cortisol can also make you feel depressed, experience foggy thinking and difficulty in making decisions.
Continued exposure to high stress levels without making any lifestyle or supportive changes will promote negative health outcomes for your body.
Help for Healthier Behavior
CONCERN’s comprehensive employee assistance program can help you achieve your personal wellness goals and make better decisions. With the breadth and depth of services available through your company-sponsored benefit plan, you already have many of the resources in place to get started.
Whether you need assistance with life management resources (like finding child care), job-related stress, financial or legal consultations, counseling for help with difficult personal relationships, grief, loss or many other situations that can be overwhelming, give us a call at (800) 344-4222. You’ll be greeted by a friendly, experienced referral specialist who will help guide you to the right resource. Your EAP benefit is free, confidential and easy to use.
Sign up for our monthly newsletter, Balanced Living, free for the asking, containing excellent tips and ideas for you and your family.
You can also go online to LifeAdviser, where you’ll find Wellness on the Web for wellness-specific tools and resources. You may want to start with a personal assessment—there are six different kinds, from a general health risk assessment to a diabetes risk assessment. There is specialized content focused on dieting, fitness, stress and smoking that includes videos, articles, FAQs and much more.
And if your employer has elected to sponsor personal health coaching, you can take advantage of a dedicated health professional that will help you design and follow a specific wellness plan for up to a year (wellness benefits vary by employer group; contact your Human Resources department for more information).
Parenting & Childcare | Legal | Financial | Eldercare |
Wellness
[well-ness] n. healthful condition or state of wellbeing through diet, exercise and healthy behaviors.
Healthy Choices
Your life is filled with decisions. Each unhealthy choice you make has an impact on your overall wellness. Regardless of how you personally define wellness, the first step to achieving this sometimes elusive goal is to recognize the choices you make every day that shape your emotional and physical state of wellness.
Stress
There’s no shortage of the kinds and sources of stress today, and getting a handle on it can be challenging. After all, it goes where you go—it lives with you at home and goes with you to work.
You know in your mind when you’re under stress, but it's also evident in your stomach, heart, muscles and even your toes. Migraine headaches, sleep disorders, backaches, skin rashes, fatigue, irritability, headache, depression, worry, mood swings, chest pain, anxiety, upset stomach, ulcers and high blood pressure are common reactions to stress.
When you feel stressed, anxious or just plain overwhelmed your body produces various chemicals, including cortisol, an immune-suppressing hormone. The more cortisol produced, the weaker your immune cells become and the more susceptible you are to illness. Too much cortisol can lead to weight gain and craving for high-sugar foods. Excess cortisol can also make you feel depressed, experience foggy thinking and difficulty in making decisions.
Continued exposure to high stress levels without making any lifestyle or supportive changes will promote negative health outcomes for your body.
Help for Healthier Behavior
CONCERN’s comprehensive employee assistance program can help you achieve your personal wellness goals and make better decisions. With the breadth and depth of services available through your company-sponsored benefit plan, you already have many of the resources in place to get started.
Whether you need assistance with life management resources (like finding child care), job-related stress, financial or legal consultations, counseling for help with difficult personal relationships, grief, loss or many other situations that can be overwhelming, give us a call at (800) 344-4222. You’ll be greeted by a friendly, experienced referral specialist who will help guide you to the right resource. Your EAP benefit is free, confidential and easy to use.
Sign up for our monthly newsletter, Balanced Living, free for the asking, containing excellent tips and ideas for you and your family.
You can also go online to LifeAdviser, where you’ll find Wellness on the Web for wellness-specific tools and resources. You may want to start with a personal assessment—there are six different kinds, from a general health risk assessment to a diabetes risk assessment. There is specialized content focused on dieting, fitness, stress and smoking that includes videos, articles, FAQs and much more.
And if your employer has elected to sponsor personal health coaching, you can take advantage of a dedicated health professional that will help you design and follow a specific wellness plan for up to a year (wellness benefits vary by employer group; contact your Human Resources department for more information).
Parenting & Childcare | Legal | Financial | Eldercare |