What's Happening in the World of Wellness?

• My primary job is being a life coach, working with people who want to improve their overall wellness in body, mind, and spirit.   I also work as a registered nurse 2 days a week at a mental health clinic. I was surprised to read this week that a government survey finds that 5 percent of Americans suffer from a serious mental illness.  I thought that it would be less than that.  The report says about 20 percent of American adults suffer some sort of mental illness each year, and about 5 percent of those experience a serious disorder that disrupts work, family or social life. The findings were drawn from interviews with about 68,000 randomly selected Americans living at homes, dormitories or shelters in 2010.

• Good news: sex is safe for most heart patients. If you're healthy enough to walk up 2 flights of stairs without chest pain or grasping for breath, you can have a love life. The American heart Association says having sex only slightly raises the chance for a heart attack. And that's true for people with and without heart disease. But of course, as always, check with your physician before any strenuous activity after having even a mild heart attack.

• I thought I would talk about very briefly, in closing, the Paula Deen and diabetes story. On AOL healthy living I read an article written by Dr. David Katz. The basis for his article was that we should love food that loves us back.

I believe this is a great way to look at food. He discusses that we have undeniable evidence, reaffirmed many times over the past several decades, that major detriments of premature mortality and chronic morbidity in modern society are tobacco use, dietary pattern and physical activity.

He goes on to say we know that diet can be and often is the difference between good health, and ill health. This is not controversial. The fact is food provides immediate gratification, while good health is a long–term return on a long-term investment, the immediate gratification of food tends to prevail.

One author I like to read is Kara Davis M.D. Her mantra is… eat well, eat less, and move more. That's something we can all live by (literally).

That’s the wellness news as I saw it today.

If you would like to learn how to eat better, lose weight and live life to the full, maybe you could use a life coach.

Wellness Matters for Life

Life Coach Doug ~ 678-793-5399

http://www.lifecoachDoug.com