Leadership Flagship

Staying Young In Spirit When You’re Retired

June 16, 2017

RePosted: Author: Ann Vanderslice on 06-04-2017

Mohr Keet of South Africa bungee jumped when he was 96, landing himself in the Guinness Board of World Records.

Yuichiro Miura of Japan climbed Mount Everest when he was 80.

Not everyone in the golden years of life will attempt and accomplish such extraordinary feats, but most people can take steps to keep themselves young – at least in spirit – when they reach retirement.

Unfortunately, for many people retirement planning remains fixated on finances, so when the big day arrives they’re not quite ready to segue into life’s new chapter.

After you’ve planned for the money, there is still anxiety about retirement. You don’t know what it’s like to not work and so there is that emotional part of retirement you need to manage. Sometimes people aren’t ready in any way, shape or form.

A few ways to hang onto a little youthful exuberance while aging gracefully in retirement include:

Be a lifelong learner. Making the effort to learn about new things keeps our brains young. Read something you wouldn’t normally read. Sit in on a lecture that a college opens to the public. Some of my clients mentioned they took classes in philosophy or in a foreign language. It’s proven that those who are lifelong learners have a greater sense of optimism and a lower chance of dementia.
See the world – or at least some of it. There are plenty of places you haven’t ventured out to, some close by and others far away. Traveling and enjoying new experiences is a great way to keep you feeling young and enthusiastic about life. Whether you head to a state park just an hour’s drive away or you board a plane bound for Paris, part of the fun of traveling is deciding where you want to go. The sky should be the limit. Don’t eliminate anything from your initial list just because of expense. You might be able to find bargains, and because you’re retired you can travel any time you want, which allows you to go in the off season when prices are lower.

Remember your doctor’s advice. Activities such as enrolling in a college class can help keep you mentally young, but you want your body to cooperate, too. We’re always looking for that magic bullet, the easy and quick way to feeling younger. The truth is that, those things your doctor tells you – exercise, eat a healthy diet, get the appropriate amount of sleep – are about as close to a magic bullet as you’re going to get.

People think that money is the most important aspect of retirement, but it’s really No. 2. You can have more than enough money, but if you aren’t healthy or doing the things you enjoy, the money won’t matter. PE

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How are you planning to spend your retirement days? http://web.hr.com/366x
YOUR HEALTH MATTERS – ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS AND OBESITY

June 15, 2017

Repost: Transcript of Aired Program -Dr. David Perlmutter, MD June 15, 2017

You know, there are so many diet books when you go to Amazon ,or you go to the bookstore. You see so many books written about various diets these days, and whether
these diets have a focus on eating for your blood type or being gluten-free or high-fiber, or eating Paleo, one thing that really has emerged as a common thread, or central
theme, is the notion that we’ve really got to avoid eating sugar.

I think we’re seeing so much information now really pointing a finger at sugar, and also making it quite clear that the reason we got into this mess is because of an industry that
really wanted us to eat more sugar and, at the same time, less fat.

But that said, you know the food industry, this has not gone unnoticed by them. The food industry has really understood this and, as such, has really pushed us to be aware of non-sugar sweetened, artificially sweetened products, like beverages, sodas, etc., or making a huge push to make people aware that sugar-free this and that are available.

The problem is that when you’re avoiding sugar and using sugar-free beverages, and artificially sweetened foods and beverages, you’re actually setting the stage for more weight gain, and even for type 2 diabetes. Now that sounds really counterintuitive doesn’t it! You’re consuming food that has virtually no sugar, and if it’s in the case of a soda, has no calories.

And yet, it increases your risk for gaining weight! How does it happen?…A recent study from Canadian researchers…let’s explore what they’ve found. So this study is called Chronic Low Calorie Sweetener Use and Risk of Abdominal Obesity Among Older Adults, a cohort study.

What does it actually mean, and what was actually done in the study?

Here’s what they did:

They took close to fifteen hundred participants and they followed this group for approximately 10 years. They looked at what are called anthropometric measurements, things like the size of their belly the size of their abdominal fat, and they looked at various other measures, like weight gain, body mass index etc. But they also looked at what are called their food diaries, and paid particular attention to their
usage, or not, of low calorie sweeteners.

Here’s what they began to notice when they looked at the data. When comparing users of low calorie sweeteners in relation to non-users, and looking specifically at what is called Body Mass Index (BMI), the non-users of these artificial sweeteners actually had a reduction over time in their body mass index, in comparison to a pretty dramatic increase in the body mass index in people using these low calorie sweeteners.

Now, when you look at waist circumference again, you see that the waistline of people using these non-caloric sweeteners, these artificially sweetened beverages (diet this,
diet that), have a bigger and bigger belly as time goes on, whereas people who refuse these drinks generally tend to lose weight. Their conclusion was that, independent of the
calorie content, in other words you know really getting away from this notion of calories in versus calories out, that the specific food eaten affects subsequent eating behavior.

We knew that it influences intestinal microbiota and that contributes to energy handling and interacts with the endocrine system and neuroendocrine systems. All of which
are mechanisms which ultimately affect energy homeostasis. Through these mechanisms, low calorie sweetener use may be a contributor to the obesity epidemic.

This is also a very interesting study again demonstrating that those individuals who favor the use of artificial sweeteners over the course of the study, averaging about
10 years (5,300 adults), actually had significant worsening of things like abdominal fat, body mass index and overall tendency to gain more weight. Other studies have shown
a significant increase in risk for Type 2 diabetes in people using artificial sweeteners.

…Artificial sweeteners have a profound detrimental or damaging effect on the gut
microbiome the microbiota, the organisms that live there. It sort of changes our gut bacteria to the extent that we actually get signals from our gut bacteria telling us that
we’re starving and we tenaciously hold on to every calorie thus leading to increased weight gain and inflammation -hallmarks of many of our chronic degenerative conditions, including type 2 diabetes.

So again, let’s avoid these artificial sweeteners; very, very detrimental towards health. If you want to drink something, drink water. Who knew?
Your Health Matters: Keep Yourself in Ketosis

June 15, 2017

Repost : Author: Dr. David Perlmutter, MD

… It may be that you’re not exactly sure what ketosis is, or why we should be worrying about getting our body into this state. Allow me to explain.

Ketones are a special type of fat that can stimulate the pathways that enhance the growth of new neural networks in the brain. A ketogenic diet is one that is high in fats, and this diet has been a tool of researchers for years, used notably in a 2005 study on Parkinson’s patients finding an improvement in symptoms after just 28 days. The improvements were on par with those made possible via medication and brain surgery. Other research has shown the ketogenic diet to be remarkably effective in treating some forms of epilepsy, and even brain tumors.

Ketones do more than just that though. They increase glutathione, a powerful, brain-protective antioxidant. Ketones facilitate the production of mitochondria, one of the most important actors in the coordinated production that is the human body. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Our bodies are said to enter ketosis at the point when blood sugar levels are low and liver glycogen are no longer available to produce glucose as a fuel for cellular energy production. At this point, not only is the body doing the natural thing, and burning off fat, it’s also powering up the brain with a super efficient fuel.

We can jump start ourselves into ketosis with a brief fast, allowing our body to quickly burn through the carbs that are in our system, and turn to fat for fuel.

A ketogenic diet is one that derives around 80% or more of of its calories from fat, and the rest from carbs and proteins.

Editor: Please visit this site for more information on Ketogenic Foods
Your Health Matters: Science Is Proving Some Memories Are Passed Down From Our Ancestors

June 15, 2017

Repost: Author: Aaron Kase

Do you have a fear of spiders? Maybe snakes? It could be your ancestors trying to tell you something. Recent studies have provided evidence that memories of fear are one of many things our forebearers pass down to us through our DNA.

A 2013 study from Emory University found that mice trained to fear a specific odor would pass their emotions on to their offspring and future generations. Scientists applied electric shocks to mice as they exposed them to the smell of cherry blossoms. The mice then bred, and both the children and grandchildren of the affected rodents demonstrated a fear of cherry blossoms the first time they smelled them.

“Our results allow us to appreciate how the experiences of a parent, before even conceiving offspring, markedly influence both structure and function in the nervous system of subsequent generations,” Dr. Brian Dias of the Emory University department of psychiatry said to the Daily Telegraph. “Such a phenomenon may contribute to the etiology and potential intergenerational transmission of risk for neuropsychiatric disorders such as phobias, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.”

The study went beyond just observing a fear reaction. Scientists actually looked at the brains of the animals and found physical changes in the areas that process odors, and also found a marker on the odor gene of the mouse DNA.

The experiment worked even when the researchers used artificial insemination in place of allowing the mice to breed naturally. The scientists still aren’t sure how the fear imprint makes it into the sperm — whether the smell itself passes through the blood, or the brain processes the odor and sends its own signal.

“It is high time public health researchers took human transgenerational responses seriously,” Prof Marcus Pembrey, from University College London said to the BBC. “I suspect we will not understand the rise in neuropsychiatric disorders or obesity, diabetes and metabolic disruptions generally without taking a multigenerational approach.”

Humans have long sought to understand memory and heredity, nature vs. nurture and how much information parents actually transmit to their children. The nature study is another step toward answering our questions about exactly what, and how much of our forebearers’ experiences get passed down through DNA.

Primordial Fears

There is already a growing body of research about how humans and other animals inherit fear from their ancestors. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2013 found that primates’ brains are uniquely tuned to recognize snakes, suggesting that we gained an innate fear of the reptiles over the course of our evolutionary development. A 2011 study in Current Directions in Psychological Science found that human infants aren’t necessarily afraid of snakes from birth, but they learn to fear them more quickly than they learn to fear other more innocuous stimuli like flowers and rabbits.

“What we’re suggesting is that we have these biases to detect things like snakes and spiders really quickly, and to associate them with things that are yucky or bad, like a fearful voice,” study co-author Vanessa LoBue of Rutgers University said in a press release. The research built on previous work by LoBue and her team that showed that people were able to identify snakes and spiders more quickly than other animals and objects. There’s even evidence that primates actually developed large brains and keen eyesight as a defense measure to avoid falling prey to snakes.

Another study found that unborn crickets whose mothers were stalked by wolf spiders showed more fear of spiders after they were born than control crickets — not to mention a higher survival rate. At this point there’s little doubt that fear gets passed down through the generations — now we’re learning about how.

Rewriting The DNA

Fear isn’t the only thing that gets imprinted in our genes. Recent breakthroughs have made big strides in understanding epigenetics — how our DNA gets changed by environmental factors. A study published in 2013 revealed details about how certain aspects of DNA can be turned on or turned off, and therefore passed on to offspring or not. A report last year found that Crohn’s disease can cause epigenetic changes in people who suffer from it. And scientists were able to edit the DNA of mice to cure them of an inheritable liver disease — with hope that the same process would work in humans.

Other researchers are working on how to encode DNA with specific information. A study led by synthetic biologist Timothy Lu of MIT and published in Science in 2014 found a way to rewrite living DNA in a cell and watch as the altered information was transferred to new cells. The researchers changed cells to make them sense light and react to other stimuli. Next, they hope to use the technology to make a recording of the cell’s environment for study, such as placing the cells in water for a week and then testing them for toxins.

Other scientists have managed to etch the equivalent of a megabyte worth of data onto DNA, and then read it back. Both studies are more geared toward gathering and storing information, but the more we learn about how to change DNA, the possibility looms that we could learn how memories are implanted — and someday even artificially create hereditary memories, if scientific interest and ethics allowed such an outcome.

Beyond The Physical Realm

The idea of memories being written into DNA could provoke speculation about phenomenon like visions of past lives, although it might be a leap to go from a reaction to odor to the recall of specific and discrete memories.

Polish Professor of Pedogogy Andrzej

(more…)
Why You Must Deal With Difficult People—They Won’t Go Away and They Won’t Stop

June 15, 2017
Repost: Author: Susan M. Heathfield June 03, 2017
Difficult people do exist at work. They come in every variety and no workplace is without them. How difficult a person is for you to deal with depends on your self-esteem, your self-confidence, and your professional courage at work.

Dealing with difficult people is easier when the person is just generally obnoxious or when the behavior affects more than one person. Dealing with them is much tougher when they are attacking you, stealthily criticizing you or undermining your professional contribution.

Difficult people come in every conceivable variety. Some talk constantly and never listen. Others must always have the last word. Some coworkers fail to keep commitments. Others criticize anything that they did not create. Difficult coworkers compete with you for power, privilege, and the spotlight; some go way too far in courting the boss’s positive opinion—to your detriment.

Some coworkers attempt to undermine you and you constantly feel as if you need to watch your back. Your boss plays favorites and the favored party lords it over you; people form cliques and leave you out. Difficult people and situations, such as these, exist in every workplace.

They all have one thing in common. You must address them. No matter the type of difficult situation in which you find yourself, dealing with difficult people or situations is a must.

Why You Must Deal With Difficult People

Trust this statement. Your situation won’t get better; left unaddressed, it usually gets worse.

Unaddressed, necessary conflict simmers just below—and often erupts counter-productively above—the surface at work.

Initially, people go into shock when they are treated unprofessionally, so if you take some time to understand exactly what is happening to you, you are not alone. Once you are fully aware of what is happening, deciding to live with the situation long term is not an option.

It will fester to the point that you are miserable going into work each day.

You become so angry and feel so much pain that your efforts to address the situation become irrational. It’s far better to address the difficult person early while you can maintain some objectivity and emotional control.

Occasionally, at this point in your relationship with a difficult person, you can back off and say nothing good will come from my confronting this difficult person’s behavior. Make sure that you aren’t fooling yourself to avoid conflict, but cases do exist when you can avoid the difficult person and minimize their impact on your work life. But, it depends on your individual circumstances.

Worse Case Scenario If You Fail to Deal With Difficult People

Constant complaining about the coworker or situation can quickly earn you the title of whiner or complainer. Managers wonder why you are unable to solve your own problems—even if the manager’s tolerance or encouragement of the situation is part of the problem.

Most importantly, if you are embroiled in a constant conflict at work, you may not only get blamed for being “unable to handle the situation like a mature professional,” you may find yourself labeled as a “difficult” person, too.

This label is hard to escape and can have devastating consequences for your career.

Finally, if the situation continues to deteriorate over time, the organization and your boss may tire of you. Your boss may decide that you are a “high maintenance” employee, easily replaced with a more professional or cooperative person, and you could lose your job.

Dealing With the Difficult People in Your Workplace

If you’ve been working for awhile, you’ve experienced workplaces in which all sorts of dysfunctional approaches to dealing with a difficult coworker have been tried. Putting an anonymous note in the person’s mailbox is not a viable option.

Placing a can of deodorant on a hygiene-challenged coworker’s desk is not a productive option either. Confronting the bully publicly can often lead to disaster.

Putting dead bugs in his desk drawer can leave your boss no option other than to fire you. So, let’s look at more productive ways to address your difficult coworker.

How to Productively Deal With Your Difficult Coworker

Are you convinced that in almost all cases you need to productively deal with your difficult coworker? Good. These are ten productive ways to deal with your difficult coworker.

Start out by examining yourself. Are you sure that the other person is really the problem and that you’re not overreacting? Have you always experienced difficulty with the same type of person or actions?
Does a pattern exist for you in your interaction with coworkers? Do you recognize that you have hot buttons that are easily pushed? (We all do, you know.) Always start with self-examination to determine that the object of your attention really is a difficult person’s actions.

Explore what you are experiencing with a trusted friend or colleague. Brainstorm ways to address the situation. When you are the object of an attack, or your boss appears to support the dysfunctional actions of a coworker, it is often difficult to objectively assess your options. Anger, pain, humiliation, fear, and concern about making the situation worse are legitimate emotions.
Pay attention to the unspoken agreement you create when you solicit another’s assistance. You are committing to act unless you agree actions will only hurt the situation. Otherwise, you risk becoming a whiner or complainer in the eyes of your colleague.

Approach the person with whom you are having the problem for a private discussion. Talk to the coworker about what you are experiencing in “I” messages. (Using “I” messages is a communication approach that focuses on your experience of the situation rather than on attacking or accusing the other person.) You can also explain to your coworker the impact of their actions on you.
Be pleasant and agreeable as you talk with the other person. They may not be aware of the impact of their words or actions on you. They may be learning about their impact on you for the first time. Or, they may have to consider and confront a pattern in their own interaction with people. Worst case?

They may know and recognize their impact on you but deny it or try to explain it away. Unfortunately, some difficult people just don’t care. During the discussion, attempt to reach agreement about positive and supportive actions going forward. Focus on the one or two actions that hurt or hinder you the most.

Follow-up after the initial discussion. Has the behavior changed? Gotten better? Or worse? Determine whether a follow-up discussion is needed. Determine whether a follow-up discussion will have any impact. Decide if you want to continue to confront the difficult person by yourself.
Become a peacemaker. (Decide how badly you want to make peace with the other person and how much you want your current job. Determine whether you have experienced a pattern of support from your boss.) If you answer, “yes,” to these questions, hold another discussion. If not, escalate and move to the next idea.

You can confront your difficult coworker’s behavior publicly. Deal with the person with gentle humor or slight sarcasm. Or, make an exaggerated physical gesture—no, not that one—such as a salute or place your hand over your heart to indicate a serious wounding.
You can also tell the difficult person that you’d like them to consider important history in their decision making or similar words expressed positively, depending on the subject. Direct confrontation does work well for some people in some situations. It doesn’t work to ask the person to stop doing what they’re doing, publicly, but you can employ more positive confrontational tactics.

Their success for you will depend on your ability to pull them off. Each of us is not spur-of-the-moment funny, but if you are, you can use the humor well with difficult coworkers.

Need Help Dealing With the Difficult Person?

If you have done what you can do and employed the first five recommended approaches with little or no success, it’s time to involve others—your boss or a manager. Note that you are escalating the situation. Prepare to talk with your boss.
Take notes and address the issues, not as interpersonal problems, but as issues affecting your productivity, the work and your progress on projects. Tell your boss exactly what the difficult person does.

Make a plan to address the issues. Perhaps involve your coworker’s boss. Recognize that a good boss is likely to bring your difficult coworker and his supervisor into a three or four-way discussion at this point. Expect to participate in follow-up over time.

Rally the other employees who might have an issue with the difficult person, too—carefully. Sometimes, a group approach convinces the boss that the impact of the behavior is wider and deeper than she had originally determined. Be careful with this approach, however. Know what works with your boss. You want to solve your problem, not make it look as if you are rabble-rousing and ganging up on another employee.

If these approaches fail to work, try to limit the difficult person’s access to you. Protect the needs of your business, but avoid working with the person when possible. Leave voluntary committees, Choose projects he or she does not impact. Don’t hurt your own career or your business, but avoidance is an option.

Transfer to a new job within your organization. Depending on the size of your company, you may never have to work with this difficult coworker again. Fleeing is definitely an option.

If all else fails, you can quit your job. What, flee, you ask? But, I wasn’t the employee with the problem. I was not the difficult coworker. All I tried to do was my job. You’re right. But, what price, in terms of your happiness and success, are you willing to pay to stay? You need to decide whether the good in your current situation outweighs the bad or whether the bad outweighs the good.
If the good wins, stop complaining and get back to work. Backtrack on these recommended steps and retry some of them when appropriate. If the bad wins, redirect your energy to leaving your current employment. You’ll be glad you did.You can find out how to conduct a stealth job search and much more about job searching with these resources.