Read our FAQs for "Eliminating Stress Damage" and "About Optimal Health Trainings".
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Eliminating Stress Damage
1. Why is this important news for employers who want results and costs savings?
2. Why are stress damage elimination skills top priority in today’s climate of staff cutbacks?
3. How can my organization gain the benefits of Optimal Health Trainings?
4. What is stress damage?
5. Why is eliminating stress damage the high value starting place for all wellness programs, health promotion, illness prevention and healthcare cost containment?
6. Why is eliminating stress damage such an important breakthrough?
7. Why are Optimal Health Trainings “The Heart of Wellness”?
8. How can wellness programs now achieve superior outcomes?
9. Who developed this methodology to eliminate stress damage?
10. What is the difference between eliminating stress damage and stress “management”?
11. Why have the enormous costs of stress damage been acceptable?
12. What are the benefits of successful stress damage elimination?
13. Why is eliminating stress damage an important key to correcting and preventing hypertension, diabetes and obesity - components of the “Metabolic Syndrome”?
14. What are the true costs of stress damage to health and productivity?
15. How do fatigued adrenal glands cause so much illness, doctor visits and lost work
time costs?
16. Why haven’t you heard of this before?
17. If stress is so important, why is stress management missing from most wellness programs and most illness prevention efforts?
18. Do you have these symptoms of stress damage? your stress test
FAQs
Eliminating Stress Damage
1. Why is this important news for employers who want costs savings and productivity results?
Your main losses of productivity from lost work time costs of absenteeism and presenteeism are because of one thing: stress damage. Stress is the #1 factor of illness - the common denominator of most health issues today: hypertension, diabetes, obesity, depression, immune weakness, insomnia, anxiety, tension headaches and more. Stress damage is the single primary source of most lost work time costs, most doctor visits and most illness costs. With Optimal Health Trainings these costs are now unnecessary and can be significantly reduced.
 75%-90% of all primary care doctor visits American Institute of Stress
50% of absenteeism European Agency for Safety & Health - study of USA workers
50% of increased healthcare expenditures Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine
This enormous opportunity for costs savings is made real via understanding “levels of organization” in the body and then translating physiology into finance. In the executive suite of the body’s organization, the adrenal glands produce vital hormones that regulate every internal organ and protect every cell. Benefits are gained by recognizing “stress” as the result of fatigued adrenal glands too taxed from hundreds of daily stress events to produce their vital hormones. A vast majority of doctor visits and illness conditions are direct consequences of adrenal gland fatigue. Repeated costs of illness “repair” are incurred when not directly treating nor preventing adrenal gland fatigue. With stress damage removed, health improves and all medical treatments can become more effective. Correcting this first makes eliminating stress damage THE high value top priority intervention to maximize wellness outcomes and shareholder value.
These costs savings are now possible because Optimal Health Trainings supply your workforce with the tools – the first effective method – to eliminate (not “manage”) the entire range of stress damage to health and performance. Based on 25 years of clinical expertise and research, these tools are lifelong skills that also produce optimal health and sustain top performance - by teaching your workforce how to better operate their mind, body and personal energy. These LIFELONG skills give exceptional ROI and appreciate your people capital.
2. Why are stress damage elimination skills top priority in today’s climate of staff cutbacks?
The people left after downsizing and layoffs are responsible for keeping your business alive. They now must handle far greater workloads. The per person costs and financial impact of productivity losses from absenteeism and presenteeism are now greater. Unless eliminated with skills, stress damage will undoubtedly increase its toll on your workforce.
Eliminating stress damage is the “stitch in time” needed to complement health plan cost control, prevent lost work time and keep people at low risk. You can safeguard your productivity from loss, protect and appreciate these valuable people from stress damage. Results give you a triple win: save costs, produce healthier people and drive productivity.
Optimal Health Trainings help businesses achieve maximum shareholder value by stopping – before it develops – the entire chain reaction of adrenal stress damage to health and productivity.
3. How can my organization gain the benefits of Optimal Health Trainings?
Two ways:
A. Call 206-397-3156 and let’s schedule trainings for your workforce or group.
B. Order the Stress Damage Elimination Kit for your personnel or for everybody in
your benefits plan. This kit contains the complete manual of lifelong skills from
the workshop, the book Six Seconds to True Calm, the True Calm CD and more.
4. What is stress damage?
It is vital for employers to translate physiology into finance to clearly understand the business value of redeploying capital to eliminate stress damage. Stress damages health and productivity in stages because stress damage accumulates. Costs increase exponentially when unresolved symptoms become illness and develop into disease. Much of this is now preventable with Optimal Health Trainings.
Adrenal gland function helps remove the confusion surrounding “stress”. Adrenal glands produce and co-produce dozens of hormones that help regulate all internal organs, strengthen the immune system and protect all cells.
Hundreds of daily stress events – whether mental, emotional or physical – each trigger adrenal glands into survival reactions. This constant over-arousal results in taxed or fatigued adrenal glands. Most peoples’ adrenal glands are too fatigued from constant stress to produce the vital hormones their body needs in the necessary quantity, quality and timing.
Without proper supply of adrenal hormones, internal organs become compromised and simply cannot function properly. This causes a large variety of health problems. Confusion and ineffective treatment result from not recognizing adrenal stress damage as the common source. It is valuable to realize that most doctor visits (75%-90%), most absenteeism (50%), many illness conditions and medical costs are downstream consequences of stress damaged health from fatigued adrenal glands. Hypertension, obesity and diabetes - all at epidemic levels - are among the costly conditions directly impacted by fatigued adrenal glands.
One valuable skill of Optimal Health Trainings is the LIFELONG ability to de-stress and feel calm within six seconds by resetting four main body systems to optimal healthy operation. Faster and safer than pills, this skill is essential to prevent the entire chain reaction of stress damage. These same skills produce a sustainable state of optimal health and top performance all day with sharp focus, calm emotions, clear mind and relaxed body.
5. Why is eliminating stress damage the high value starting place for all wellness programs, health promotion, illness prevention and healthcare cost containment?
Stress is the single reason people generally stop exercising regularly, fall off their diets, start smoking or start using harmful substances again. Without skills to eliminate stress damage and resolve stress issues, people seek sugary sweets and fried fast foods to feel better instantly.
When stressed, people reach for cigarettes to feel calm. When stressed, people drink more alcohol and seek substances to numb and distract themselves. When stressed, people take pills to sleep and other pills just to make it through the day. Mental stress symptoms (worry, negative thinking, depression, anxiety and emotional upset) combine with the physical discomforts of stress symptoms (headaches, muscle tension, fatigue, upset stomach, etc.) to regularly derail people from the healthy focus and discipline necessary to achieve their fitness goals.
This is why it is vitally important to have the foundation of Optimal Health Trainings skills in place to eliminate stress damage and produce optimal health. Other wellness efforts can then better succeed.
6. Why is eliminating stress damage such an important breakthrough?
Optimal Health Trainings help businesses achieve maximum shareholder value by stopping – before it develops – the entire chain reaction of adrenal stress damage to health and productivity. With stress damage removed, health improves and all medical treatments can become more effective.
Significant costs savings can now be achieved by eliminating and preventing stress damage altogether. Vital health gains and productivity improvements can be accomplished with the same effort. This is new.
As a breakthrough proactive wellness solution, Optimal Health Trainings are the first effective methodology to simultaneously eliminate (not “manage”) stress damage to health and productivity, produce optimal health and deliver sustainable top performance.
7. Why are Optimal Health Trainings “The Heart of Wellness”?
Wellness starts with these core skills to eliminate stress damage and produce optimal health. Otherwise, stress damage will continue to constantly erode health gains and prevent lasting success of other wellness efforts.
8. How can wellness programs now achieve superior outcomes?
Identifying the high value “level” of intervention is the key to success. We start with “stress” because stress damage – particularly to adrenal glands - can and does prevent many medical efforts from working. It is physiological fact that unless the adrenal glands function properly, conditions like hypertension, diabetes and obesity cannot be “cured” or successfully reversed. They can only be managed with increasing medications. Further disease development might be slowed but not stopped.
The good news is that the same skills that eliminate stress damage and help restore healthy adrenal gland functioning simultaneously produce optimal health and optimal human functioning. This translates into decreased absenteeism and increased productivity.
9. Who developed this methodology to eliminate stress damage?
Robert Simon Siegel, MS developed this approach over 25 years of clinical specialization and research from successfully treating a wide range of stress-related conditions – medical and psychological - in hospitals, medical centers, wellness clinics and private practice. This methodology was continually refined through training thousands of people in workshops for corporations, healthcare professionals and the public. Its main strength is that the skills work. They are easy to learn and are immediately beneficial. Robert Simon Siegel is an internationally known author, trainer, psychophysiologist and Founder of GOHG.
10. What is the difference between eliminating stress damage and stress “management”?
Managing stress is like trying to “manage” rough weather after not listening to weather news forecasts. It simply does not work. It is reactive, not proactive. Faster & safer than pills, our skills stop the entire stress damage chain before damage develops. More effective is to accurately perceive changing weather, adapt by dressing appropriately and choosing better activities to easily navigate climate change. “Managing” stress focused exclusively on reducing the effects of the fight/flight reaction. It stopped far short of gaining the health benefits of successfully responding to change. Stress is an amazing biological adaptation signal that communicates when something is wrong - when something needs correction. Correctly utilized, it gives exquisite guidance that improves health and productivity.
11. Why have the enormous costs of stress damage been acceptable?
The true costs of stress damage to health and productivity have not been accurately assessed. Stress damage became “normal” and acceptable only because 30 years of stress “management” produced no effective results. Stress became a confusing, vague term with no standard meaning, no operational definition and no treatment methodology – until now.
Stress confused many people and healthcare practitioners because it crosses so many disciplines. Stress affects mind, body, immunity, emotions, focus, relationships, sleep, energy levels, digestion, metabolism, perception, organ function, endocrine glands, self esteem and communication. Rather than deal with such complexity, many wellness programs, health plans and healthcare professionals ignore stress altogether - even though most people are perilously “stressed out”.
Knowledge has advanced. Optimal Health Trainings deliver lifelong skills that correct the entire range of stress damage.
12. What are the benefits of successful stress damage elimination?
Increase productivity by 50–125 hours per person per year from regaining the
productivity lost by each person too stressed to focus for 12–30 minutes per day
Reduce lost work time costs of absenteeism and presenteeism by 50%.
Prevent primary care doctor visits up to 75%
Decrease healthcare expenditures by 50%.
13. Why is eliminating stress damage an important key to correcting and preventing hypertension, diabetes and obesity - components of the Metabolic Syndrome?
While there are several factors contributing to these conditions, they can be greatly helped by eliminating stress damage and restoring healthy adrenal gland function. For physiological reasons this component may prove to be an essential part of the remedy. The prevalence is increasing.
The Metabolic Syndrome of diabetes, obesity and hypertension is an enormous challenge, affecting an estimated 25% of our USA adult population.
Hypertension
50 million people or 18.38% in USA. More than 15 million are undiagnosed
Diabetes / Pre-diabetes
23.6 million children and adults or 8.0% of the population have diabetes.
57 million people have pre-diabetes
Overweight / Obese
More than 39.8 million American adults or 57% are overweight.
25% of American adults are obese.
Insomnia
32 million people or 11.76% or 1 in 8 in USA suffer from insomnia
Depression
14.4 million people or 5.30% or 1 in 18 in USA
14. What are the true costs of stress damage to health and productivity?
To companies
Lost work time – absenteeism and presenteeism
Lost productivity – missed deadlines, work undone, added management efforts, quality lapses, low morale, feelings of anger, resentment and disloyalty to the company
Lost profitability – overtime, wage replacement payments, extra staffing costs, lost revenue, reduced net income
To individuals
Lost wages: getting behind in work, missed deadlines, using vacation as sick days
Symptoms: high blood pressure, insomnia, headaches, emotional upset, negativity, anger, low morale, fear, tension, anxiety, depression, low motivation, fatigue, relationship problems
Adrenal fatigue: weakened immunity, flu, colds, infections, cancer, pneumonia; obesity/diabetes from low cortisol.
15. How do fatigued adrenal glands cause so much illness, doctor visits and lost work time costs?
Supply and Demand Translating physiology into finance reveals the primacy – and the promise - of adrenal gland health. These tiny walnut-shaped structures that sit one atop each kidney co-produce dozens of vital hormones that all body systems need to function properly, also needed to help protect every cell.1 Adrenal glands cannot supply these hormones if they are too taxed - from hundreds of daily repeating stress events that activate their adrenal stress hormone release. Organ function is compromised without adrenal hormones supplied in timely quantity or healthy quality to meet demand. This is a serious deficit. The body's hormone needs are left in dangerous jeopardy.
In business terms, the body’s net working capital goes negative. Energy (capital) reserves are drained. Organ work stoppages lead to the equivalent of layoffs and factory shutdowns because resources in the form of nutrient-rich blood flow are diverted from normal organ operations to fuel basic survival needs. Without resetting, damage accumulates over time.
This physiological fact explains why fatigued adrenal glands can single-handedly cause or prevent the healing of: diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, immune weakness, obesity, colds, flu, cancers, anxiety, depression, headaches, digestive problems & insomnia. This is unnecessary.
On a pragmatic physiological level, this basically means that those common illness conditions literally cannot be fully remedied without restoring healthy adrenal gland function. For example, if cortisol, a single adrenal gland hormone, is not produced adequately because adrenal glands are too taxed, then everything from immune problems, blood sugar problems, high blood pressure, colds, obesity and cancers can and do increase in the costly direction. Organizationally, endocrine glands like the adrenals are equivalent to the executive management level that governs the internal organs, tissues and cells.
Blood Pressure Each adrenal arousal from stress raises blood pressure. Hundreds of these daily jumps keep pressure in the system of large arteries that branch into smaller capillaries and even tinier arterioles that directly feed our organs vital blood, oxygen, nutrients and remove wastes. Our tiny arterioles must keep their pressure at 6mm Hg because the 120/80 mm Hg of larger artery blood pressure literally explodes them. For protection, they narrow their passageways by growing muscular walls. Organ function is compromised without proper blood flow. Arterioles cannot perform their nutrient delivery functions if too many blow out or if their walls close down the blood flow too much. Risk dangerously compounds with added pressure from too much dietary salt, obesity, lack of exercise and essential hypertension. “Malignant hypertension” is the term for death caused when a critical mass of too many arterioles blow out.
Immune strength Recent research has uncovered a cellular mechanism by which the mere mental perception of being stressed accelerates aging and depletes telomeres, the DNA that replicates immune cells.2 Without the ability to bring new immune cells on line, the body has little defense against colds, flu, infections, opportunistic microorganisms and cancers.
Cancer The adrenal stress hormone norepinephrine can stimulate tumors in two ways. It breaks down tissue around cancer cells so they can travel through the bloodstream more easily and form new tumors. It also helps grow new blood vessels that feed cancer cells to grow more rapidly.3
16. Why haven’t you heard of this before?
Adrenal fatigue, or subclinical hypoadrenia, was recognized, treated and taught in medical schools as a distinct syndrome earlier in the 20th century.4 Today it is often not recognized until after it has become extreme enough to be diagnosed as Addison’s disease. Extremely high levels of adrenal cortisol, caused mostly by steroidal drugs, is called Cushing’s disease. Adrenal fatigue is much more prevalent than both extreme conditions combined.5
More sophisticated diagnostic tests now exist that can assess adrenal function. Though not perfect, they at least provide more useful information than the traditional measures that only detect extreme adrenal dysfunction. Saliva tests for hormone levels now exist that can pick up signs of non-Addison’s hypoadrenia. 6
If your goal is to effectively lower utilization of medical services, reduce illness costs, decrease lost work time AND ultimately gain the performance benefits of a healthy workforce, a high value starting place is to first address and restore healthy adrenal gland operation. We can help you succeed.
17. If stress is so important, why is stress management missing from most wellness programs and most illness prevention efforts?
Until now there has been no effective methodology to remedy stress. It took 25 years of clinical specialization and research for Robert Simon Siegel to understand how to eliminate not merely “manage” the extensive stress damage to health, performance and quality of life. Very few healthcare practitioners have been so stubborn in their focus. That quest through multiple disciplines produced breakthroughs that have important implications and practical applications.
Again, stress was too confusing and too time-consuming for many healthcare practitioners to deal with because it crosses so many disciplines. Stress affects mind, body, immunity, emotions, focus, relationships, sleep, energy levels, digestion, metabolism, perception, organ function, endocrine glands, self esteem and communication. Rather than deal with such complexity, many wellness programs, health plans and healthcare professionals ignore stress altogether - even though most people are perilously “stressed out”.
The popular concept of stress came from the medical model, which mainly bound its research to the fight or flight emergency response. That important body of knowledge turns out to be a secondary function of adrenal gland arousal. The primary function, which every individual and every business can benefit from – is that lowly “stress” is part of our exquisite human adaptation mechanism to successfully navigate change. By metaphor, the symptoms are a signal, like hearing a cellphone ring. Picking up the phone and getting the message require new skill sets.
Swiftness of intervention is necessary to effectively stop the entire chain of adrenal stress damage from developing.
Optimal Health Trainings deliver skills that simultaneously produce the lifelong ability to de-stress and feel calm in seconds - by resetting four body systems to optimal healthy operation. These skills further produce an optimal health state sustainable throughout the day characterized by clear mind, sharp focus, calm emotions and relaxed but ready muscles – prized qualities of top performance and energy conservation. Additionally they provide healthy fuel for top performance from biological energy not adrenal drain. In the same package are the focusing tools human minds need for innovation, creativity and solutions (not problem-solving) that generate positive communication. Neuropeptide research confirms that using these same mental tool boosts immune strength.7
The fullness of this understanding helps explain why 30 years of stress “management” never yielded lasting results nor an effective methodology. The definition of “stress” used for the last 60 years has been that of Dr. Hans Selye, the Canadian endocrinologist. He defined stress as “the nonspecific response of the body to any demand made upon it.” 8 Knowledge has advanced. That definition did not have the benefit of a system’s perspective to fully recognize the larger context – change - nor the primary communication role “stress” performs to guide human adaptation. Its operation extends throughout the entire range from fight/flight emergency survival to recognizing breakthrough opportunities for innovation and successful change.
18. Do you have these symptoms of stress damage? your stress test
These symptoms of stress damage are not normal despite their widespread prevalence. Symptoms indicate something is wrong and needs correction.
These symptoms can be painful, uncomfortable and distracting. They can stop you from enjoying life and being productive. More dangerous is that unless they are resolved, these symptoms will become major problems. Doing nothing is a costly gamble of WHEN - not IF - unresolved stress symptoms develop into more severe illness, immune problems, disease and organ deterioration. Your healthcare costs will likely increase exponentially. This is now unnecessary.
With Optimal Health Trainings you can easily restore your health and prevent further disease development. All stress-related symptoms can be corrected with these skills. As the saying goes: “a stitch in time saves nine.” Now you can stitch in time!
References
1. Adrenal Fatigue: The 21st Century Stress Syndrome, Wilson, James L.,
Smart Publications, 2001
2. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nov.30, 2004
3. Cancer Research, November 1, 2006; 66(21): 10357-10364
4. Tintera, John D. MD. Hypoadrenocorticism, New York State Journal of Medicine,
Vol. 55, No. 13, July 1, 1955.
5,6. Adrenal Fatigue: The 21st Century Stress Syndrome, Wilson, James L.,
Smart Publications, 2001
7. The Molecules of Emotion, Pert, Candice, PhD, Scribner, 1997
8. The Stress of Life, Selye, Hans, McGraw Hill, 1956
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About Optimal Health Trainings
1. What are Optimal Health Trainings?
2. How do Optimal Health Trainings drive productivity?
3. What makes Optimal Health Trainings so effective and deliver exceptional value?
4. What is the Optimal Health Principle?
5. Why is producing optimal health the missing “upside” to our health spectrum.
6. Why is it necessary to produce optimal health to lower healthcare costs?
7. What are the productivity benefits of an optimal healthy workforce?
8. Where do optimal health skills come from?
9. When do benefits begin?
10. Why are healthcare costs and lost work time costs not going down?
11. What is the bottom line?
12. What is our proactive goal?
13. What is our proactive strategy?
FAQs
About Optimal Health Trainings
1. What are Optimal Health Trainings?
Optimal Health Trainings teach hands-on practical skills that apply knowledge of physiology, science, clinical effectiveness and practical wisdom – ancient and modern - to produce a full spectrum of optimal health. These lifelong skills produce optimal physical health, optimal mental health, optimal emotional health and optimal energy health.
Our three main programs provide the necessary wellness foundation to be well: eliminate stress damage, move well and eat well.
2. How do Optimal Health Trainings drive productivity?
These are the main ways:
A. People are healthier and can work more – less absenteeism and less presenteeism
– once they eliminate stress damage: the single primary source of lost work time,
illness conditions and doctor visits.
B. People have the mental skills to clear their mind of distractions in seconds and
focus powerfully on their job, undistracted by emotional upset, muscle tension,
mental overwhelm and worries with faster recovery from stress events. For example, you can increase productivity by 50–125 hours per person per year simply
from regaining the productivity lost by each person too stressed to focus for
12–30 minutes per day.
C. People have the mental focusing tools to produce new solutions, innovate, create
and improve operations continuously versus common “problem-solving”. This
way of operating the mind also boosts immune strength and develops teamwork
by generating more efficient, positive communications. Your company gains
competitive advantage in a global marketplace where rapid change and innovation
now greatly determine success.
3. What makes Optimal Health Trainings so effective and deliver exceptional value?
Optimal Health Trainings produce outstanding results because they teach people LIFELONG skills to better operate their body, mind and personal energy. You do the skills, you get the results. Once learned and applied, they work – for life. This gives excellent bang for the buck!
Like manufacturing processes of “process improvement”, “doing it right the first time” and “defect prevention” these skills succeed because they utilize the body’s design. They are not theoretical. You do the skills, you get the results. Simple, easy-to-learn skills can serve people for life. Lifelong use provides continuous ROI.
4. What is the Optimal Health Principle?
The cutting edge movement to proactively produce optimal health is guided by The Optimal Health Principle. This states that: “Knowledge is continually applied to the goal of developing lifelong skills that improve health and performance by better operating the body, mind and personal energy – without pills and external agents.”
5. Why is producing optimal health the missing “upside” to our health spectrum.
The best illness defense is an optimal health offense. Businesses need healthy people to work. However, nobody in the healthcare system – HR, insurance, pills, doctors – produces optimal health. They are in the business of health’s downside - modifying symptoms, reducing illness, managing disease and attempting to contain costs. The healthcare industry’s domain is pathology, not optimal health.
Our healthcare system is reactive, not proactive. Operationally, it’s reactive stance means that medical treatment can engage only after illness has developed enough to be diagnosed. High deductibles further delay treatment because people avoid going to doctors for as long as possible to avoid paying. Treatment delays are expensive opportunity costs. Treatment delays increase costs exponentially when symptoms develop unnecessarily into illness, then disease and organ deterioration.
We Americans have become totally dependent on after-the-fact illness reduction. We’ve been trained to go to doctors with a “fix me” attitude and no sense of responsibility for how we got ourselves there.
While we cannot mandate that people apply the tools and knowledge that sustain optimal health, we can indeed teach those skills and provide incentives. There is no getting around the fact that people must take responsibility for their own health. Fortunately, most people want to enjoy good health. They often simply do not know how.
6. Why is it necessary to produce optimal health to lower healthcare costs?
For people, for businesses and for the nation, the single best way to lower healthcare costs is to be healthy. Unfortunately, our healthcare system does not produce health. It only tries to reduce illness. 74% of American health care costs are due to preventable lifestyle-related behaviors, according to a 2006 study by Purdue University.
Optimal Health Trainings produce optimal health. This proactive goal is the next step beyond disease management, illness prevention, health promotion and wellness. The long term Return On Investment is exceptional because Optimal Health Trainings skills are designed for lifelong use.
7. What are the productivity benefits of an optimal healthy workforce?
1. Optimal healthy people come to work more often - less absenteeism.
2. Optimal healthy people work better and focus better - less presenteeism.
3. Optimal healthy people need fewer medical services – less illness costs.
Healthy people directly decrease lost work time costs. Decreased utilization of medical services must be a financial incentive that can also lower insurance premiums contractually. Carriers benefit from the reduced risk and lower payouts. Business needs to gain these competitive advantages and have this financial incentive to inspire innovation.
8. Where do optimal health skills come from?
Producing optimal health is an innovation born of necessity. It supplies the missing leg – the upside – to our health spectrum. This proactive strategy requires new thinking. Yet it promises an unprecedented opportunity for business to achieve the financial and health goals we value.
We at GOHG are developing a growing body of skills, knowledge and best practices from around the Earth that produce optimal health and optimal human functioning. All Optimal Health Trainings teach skills that are science-based, clinically effective and produce exceptional results because they utilize the body’s design. You do the skills, you get the results.
9. When do benefits begin?
Benefits begin immediately – as soon as you use the skills. Benefits last a lifetime because they are skills, not pills. You put the skills to work and you gain the benefits.
10. Why are healthcare costs and lost work time costs not going down?
A recent survey of nearly 500 Chief Financial Officers concluded that: “Health plan cost control has little success on costs, productivity, health or absenteeism.” 1
Yet the dominant focus of corporate efforts is on health plan cost control, the area of “little success”. Tactics shift costs, decrease benefits, raise deductibles, increase co-payments and premiums, transfer responsibility and annually shop new plans because… poor results. This commonly shared outcome suggests that a solution key is absent.
But… even if healthcare insurance costs decrease somewhat, total illness costs won’t lower significantly. Why? Here is another fact we cannot ignore from the same CFO survey. Half those CFOs reported their businesses were at or above the critical point where: “Lost work time from poor health has meaningful impact on business performance.” 2
Lost work time is serious business. Regardless of health insurance plans, employee poor health directly erodes profitability and productivity. Only when we shift our focus to producing optimal healthy people that need fewer medical services can costs truly decrease.
11. What is the bottom line?
No matter who pays, here’s the bottom line: Because it does not produce optimal health, our healthcare system does not fully meet the business need for a healthy workforce.
We need a proactive complement – the upside - to pathology reduction and health plan cost control. In practice even prevention is still reactive. Diagnostic tests and health risk appraisals are designed to give advance warning of impending illness and disease. They help delay illness onset. But without producing health, the illnesses are rarely avoided. The best illness defense is an optimal health offense.
12. What is our proactive goal?
Our proactive goal at GOHG is to transform health from a cost into an investment that drives productivity.
The end result is an optimal healthy, energized workforce of people who can focus, innovate solutions, improve operations, communicate positively and contribute their talents. Your organization can compete well in a global marketplace. Your business can thrive with change because your people have the tools to succeed.
America’s businesses must define and achieve a genuine proactive goal in order to gain sustainable global competitive advantage. This is particularly challenging when the governments of competing countries, not their businesses, now pay the lion’s share of their employees’ healthcare costs. Slowing rate hikes, modifying symptoms (pharmaceutical speak) and reducing illness after they develop are not proactive goals.
13. What is our proactive strategy?
We can start accomplishing this worthy goal with a simple, straightforward three-step proactive strategy:
1. Translate physiology into finance to identify high priority wellness interventions that work
2. Eliminate stress damage as the primary source of most illness and lost work time costs
3. Continuously produce optimal health as optimal human functioning
References
1,2. The Business Value of Health, 2006 survey by CFO Research Services and Integrated Benefits Institute.
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