Work And Health

Because work outside the home is central to many people’s lives, it has a powerful effect on their health. A third of the individual’s life between leaving school and retirement, experts say, is spent at work and for this reason it tends to have a bearing on the quality of his/her life. And it is for this reason one should be concerned about how it affects the health.

Work can affect one’s life in two major ways: mentally and physically.
Mentally: As a source of pleasure, stimulation and satisfaction, it can add to one’s wellbeing. As a source of boredom, monotony or stress, it can lead to a feeling of depression, worthlessness or anxiety.
Physically: On the credit side, using one’s physical and mental abilities can help one stay fit. On the debit side, many modern work processes involve hazards that can lead to illness.

In this regard, it is important to know how far one is enjoying a particular job. Although this might seem to have little to do with health, but work that is not enjoyable is often stressful. It takes its toll on days lost through minor illnesses, emotional problems and a general loss of sense of wellbeing that is essential to a full, satisfying and healthy life.

Finding a job that is truly satisfying is not very easy, but it is advisable to look at the possibilities of change, when it has got to the point where one is totally in disharmony with a job.
It is general knowledge that an executive under stress can suffer ulcer, heart attack and other illnesses. Not many people realise, however, that people in other occupations experience as much, if not more stress in their working lives.
So, if for whatever reason a job has become a source of serious harassment or depression, then maybe it is high time you started thinking of moving on and looking for another one.

At home, one might take all the care to eat the right foods, exercise and has nothing to do with smoking and gets on well with family and friends. But what happens at the work place? It is possible to endanger one’s health by getting into things one would ordinarily not tolerate at home.
While some hazards at work may be obvious, many may not be. It is possible to have got used to the presence of a hazard that one may not notice it anymore. Or one may not know that it is there because it cannot be seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched.
A machine or substance may only be safe if used in accordance with strict guidelines. But new machines and substance come into use everyday that they pose a danger to health, if the guidelines to their proper use are not studied and followed.

The effects of a hazard on one’s health may be hard to detect. It may occur without warning or creep on gradually over the years. One may even have changed job before the effects become noticeable at which time it may be late to tackle the problems successfully.

Memory Booster
For centuries, music has been used as a therapeutic means to soothe, energise and rejuvenate the body. The different ways in which the power of the right music can be employed to benefit the system and wellbeing of the individual has been appreciated even from ancient time. Music, among other things, has the capacity to build the brain so that it is aided to perform its task optimally.

Studies have shown that children, who are exposed early to music before the age of three, for instance, are three to four times more likely to be alert and intelligent than their peers that were not so exposed. This is because music lessons boost memory skill even if the kid quits after the preliminary stage.
A Chinese study of 90 boys found that a year or more of musical training stimulates the brain’s left side.