Health and Wellness in the Workplace

MemorialCare Health System, excellence in healthcare, presents Weekly Dose of Wellness. Here's your host, Deborah Howell.

Deborah Howell (Host): Hello and welcome to the show. You're listening to Weekly Dose of Wellness, brought to you by MemorialCare Health System. I'm Debroah Howell and today's guest is Melanie Cumbee, who serves as the Employee Wellness Program Manager for MemorialCare Health System. Melanie has 20 years of experience in corporate wellness, health education, personal training, and exercise program design for a variety of different health populations. My kind of gal. She was instrumental in helping MemorialCare develop their employee wellness program, The Good Life. Her leadership and collaboration with the Good Life executive team has helped make MemorialCare's The Good Life program nationally recognized and award-winning program. Ms. Cumbee holds a Bachelor of Science in Physical Activity and Health, is a certified ACE personal trainer and group fitness instructor, WELCOA faculty member, and a trained wellness coach through the American College of Sports and Medicine affiliate WELCOA Coaches. Wow that's a lot of wellness! Welcome Melanie!

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: Thank you Deborah, it's great to be with you this morning.

Deborah Howell (Host): No surprise that the topic today is employee wellness programs which are a relatively new benefit in many workplaces, of course. So our work environments have changed so very much over the past 30 years in this country. Can you please speak to some of those changes?

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: I can. You know, it's a sad thing. We have approximately two-thirds of adults in the U.S. are overweight or are obese, but really more than a weight crisis, I think we have an inactivity crisis, and our work environment has really contributed to that. There was a very interesting study done by the University of Tennessee Department of Health where they observed an old Amish order without cars or modern conveniences. And what was really interesting about that study is that the Amish men moved approximately 18,000 steps a day, the Amish women about 14,000 steps a day, and the average American takes about 5,000 steps a day. Not enough. So we can see that things have really changed there. And also just the type of work that we're doing. So in about 1960, half of our jobs were physically active and now only one in five.

Deborah Howell (Host): So how does that contribute to the health and wellness of today's employees if they're stuck at their desks and not moving around?

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: Well, they are expending a lot of less calories and that's a problem. And as a matter of fact, there's an endocrinologist, Dr. James Levine at the Mayo Clinic, who's done a lot of work around this, and what he has found is that we've actually engineered about 1,500 to 2,400 calories out of our daily routine by the type of work that we're doing today.

Deborah Howell (Host): Wow. And Facebook doesn't help.

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: It doesn't. And hopefully, they're not doing Facebook work. But that's right. They sit at work all day. They sit to drive in. They sit at work. And then they go home and sit and do Facebook and watch The Bachelor.

Deborah Howell (Host): Right. Not necessarily in that order.

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: Right.

Deborah Howell (Host): But sometimes simultaneously. It's true. And whatever happened to walking, even when you go to the mall, people will circle and circle and circle before they'll walk the extra 300 yards from the place that's farther away.

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: Right.

Deborah Howell (Host): I mean, we've just gotten out of the habit.

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: Yes, I think we are just in a place of fast and convenient and just those little things actually really do take those calories out of our day and that's a problem for us. We need that walk from the furthest parking space.

Deborah Howell (Host): Food choices and diets have also changed significantly over the years, of course, so let's talk about how that has contributed to our overall health and wellness as well.

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: Well, I think the short and sweet of that is that food is faster, it's further from the farm, and it's bigger, and we're growing with our food. So bigger portions, nutrient-poor food, and less caloric expenditure are really a terrible threesome.

Deborah Howell (Host): A lot of grocery stores are starting to have more organic produce, but it's so doggone expensive. How can we solve this problem? How can we get more organic produce into our lives without really busting the... It's funny, Gwyneth Paltrow just came out with a cookbook, and it's wonderful, and it's very organic, and there's some lovely recipes, but we did the math, and the average person eating three meals a day from Gwyneth Paltrow's book will spend $200. I don't have that, do you? Or does anybody? Other than Prince Paltrow?

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: I think it's tough.

Deborah Howell (Host): You know, and that's one person eating.

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: That's right. And I think more than focusing on organic, I think organic is important. And there's some lists that you can look at, like Clean 15 and Dirty Dozen. Those couple different lists will tell you which produce has the most pesticides and which really you shouldn't have to worry about. You don't need to buy an organic banana if you're going to peel it. So those lists are helpful, but I think more than focusing on organic, it's really getting back to food that's not as processed. So you can eat organic cookies all you want, but is that really the best thing for you to, instead of an apple that maybe has a trace of pesticide on it? So…

Deborah Howell (Host): You know, I think... Okay, so you've given us one. You've given us one. Give us three or four, if you could, of the clean 15.

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: Three or four of the clean 15 of pineapple would be on there. Basically anything that you're going to peel. The top of the list of the dirty dozen this last year surprisingly enough was apples. Berries, so blueberries and strawberries also tend to be on that top 10 list. So avoiding things that have a lot of surface area, those little, lots and lots of blueberries tend to soak up the pesticide. That's something that we want to avoid. And like I said, apples are at the top of the list, so I buy organic apples for sure.

Deborah Howell (Host): This doesn't mean we eliminate them from our diet. It just means we don't eat a pint of blueberries every day, correct?

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: We just try. That's where you want to spend your money. So you might not have money to spend on everything organic, but buy your apples organic or buy your blueberries or your strawberries organic when you can.

Deborah Howell (Host): Okay. Oh, that is an important distinction, not to eliminate them at all, but just buy organic when it comes to those high-risk foods. Okay. All right. We have so many questions for you. I hear MemorialCare Health System has an outstanding employee wellness program. It's called the Good Life. You're a big part of that. Could you please describe what the Good Life is and what you're doing for these employees?

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: Absolutely. Well, it is a great program, and the goal of our program is to really help employees to maintain or improve their wellness. And we do that by providing many opportunities for healthy behavior and choices where we spend most of our time, and that's at work. So we first help employees to become knowledgeable about their current health status through biometric screenings and health risk assessments. And then we offer many ways and opportunities to move. So we want them to not go home with a deficit of 1,500 or 2,400 calories a day. We have some great walking workstations. I don't know if you've seen those, but we have about 12.

Deborah Howell (Host): Oh, tell us about those. Can you describe them?

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: Sure. This is a, it's a treadmill desk. So you basically walk at a slow pace, about two miles an hour, while you work on a computer.

Deborah Howell (Host): Oh, I totally want one.

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: Yeah, it's really fantastic. And just the act of standing up at a desk makes a physiological impact, but having a little bit of movement in your day really helps. So you can, most people can type at about 1.2 miles per hour. Most people have a harder time at 2.0 miles per hour. that they're reading or doing emails or reading through emails or listening to a podcast like this at 2.0 miles per hour. So we have those. Those are utilized extensively here and I think that's a great way to work and move. And then we also have a lot of other opportunities. So we have Wii stations and outdoor walking paths and Zumba and kickboxing classes at lunch. We also do something that we call instant recess. And that is a, it looks a lot like a playground. And it's about 10 minutes of anything. So it could be Nerf footballs, it could be hula hoops, it could be jump ropes, it could be a conga line. So we get people up and moving, doing things that are just fun and a throwback to your childhood and you're up and you're moving and you're having a great time and relieving stress. You're laughing, you're doing something completely out of the box. So those are kind of ways that we … you're breathing …

Deborah Howell (Host): not for nothing, you're opening up your oxygen pathways in your brain, so you're thinking.

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: That's right. You're thinking better. It's better than a cup of coffee, for sure.

Deborah Howell (Host): For sure. And, you know, I can't imagine that everybody in America does not want to work for you. I mean, go play Nerf football for 10 minutes and then go back to your lovely desk that moves. I mean, how wonderful.

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: I would think everybody would want to work here. It's a great place to work.

Deborah Howell (Host): Do you think this is going to be a trend? I hope you say yes.

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: I do. I do think it's going to be a trend, absolutely. And I think employees are being incentivized more and more to pay attention to how their employees are, what types of choices that they're making at work to help them reduce their risk for different chronic conditions.

Deborah Howell (Host): Where can somebody go for more information about maybe what they can do, maybe what you're doing right now, and then of course maybe they can, you know, kind of show that to their boss?

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: Well, there are a lot of wellness resources out there. The Wellness Council of America or WELCOA is one of the premier wellness resources, so I would send them to that if they wanted more information about corporate wellness. And then there are many other organizations, so looking for health promotion journals and some different things are a good place to start.

Deborah Howell (Host): And they could also Google the Good Life at MemorialCare Health System and see what you're up to.

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: They could. We have a few videos on YouTube that are interesting and fun. They can see a recess. Or we've done a flash mob and some different things so they can see the things, some of the fun things that we do. So you have that as a resource. And then if they're just wanting more personal health information, they can always go to memorialcare.org and look for our Live Healthy articles.

Deborah Howell (Host): Sadly, we have to take an instant recess right now, but thank you so much, Melanie Cumbee, for finding the time to talk to us today.

Melanie Cumbee, BS, CPT: Thank you, Deborah!

Deborah Howell (Host): Keep up the fabulous work. I'm Deborah Howell. Join us again next time as we explore another fun weekly dose of wellness brought to you by MemorialCare Health System. Have a great day and don't forget to give yourself an instant recess sometime today.