The GWI’s Initiative, “Wellness for Cancer,” tackles a serious problem: while the world is now chasing every kind of “wellness,” we need to grasp that we’re a diseased society. Cancer has become more prevalent, and people suffering from cancer are a big percentage of wellness and spa businesses’ client base. But far too few spas are trained to be the best for those who need it most: those that have, or are recovering from, cancer.
Must-Reads from the Wellness World (Week of March 22, 2016)
World Happiness Report Released – “Denmark Ranks as Happiest Country; Burundi, Not So Much” – The New York Times, 3.17.16
The fourth World Happiness Report was released last week, and Denmark has reclaimed its place as the world’s happiest country, while Burundi ranks last. This year’s report finds that “inequality is strongly associated with unhappiness — a stark finding for rich countries like the United States, where rising disparities in income, wealth, health and well-being have fueled political discontent.” The world happiness leaders: Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia and Sweden. All are nations with strong safety nets and more homogenous populations.
The Radical Ways Work Will Change in the Future
The GWI’s new report, “The Future of Wellness at Work,” forecasts the many profound ways that work will change in the future. Long-term, stable jobs (at set locations/hours) will give way to a virtual and “free agent” workforce that will be intensely multigenerational: By 2020, teens and employees over 70 will work side-by-side. The big shift comes from the fact that the Information Age will be succeeded by a “Wisdom” Age; as robots and Artificial Intelligence coopt many work tasks, human qualities not replicable by machines (collaboration, creativity, empathy, etc.) will be in high demand. And these are precisely the qualities that demand the highest level of mental and physical wellness.
With Workplace Wellness, Do Carrots or Sticks Work Better?
In the wake of the Global Wellness Institute’s recent report, a hot issue to watch is how workplace wellness programs are going to evolve in the foreseeable future. And a big question, and new research ponders, what works better – penalties or rewards – carrots or sticks? Do humans respond better to losses or gains?
Global Wellness Day Coming June 11
The second-annual Global Wellness Day, the brainchild of Belgin Aksoy (creative director, Richmond International), will be celebrated worldwide this year on June 11. This very special day, which brings together exercise, healthy eating and inner peace/happiness at a series of public events (at spas, hotels, fitness studios, public parks, etc.) recently became a GWI Initiative. Global Wellness Day was an amazing success in 2015, and will blossom further this year as its being celebrated in 100 countries at 1,000 locations with 70 official Ambassadors across all continents.
Wellness Evidence: What Kind of Exercise Builds the Most New Brain Cells?
A new study from the University of Jyvaskyla (Finland), performed on rats, had some provocative findings about what type of exercise drives the most new neurons (neurogenesis) in the brain. For the first time, scientists compared the effect on the brain of running, weight training (rats climbed walls with little weights attached to their tails) and high-intensity interval training (sprinting on little treadmills, slowing and repeating). A substance was injected in the rats’ brains to track the creation of new brain cells and the runners showed by far the most brain cell creation: their hippocampus teemed with new neurons, while the high-intensity interval training showed far fewer neurons created and the weight training showed no neurogenesis.
