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ggoffe

New Year, New You, New Fave Brand

Published by Gretchen Goffe on January 25, 2012.

January is notorious as the time when people make healthy New Year’s resolutions. Places and times when health is top of mind are opportunities for brands to solve Wellness Dilemmas for consumers. Brands win big by finding a pain point—and providing a way out. The rewards are loyalty and a place as their go-to brand. The dilemma is a straightforward identification of a problem that resonates with consumers and interferes with turning intentions into actions. The brand provides a solution as the counterpoint. And here’s the fun part – it’s not just what your brand says (“We’re healthy!”), but the actions of the brand that matter (“Here’s a plan to make this happen”). Let’s take a look at a few initiatives and the Wellness Dilemmas they solve across categories such as meat, breakfast, weight loss, and workout gear that venture into new venues and programs.

Tyson Grilled and Ready chicken breast strips. Wellness Dilemma – you promised you would eat right but you’re so busy with work, friends and family, it’s hard to stay on track. Tyson introduces a program that solves the dilemma with 30 Days, 30 Ways, and 30 Rewards.

Slimfast. One of the original meal replacement weight loss plans, Slimfast has refreshed the brand with new packaging and formulations to go with their plan of a shake or bar at breakfast and lunch, followed by a 500 calorie dinner. Slimfast continues to solve the same Wellness Dilemma – that weight loss programs require time-consuming preparation of new recipes 3 times a day.

Egg Beaters. Wellness Dilemma – you want to eat more protein to support your healthy lifestyle and build muscles, but worry about too much fat, cholesterol and calories. Egg Beaters muscle supporting protein helps individuals meet fitness goals. It’s interesting to see the print campaign move from magazines to featured posters inside mega-gyms. Why not extend the promotion to trial, including breakfast choices made with Eggbeaters at the gym’s cafes?

Victorias Secret Sport VSX. Wellness Dilemma – Individuals want to look good at the gym even before the results of their new resolutions shows. VSX combines VS figure enhancing designs with performance workout gear, and introduces it via the Get a Runway Body promotion. Promotional posters have a lot less category noise to compete with at mega-gyms and boost visibility as fitness Instructors hand out scratch off  discount cards for VSX stores.

If your brand competes in those categories and you haven’t developed a clear strategy to connect your brand with the health and wellness opportunity, now is a good time to think about the role you can play for consumers looking for help turning healthy intentions into actions. Brands that haven’t developed a clear strategy and plan to execute it risk dropping off consumer’s radar as they discover new brands in the New Year.

*For more information on health and wellness visit thewellatgsw.com.

Categories: Health and wellness marketing
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brizzo

Is your body trying to tell you something? Are you listening?

Published by Brenda Rizzo on December 5, 2011.

Many of us deal with stressors every day. Stressors are confirmation that we are alive! There is no such thing as a stress-free life, but being able to integrate or adapt to stress can help us to reduce the damage that stress can exert on our health. And your body often tries to tell you when you are experiencing too much stress but we often ignore it. Let me explain.

Dr. Hans Selye, an endocrinologist, first began to describe stress in 1936. His observations led to a three-stage model of the body’s response to stress. He called his theory the general adaptation syndrome (GAS). The first phase is an alarm reaction, the second stage is one of resistance or adaptation, and the final stage is one of exhaustion.

  • In the alarm stage the body responds to a stressor, which could be physical or psychological. With the release of adrenaline your heart could begin to beat fast, or you might include butterflies in your stomach, a rise in your blood pressure, heavy breathing, dilation of your eyes, dry mouth, and the hair on your arms might even stand on end.
  • During the resistance stage of a stress reaction, your body remains on alert for danger. When this part of the GAS is prolonged, your immune system may become compromised and you may become susceptible to illness. And with prolonged stress changes take place that weaken your body’s ability to fight off disease.
  • The final stage of Selye’s GAS is the exhaustion stage. As your body readjusts during this period, hormones are released to help bring your body back to normal, to the state of balance called homeostasis. Until balance is reached, the body continues to release hormones, ultimately suppressing your immune system, contributing to illness.

Over time, these hormonal changes can lead to ulcers, high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, arthritis, kidney disease, and allergic reactions. His seminal work “A Syndrome Produced by Diverse Nocuous Agents” was published in 1936 in Nature.

He described two different kinds of stress, eustress or “happy stress” and distress or “disturbing stress.” We have to integrate and respond to that stress in our lives, we have no choice.  However Selye noticed that changes we feel upset about (distress) cause much more biological damage than changes we feel good about (eustress).

How does stress affect health?

In the short term stress can affect your health by disturbing your digestion (desire to eat more than usual, or eat less, diarrhea or constipation) or affect your immune system (ever notice how you get a cold after a stressful period in your life?). But there can be some not so obvious deleterious health consequences. You may have a rise in blood pressure (which can affect your kidneys, cause a stroke, or contribute to heart disease) or you could have an increase in acid secretion in your stomach (which can cause irritation, or lead to gastroesophageal reflux disease or ulcers). These are just a few examples.

Short-term, the stress response can be normal – the body does this for survival. However a chronic or habitual stress response can lead to a “weak organ response”. For example, some of us have recurrent chronic back pain, while others may notice they go through periods of intestinal discomfort. Chronic hypertension can be your body’s response to long term stress, chest pain, leading to heart disease. Some people get asthma, or are susceptible to lung infections. Everyone has a body system or organ that responds to too much stress over an extended period of time.

What can you do about it?

Start to pay attention to your body. What is your weak organ that always responds to too much stress? When do you know you have had enough? Here are some tips to help you adapt to stress:

  • Journal, this will help you clearly identify your stressors and how your body responds.
  • Exercise increases your ability to handle stress and boost your immune system.
  • Eating healthy can maintain energy and reduce digestive disorders.
  • Keep good sleep hygiene, maintain the same bedtime, the same amount of sleep, and keep your sleep routine calm and similar.
  • Just say “no” when people ask you to do more than you know you can take on, say, “I am flattered that you thought of me, but no I can’t right now.”
  • Identify your support system and use it. Do you have friends or families that can help you out? Sometimes they just need to know.
  • Talk about the stressor, either with a counselor, minister, or close friend that can help you get perspective.
  • Know your limitations, listen to your body and slow down.
  • Set aside time for yourself for a warm bath, or a good book, or whatever helps you escape for a moment.

So what do I do over the holidays?

  • Avoid unnecessary stress, like people who stress you, or unrealistic expectations you set on yourself.
  • Avoid hot button topics that you know could upset you (politics, religion, economy).
  • Be willing to compromise to get along.
  • Don’t try to control the uncontrollable.
  • Try to forgive, long-term grudges can waste a lot of energy.
  • Look for humor, maintain perspective, shrug it off.

Remember stress may be not only having a psychological affect but also a weak organ response that could be even more damaging.

Categories: Health and wellness marketing
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mtscott

The Eternal Sunshine of Protein Synthesis Inhibition

Published by Michael Scott on October 6, 2011.

Why do people dwell on bad memories? We talk of memories being “scorched” or “branded” into our brains. The phrase “there are just some things you can’t unsee” has gone from being a joke to part of the lexicon

This phenomenon drove Freud, who had written The Pleasure Principle, to write one of his darkest books, in which he moved the furthest from his neurologist roots: Beyond the Pleasure Principle. He considered it “uncanny” (unheimlich) that people would continue to scratch a psychic wound, and speculated about a “deathly” instinct. There seemed to be little he could do for these patients.

An article published in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2010 looked at recent research on “memory reconsolidation” and sent me in search of the original sources. In short, in remembering something, you (or proteins in your brain) “rewrite” the memory.

Consolidation of memory

For more than 100 years, we’ve known that memories move through an unstable phase to a stable phase, at which time they are said to be consolidated. During the unstable phase, memories can be impaired by distraction or new learning. (They can also be impaired by protein synthesis inhibitors—we’ll get to that in a moment.)

For example, think of trying to remember a phone number. If someone just told you the number and then begins to recite other phone numbers, rattle off random series of numbers, or the phone rings, you’re less likely to remember it. However, if the same reciting, rattling, or ringing occurs the next day, you’ll probably still remember that phone number.

For a long time, that was believed to be that. Memories went through a stabilization or consolidation period, after which they could be “retrieved.” The analogies were always filing cabinets or computers.

Reconsolidation: the present in the past

Then a researcher named Karim Nader conducted a brilliant experiment, published in a letter to the editor of Nature in 2000. Basically, Nader and her group looked at rats that had been trained to associate a tone with a foot shock. When the tone was played, the rats froze in fear.

The next day, the tone was played, and a protein synthesis inhibitor into the amygdala, a part of the brain associated with learned fear. No foot shock followed. The day after that, the tone was played again, and the rats no longer froze in fear. The memory of the initial training was cleared.

Turns out that both the original consolidation of memories and the reconsolidation of memories require protein synthesis. As Nader put it, “Our data show that consolidated fear memories, when reactivated, return to a labile state that requires de novo protein synthesis for reconsolidation.”

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Total Recall? One of those “flashy memory erasing things” from Men in Black?

Not so fast.

But a decade of studies has shown that new learning and other distractions can lead to altered or forgotten memories, but only within a certain window after the memory is brought up. Your mind then lays down a “new” memory, based on current experiences, thoughts, personality, fears, hopes, and dreams.

New hope in post-traumatic stress disorder

Protein synthesis inhibitors used in rat studies are highly toxic, but propanolol (a beta-blocker) may interfere with protein synthesis in the amygdala. That may be why some people report feeling “foggy” when taking this drug.

However, based on the model laid out by Nader, a group looked at what happened if people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were asked to recall the traumatic event in detail and then given propanolol. A week later, when asked to remember the traumatic event once more—without propanolol—the researchers measured heart rate, skin conductance (a measure of stress), and the electrical impulses in the “facial frowning” muscle (the left corrugator). All were much, much lower than a group that had received placebo the previous week.

So we’re not in a brave new world of designer memories, memory erasure, or vacations by memory implants. Not just yet. But Freud has been demonstrated wrong (yet again). People with PTSD have been helped. And who knows where this research will lead next?

Categories: New ideas and approaches
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dstout

Gaming for good health

Published by Danielle Stout on September 19, 2011.

So lately the buzz has been healthy video games (which in the first UP:ROOT shows how there is a big market for this too). Okay, okay, I’ll be honest. My particular obsession with Call of Duty: Black Ops is far from healthy, but there are many other options in both mainstream and healthcare gaming that provide unique ways to promote wellness. Here’s my take, as a part of the 26% of female gamers, on some of the coolest advances in gaming for health and wellness.

Motion gaming minimizes sedentary play

Even though motion gaming has been around for quite some time (remember stepping as hard and fast as you could on the old Power Pads for Nintendo’s track and field games?), motion gaming as we know it now with facial, spatial, body and, for some even voice, recognition still  has a lot of exploration and growth happening. This is prime time for medical marketers to find solutions on these platforms as the early adopters have helped identify holes in the games first made available. These types of systems and all of their intricacies that have yet to be fully utilized hold a huge potential, but  for now my recommend best use of this platform in healthy gaming is Your Shape Fitness Evolved for Kinect.  Besides utilizing full body scanning for customizing arm and leg span and making movements and positioning more accurate it also helps you rack up Gamer Points as you burn certain amounts of calories which is a huge motivator especially for those gamers who like those additional bragging rights on their Xbox Live account.

Virtual reality gaming can help patients escape from painful treatment

In Fallout 3—one of the usual, not-so-healthy games—your character finds a group of people escaping the harsh reality of a post-apocalyptic world through virtual reality. Well, that theory is not just for video games now, mostly. Firsthand Technology teamed with research psychologists to build a virtual reality game that reduces pain related activity in burn patients undergoing painful therapy or treatment.

Gaming can mimic physiological effects to deter unhealthy behavior

Forget about just trying to escape reality; instead try replacing a harmful habit in an entertaining (and much healthier) manner that provides the same effects. A team at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York are developing Lit, a smoking cessation game, which uses breathing techniques to simulate effects of smoking.  Rather than just asking them to attempt breathing exercises (which could get old fast), it gives them an interactive environment that rewards them and encourages continued use.

Click here to view, “Lit, a smoking cessation game.”

Gaming provides a fun format for learning

Had someone asked me to spend at minimum an hour every evening talking about military weapons I would have answered with a resounding “no.”  However in my habitual playing of Black Ops, I’ve pretty much done that. Thing is you don’t really realize how much you’ve learned until you are watching a commercial for TopShot and can name the equipment faster than the host can. Asking patients to read up on a disease or product may not produce results, but getting them to engage in a fun game with repetitiveness may have them retaining more information. So you don’t have to find such awesome ways to take advantage of the new modes of gaming, as I’ve shown. Even just a simple, yet fun, game that divulges information will do the trick. Now go play, and tell your loved ones it’s for medical research!

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mhallett

Good relationships with co-workers helps keep emotional wellness in check

Published by Maggie Hallett on August 3, 2011.

For many of us, it isn’t just what we do for a living that’s important; it’s who we do it with. According to a study in the Journal of Applied Communication Research, “co-worker liking” had a high positive correlation to job satisfaction. But maintaining enjoyable, healthy relationships with co-workers isn’t always easy in high stress, competitive environments. Consider the following situation and the five simple steps you can take to manage the interaction and come out feeling good about yourself in the process.

Situation: Your boss assigns you to a big project that will be getting a lot of attention within the organization. You are thrilled about the opportunity, but dismayed when you find out your boss has also assigned one of your co-workers to lead it with you. You like the co-worker personally, but in your past experience working on projects together you’ve found that you usually do 80% of the work, and when it’s complete she has no problem taking 50% of the credit. You are determined to not let that happen again, but you’re also nervous about difficult conversations and confrontations you anticipate happening.

  • Remember, you are not a mind reader: Do not assume the co-worker is thinking “Sweet! I’m partnered with a workhorse. I know I won’t have to do much and I’ll still look good…” By making assumptions about what someone else is thinking, it becomes your truth—even though it may not actually be true. You enter the situation on the defensive, with a suspicious, negative mindset, which is never a good way to begin a partnership.

  • Set ground rules: Put a plan in place that clearly outlines everyone’s responsibilities. Make sure it’s in writing, and share it with your boss so she’s also aware of who’s responsible for what.  If your co-worker is not doing her part, it is now easier to approach the subject since it was agreed upon by all parties up front.  Also, make sure to address your co-worker directly before going to your boss so she’s aware that you have an issue with the situation. Give her the opportunity to fix it before involving anyone else.
  • Just the facts, ma’am: If you feel like your co-worker is slacking, make sure that you stick to only the facts when reviewing the situation—both in your head and with her. It’s our natural reaction to add some color commentary to a heated situation, so attempt to take the emotion out of the interaction to come across more professional and less accusatory. For example:  “We agreed that you’d be done with the budget by Friday, and it’s not complete. Can you let me know what your plan is to get it done in the next 24 hours?” versus  “You’re not done yet?? Are you kidding me? It’s going to put us so far behind!!” You can see how the different lines of questioning will likely garner very different responses.
  • Never say never (or always): When having a difficult conversation, try to remove the words “never” and “always” from your vocabulary.  It’s hard to stick with the facts when using extremes like “You are always late!” or “You never support me in meetings.” Most likely neither of these things are true, even though it’s how you feel. However, you won’t accomplish your goals (of your co-worker arriving on time or supporting you in meetings) if you approach her with extremes instead of the facts.
  • There IS an “I” in “Team”: When a difficult conversation is necessary, it’s much easier to make it about you versus the other person. Using “I statements” forces you to share how you are feeling about what your co-worker is doing rather than making it about her and immediately putting her on the defensive.  You can see how “I feel taken advantage of when you ask me to do your portion of the proposal” is more difficult to dispute than “I have to do everything. You always get away with the easiest part!” No one can argue with how you are feeling, because, well, they are your feelings. But as soon as you tell someone else they are doing something wrong, their natural reaction will be to defend themselves.

The gist of these five rules can apply to all relationships, not just at work. If you can remember to remain factual about the situation and stick with explaining how you feel, you’ll set yourself up for the best chance of having a productive interaction—one that helps you accomplish your goal and still feel good about yourself in the process.

*For more information on health and wellness visit thewellatgsw.com

Categories: New ideas and approaches
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pcomber

Well meaning regulations are not the solution

Published by Peter Comber on July 26, 2011.

The American Medical Association voted, at its annual meeting on June 21st, to support ad-industry policies discouraging altered, unrealistic body images in advertising.

The association says: “Advertisers commonly alter photographs to enhance the appearance of models’ bodies, and such alterations can contribute to unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image — especially among impressionable children and adolescents.” The statement continues saying there exists a link between the kind of images they would like to outlaw and eating disorders and other health problems in the young and impressionable.

It seems reasonable and the right thing to do. The latest in a long chain of right and reasonable rules and regulations attempting to make our society better and safer that, in my opinion, are having the opposite effect. I fear we are regulating ourselves towards mass ignorance.

The more rules and regulations we create for our world, the less each individual feels responsible and the less attentive they become in their choices. A healthy and safe society is a society with values, comprised of people who are attentive, able to analyze and criticize. People who think.

Just as the sharp rise in prevalence of allergies seems to be linked to the extremely hygienic conditions that many people live in, the over-sanitization of our society will produce generations of undiscerning individuals.

Because it started a conversation and raised awareness with the general public, the famous Dove “Evolution” campaign has had a more positive effect than the proposed regulations ever could (at the time of writing the film on YouTube had been viewed 13,308,630 times). Our goal should be to help children understand that perfection is merely an ideal, exalted in movies, TV, magazines and the advertising within them, an ideal that doesn’t exist in reality; every individual is beautiful, and flawed.

Celebrating real people and setting realistic expectations shouldn’t mean eliminating fantasy and fiction from our world. Because if you ban manipulated images in advertising you will have to extend the ban to editorial content and all published images.Then you will find that an un-manipulated photo of an anorexic model is equally damaging and you will have to establish a table of minimum required proportions between height, weight, and waist/hip measurements for all models used in published photography. At that point you will have created an official standard of what a healthy and beautiful body is and it will still be tragically unattainable for the majority.

I completely support the American Medical Associations ultimate goal which is to prevent eating disorders and health problems in children and adolescents. I just believe that their approach of censoring images will not be effective. Promoting the development of the personal skills required to navigate successfully through life is the real solution.

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bheffernan

Wellness is a choice we make in any state of health

Published by Brian Heffernan on May 9, 2011.

I recently typed the words “health and wellness” into my favorite search engine and about 91 million results appeared. No exaggeration. These famous words– health and wellness– are hitched at the hip and travel everywhere together. Yet, if you ask people to define the meaning of this linked linguistic staple, the responses always vary:

“It’s all about fitness, popping vitamins, exercising and taking care of yourself.”

“It’s a lifestyle.”

“It means you are trying to keep away from the doctor –health and wellness is better than sick and ornery and high medical bills.”

Interpretations of the phrase “health and wellness” ping back and forth as people reconcile the distinct meanings of two different words, while the diminutive “and” ducks for cover in the middle. We sense that health and wellness don’t mean the same thing and that both words are not equally at fault. If you ask someone, “How’s your health?”, they will almost always get your meaning and quickly oblige with an inventory of their personal afflictions. If you ask people, “How’s your wellness?”, they will ask you to repeat the question.

Our research shows clients and consumers alike lack a fundamental understanding of what “wellness” means. In our work, which included both secondary research as well as primary research with consumers and professionals, we discovered a simple way to help people better understand how the concept of wellness relates to personal health. Most people (and it turns out most formal definitions) describe health as an outcome. For example, The American Heritage Dictionary defines health as “the overall condition of an organism at a given time.” This helps explain why most people have a reasonably good understanding of what health is and can describe the condition of their “personal organism” when asked, “How’s it going?” On the other hand, wellness is not an outcome. It is a way of being that involves choices we make. We can choose to live “well”, regardless of the specific state of health we experience at any one time.

We discovered this notion resonates with people across a wide spectrum of self-described physical health. The idea that “wellness is a choice we make in any state of health” is as true for athletic people in their 20s as it is for people seeking to live “well into” their 80s. When we begin to understand wellness as a choice that is relevant to a large swath of the population, it opens up exciting, new possibilities.

Interviews with patients across a variety of illnesses demonstrate that people become increasingly aware of their wellness choices as they cope with ill health and are interested in wellness support as they manage everything from rheumatoid arthritis to diabetes to cancer. Of course, there are many dimensions to wellness and the type of support required, and it varies across conditions and patient types. However, as the population ages, there is a growing need to take wellness seriously and to pursue new approaches. Why?

  • As health care reform advances and focuses on improving outcomes (the health part), it is not surprising that key initiatives include affecting better wellness choices for all.
  • As new technology and media enable truly interactive educational forums and personalized content, our ability to affect wellness choices has never been greater.
  • As health care professionals, employers, insurers, government and other stakeholders come together to address the needs of society, our understanding of wellness and its profound impact in our lives will only increase.

For all of these reasons, this is an exciting time to be working in the two, connected worlds of health and wellness. It is important work, even if we succeed in only small ways to help people aspire and choose to live as well as is humanly possible.

Categories: Health and wellness marketing
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