Your Track to Health has provided tips on handling social anxiety as well as the benefits of exercise. Click on 
the links below to read how you can overcome social anxiety and about the benefits of adding exercise to your daily routine.
Tips for handling social anxiety: Everyone gets nervous in social situations. Perhaps you’ve experienced some anxiety when giving a presentation or meeting someone new for the first time. Maybe you are shy or more reserved than some of your family members or friends. Become familiar with the signs and symptoms of social anxiety.
The health benefits of fitness – Exercise is medicine: this is the second article in a series on The Health Benefits of Fitness and will provide you with general information about how exercise can help you maintain your overall health, especially if you have a chronic disease.
Tag: exercise
Are you as active as you should be?
In less than 15 minutes a day, you can do a few simple and effective strengthening exercises that may help you set some health and wellness goals. Below are some simple exercises that can be done just about anywhere, according to Yourtracktohealth.com.
Yourtracktohealth.com is your online gateway to information, tools and resources about your railroad health and welfare benefits.
Check with your doctor before starting any exercise program or increasing your activity level. This is especially important if you have any health conditions (i.e. arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, pregnancy, neck, back or knee problems, etc.). He or she can tell you what types and amounts of activities are safe and suitable for you.
If you experience any symptoms of weakness, unsteadiness, light-headedness or dizziness, chest pain or pressure, nausea, or shortness of breath while exercising, stop immediately and contact your doctor. If it is an emergency, call 911. Mild soreness after exercise may be experienced after beginning a new exercise. Contact your physician if the soreness does not improve after two to three days.
Connect with a personal health coach to help you get and stay on track with your health.
Don’t forget that as part of your railroad benefits, you have access to a personal health coach who can work with you to develop an exercise plan to help improve your overall health. To connect with a health coach, contact your medical benefit administrator:
• Aetna members: Railroad Employees National Plan: (800) 842-4044; NRC/UTU Plan: (888-332-8742).
• Highmark Blue Cross BlueShield members: (866) 267-3320.
• UnitedHealthcare members: (866) 735-5685
For more health and wellness information to help you maintain or achieve better health, visit the Live Healthy section of Yourtracktohealth.com.
By Dr. Norman Brown
UTU Medical Consultant
Baseball legend Mickey Mantle once joked, “If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”
I wish more of us, including myself, would look into their crystal balls of the future and find themselves saying this old half joke to others, years from now. I want to try to convince you that your efforts today – no matter what your current age – will pay off for your own health and happiness in future years.
Some interesting scientific studies recently reported very significant facts:
- People who exercise regularly land in nursing homes less often.
- People who exercise and lose weight are less frail.
- People who are more active physically are less at risk of Alzheimer’s Disease.
How do we get ourselves into life-style patterns of more exercise and less weight?
It is not easy, based upon my own personal experience and experience of working with thousands of patients over the years as they made the valiant effort.
There is another study worth mentioning – one of people working to lower their cholesterol levels. All were scanned with an electron beam that identifies cholesterol plaques in their arteries. Each was told of their cholesterol level before starting a program of diet and medication.
Those who had the most severe accumulation of cholesterol plaques were almost twice as likely to be faithful to their diets and medication as those with the least plaques.
Do you have to be frightened to stick to a blood-vessel healthy life style? Maybe, but I hope not – especially if you start early in life to become aware that putting undue stress on your body now may make life a lot less fun for you later.
Extra calories, particularly cholesterol-laden ones – and especially if accentuated by excess alcohol – put extra stress on your blood vessels and heart system, to say nothing of your bones and joints. Reducing the calorie intake and exercising are a huge benefit.
Now, a word about smoking. Leaving aside the risk of smoking triggering a cancer problem, we also know that smoking may affect the arteries. Many experts believe that the expected weight gain after stopping smoking is less harmful than smoking itself, so please think about this fact and stop if you can – and work on the weight later on. I know that many of you have already quit, so more power to you!
Many studies have shown that emotional stress, depression, or unhappiness in general may correlate with physical medical disorders – so-called psychosomatic diseases.
My goal for each of you is to work toward a healthy life in both body and mind – which are, in fact, inseparable.
Just the fact that you have taken the trouble to read, and get to the bottom of this column, tells me you are on the right path. So, keep it up. Your families need you to be as happy and as fit as possible for as long as possible.