Helping Others Is Good For Your Health
From The Toronto Star
It's the mantra of the 21st century: Work out, eat right and stay healthy. Today, it's more important than ever.
In Canada, heart disease is the No. 1 killer. Five million Canadians suffer from this ailment, making it the greatest burden on our national health care system. Obesity is not far behind.
In our quest to look and feel healthy, we'll eliminate entire food groups from our diet, swallow fistfuls of unproven herbal remedies or indulge in a small nip or a tiny tuck from time to time.
But what if we told you that volunteering at your local food bank is better than a multivitamin?
Usually described as the act of giving of oneself to benefit others, we believe that volunteering is actually about receiving. It is a "selfish" act that keeps the body healthy and it comes highly recommended.
Any type of good work will bring volunteers positive emotions and attitudes.
Even thinking about helping others boosts our health.
Harvard University psychologist David McClelland had a group of students watch a film about Mother Teresa's work in the Calcutta slums. All the students did was sit and watch. But in response to the film, tests on students revealed an increase in immunoglobulin A, a disease-fighting antibody.
According to a Health Canada report, volunteering creates support networks, social relationships and, above all, community cohesiveness. This, in turn, leads to positive health outcomes such as lowered blood pressure, strengthening of the immune system, lower premature death rates, as well as fewer instances of health risk factors, such as heart disease.
Truly, there is no mystery to being a volunteer.
It can be a simple act of mowing your neighbour's lawn or walking your grandmother's dog. It's not a pastime for seniors and stay-at-home moms or dads only. It's accessible to all who are willing to make the time.
By combining healthy eating habits and regular exercise with volunteering, Canadians will go a long way to meeting a looming national health crisis.
Craig and Marc Kielburger are founders of Free the Children and co-authors of Me to We. With this column, they are exploring the impact of global issues on young people in developing nations and what it means to youth in the GTA.
Read the entire article
It's the mantra of the 21st century: Work out, eat right and stay healthy. Today, it's more important than ever.
In Canada, heart disease is the No. 1 killer. Five million Canadians suffer from this ailment, making it the greatest burden on our national health care system. Obesity is not far behind.
In our quest to look and feel healthy, we'll eliminate entire food groups from our diet, swallow fistfuls of unproven herbal remedies or indulge in a small nip or a tiny tuck from time to time.
But what if we told you that volunteering at your local food bank is better than a multivitamin?
Usually described as the act of giving of oneself to benefit others, we believe that volunteering is actually about receiving. It is a "selfish" act that keeps the body healthy and it comes highly recommended.
Any type of good work will bring volunteers positive emotions and attitudes.
Even thinking about helping others boosts our health.
Harvard University psychologist David McClelland had a group of students watch a film about Mother Teresa's work in the Calcutta slums. All the students did was sit and watch. But in response to the film, tests on students revealed an increase in immunoglobulin A, a disease-fighting antibody.
According to a Health Canada report, volunteering creates support networks, social relationships and, above all, community cohesiveness. This, in turn, leads to positive health outcomes such as lowered blood pressure, strengthening of the immune system, lower premature death rates, as well as fewer instances of health risk factors, such as heart disease.
Truly, there is no mystery to being a volunteer.
It can be a simple act of mowing your neighbour's lawn or walking your grandmother's dog. It's not a pastime for seniors and stay-at-home moms or dads only. It's accessible to all who are willing to make the time.
By combining healthy eating habits and regular exercise with volunteering, Canadians will go a long way to meeting a looming national health crisis.
Craig and Marc Kielburger are founders of Free the Children and co-authors of Me to We. With this column, they are exploring the impact of global issues on young people in developing nations and what it means to youth in the GTA.
Read the entire article
posted by Lance Morrison @ 8:30 PM
1 Comments:
Very good message. Given our world is focused on individualism and survival of the fittest, it is important to remember our communities, each other, our neighbours, etc..
I believe that the number one killer (that causes stresses like heart disease etc) is capitalism and poverty -- people are poorer now versus 20 years ago because there is an illusion that we have more, but acutally what we have is more debt, fewer full-time jobs with benefits so people are working 2-3 jobs to survive. 20 years ago, 30% of people's income went to rent/mortgage, now, it is around 52%--health canada needs to start looking at what causes these physical symptoms and being more proactive than reactive.
the article doesn't distinguish between "volunteering" in a structured context, rather than "helping others" and seems to suggest that it's the former that makes people feel better. It doesn't acknowledge that we live in a society that allows such imbalance that some members of the society depend on the unpaid efforts of others for their very existence (such as food banks, etc) and it assumes that volunteering is something that we can all make time to do in a structured context, which fails to recognize people's longer working hours within a system that encourages looking out for number one. Maybe instead of making people feel like they need to add volunteering to their already busy lives, we need to encourage people to care about one another, really care about what happens to other people (even if it's not what we'd choose for ourselves) and to act on those feeling appropriately.
That is my 2 cents worth --- and one more thing, there actually is no real medical evidence that obesity alone is a health risk -- it can increase people's health risk but so can drinking, smoking, etc...... If Health Canada really cared about obeisty, they would advocate to put laws in place that make organic food and other healthy food cheaper and make fast food restaurants such as Mc Donalds so expensive that people could not afford. Given people's working days are longer and people have less free time, more and more people depend on fast food for meals which can contributes to obesity -- but what if all of our fast food places served fresh home made measl, organic foods etc.. things would be different.
Thanks for posting this interesting article., it got my intellectual energy flowing
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gal in the doll house (guess which gal??)
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