In recent history, the number of relatively young people dying suddenly from cardiovascular complications are on the increase. In many instances, stress has been fingered as the major culprit for these deaths. True, modern societies differ a lot from traditional society chiefly for the complexities of everyday living that has now come to characterize our lives. People are now wont to cope with multiple tasks to do, decisions to make and responsibilities to attend to. This seeming confusion has immense potential to drain ones energy and ramp up our stress hormones.

People’s lives are now more crowded than ever with conflicting needs necessitated by advances and progress in life and technology. Almost like an irony, technology that is meant to make people’s lives easier by providing faster means of getting things done have inadvertently made life more complex by providing myriads of impulses that beseech on our senses unendingly. Besides technology, the way modern societies and life generally in this present age is structured, people must now be better able to manage their energy in line with the current rush on them by many deadlines and needs to meet. At first impulse, the reaction to the need for a better mechanism to help deal with more activity would be to desire more time in our hands. Often we hear people say that 24 hours is hardly enough to go through all that a day throws at them. This apparently is a response to a quest for a better stress coping mechanism. Truth is, more time does not always amount to less stressful lives, to better able deal with stress, time actually has to be freed up.

It is important to do a quick clarification that stress is not necessarily what happens to us, but how we deal with what happens to us. That is why 2 different people would be subjected to similar circumstances; what is often referred to as stressors, but would respond differently to those stressors. The ability to adequately order (manage) our energy bequeaths us with the ability to manage our lives and keep our stress hormones down. As much as it is important to aim towards a flourishing career and optimum work performance, it is also as important to maintain a healthy work/life balance. American Journalist and business writer Tony Schwartz posits that for optimum productivity coupled with a proper balance in other aspects of our lives, our different energy levels must be properly managed. According to him we have 4 levels of energy that interplay to give us fulfilling lives;

• Physical Energy: How healthy are you
• Emotional Energy: How happy are you
• Mental Energy: How well can you focus on something
• Spiritual Energy: Why do you do all that you do, what is your purpose

All of these energy levels needs to be in proper poise and requires proper management to produce a balanced life, when one of these energies suffers, it affects the overall well-being of the person. For the sake of this write-up however we will focus on the management of Physical energy as we go through our work day in a bid to impose order into our lives.

The question that physical energy attempts to answer is, how healthy are you? Physical energy is required to power through your day. Without optimum health it is near impossible to accomplish any meaningful task, and the stress level quickly mounts. Agreeably, working under ill health requires more exertion to get meaningful work done, but also one can be without any disease and still be at a level of low physical energy as a result of a lack in certain factors that are required to get one working optimally.

The factors that interplay to provide us with the right amount and kind of energy required to power through the day optimally are Nutrition, Rest & Sleep, Exercise & Fitness

Nutrition

Food plays an important role in our everyday life. Many of us have heard the old adage “You are what you eat”. Our productivity and our health are in direct correlations to the quality of food we eat. Eating well means a balanced diet matched to the energy needs of our body at the different times of the day. According to Healthline online bulletin, Nutrition does not only affect your mood and your energy, it also impacts your creativity. Certain types of nutrition are important for brain health. According to Tony Schwartz, our morning meals should comprise largely of carbohydrates to provide us with the right glucose levels in our blood to get us going for the day and in line with our daily anabolic and catabolic cycles.

Rest and sleep

In the apparent frenzy of today’s world, people now work long hours sometime stretching into very late in the night and giving less time for rest and sleep. According to the American National Health, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), sleep is involved in healing and repair of your heart and blood vessels. Ongoing sleep deficiency is linked to an increased risk of heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and stroke. It is little wonder that there is a preponderance of young people coming down with heart diseases, diabetes and kidney diseases in recent times. Importantly, during sleep, our bodies regenerate and dead cells are replaced. This regeneration is quite important for the maintenance of an optimal state of health and wellbeing. There has been an ongoing debate about the right amount of sleep that is needed by the average individual for optimum health, some say 8 hours of sleep is needed for proper rest, while some posit that 5 hours is enough sleep to get us going. Much as the quantity of sleep that one gets is important, it is the quality of sleep that we must pay attention to. Some people sleep up to 9 hours some night and do not feel well rested, while some sleep for less and feel refreshed by the time they wake up.

A good sleep serves as energy refuel for you to cope with the busy-ness that we are sure going to face and cope with. Before your body breaks you down and make you pay the debt of sleep, do well to give it all the sleep it requires to keep your energy level high.

Exercise & Fitness

There exist a direct correlation between exercise and energy level. People who exercise a lot tend to be more energetic, primarily because they have a high rate of metabolism (break down of food to produce glucose for energy). It is important that time be spared and planned for physical exercise in our daily routine. One of the major benefits of regular exercise is that it enhances blood flow in the body and hence aids in the continuous movement of oxygen to areas in the body that requires it. Of course oxygen is primary for the oxidization of our foods and hence the release of the necessary energy contained in our food. The crux of the matter is that without oxygen your cells cannot make energy and their metabolism is less effective. This makes exercise key for the energizing of our cells. Yet again exercise is important because it helps in the strengthening of our muscles and thus encourages fitness and endurance. We generally have the capacity to go for longer and not get fatigued if we exercise regularly. As a matter of fact, exercise has been recommended as a cure for fatigue. According to Patrick O’ Connor, Professor of anatomy and neuroscience and co-director of the University of Georgia Exercise Psychology, in one of his studies conducted on 6800 people who are fatigued, he found that 90% sedentary people who completed a regular exercise program reported improved fatigue, compared to groups that did not exercise.

On the next edition of our bulletin, we will explore Emotional Energy and Mental Energy as means to actively cope with the rush of today’s world.

Anthony Andem

The term safety has been defined and envisioned by many experts and authorities since the industrial revolution. Some authorities regard safety as the deliberate endeavor undertaken to promote specific precautionary measures against damages, injury or accident; to a vast majority of persons, the term safety has to do with precaution from injuries or accidents that could lead to disability or deformity on person, properties, environment etc.

Generally, road traffic safety refers to the methods and measures used to prevent road users from being killed or seriously injured and cause damage to properties. Chief among these methods is the sign system. The information provided by the system of signs on most roads have helped to keep drivers mentally alert and provide them with the necessary “heads up” to enable proper management of their vehicular speed and stance while on the road. This system came up as a result of numerous road traffic accidents that were seen as the world’s largest public problem after the advent of vehicles; one writer popularly called the vehicle “the beast of burden” in referring to the number of lives lost from road traffic accidents. According to world health organization (WHO), more than 1million people were killed on the world’s road each year.

Let us explore some of the major causes of road accidents                                                             

1. EXCESSIVE SPEEDING: This primarily is driving above regulatory speed limits. Statistics from the Nigerian police and Federal road safety commission shows that excessive speeding is one of the (major) causes of road accidents, in view of which 100kilometers/per hour was recommended as the maximum speed limit on freeways. It must be noted however that excessive speed is a function of the type of road and part of the city in which the driving is taking place depending on the limits set by regulatory agencies for the different areas.
2. DANGEROUS OVERTAKING: Dangerous overtaking is a situation where overtaking is done in areas where clear visibility of the road ahead is not possible; such as hilly areas, bridges and sharp bends. Before overtaking, it is important to look whether the road ahead is clear and then consider if it is necessary before you do so.
3. INTOXICATION: A driver on drugs and intoxicants are very likely to get involved in an accident sooner or later because of impaired coordination and slow judgment, which makes them tend to disobey basic safety regulations and take unnecessary risks.
4. POOR DRIVING HABITS: Getting involved in any activity that would remove or lower the concentration of the driver from driving is a poor driving habit. This includes driving while reading, discussing with passengers, sheer careless, fatigue and making or responding to telephone call.   
5. POOR CONDITIONS OF VEHICLES: Preventive maintenance of vehicle is very important. It eliminates one more reason for road traffic accident. Poor conditions of vehicles are characterized by worn out tyre, faulty brake systems, poor lighting system etc.

Besides mitigating the causes of road traffic accidents, the following precautions can be applied to further enhance safety on the road.

• Use of seat belts: The use of safety sit belts has been reported to minimize the extent of injury whenever accidents occur.
• Punishment of road traffic defaulters: Drivers who deliberately or brazenly disobey traffic rules should be severely punished.
• Encouragement of good driving culture: In order to inculcate good driving culture and habit in the populace, drivers education should be incorporated into the normal school curriculum
• Road crossings: Drivers should take extra care and vigilance when driving near areas with high pedestrian traffic like, schools, markets, churches, mosques, hospitals and shopping malls.
• Familiarity with roads: Drivers should be very careful when driving on unfamiliar roads. Driving carelessly on unfamiliar roads is one of the most common causes of road traffic accidents

The following signs are important road traffic sign that will foster right behavior.

NOT IN MY KITCHEN!!!

– Josiah Diaso

The topic of this write up describes the reaction of a friend I was interacting with when I reeled out some rather scary statistics of how dangerous a place the seeming cleanest of Kitchen is.

According to Dr. Charles Gerba, a microbiologist and professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson, “In most cases, it’s safer to make a salad on a toilet seat than it is to make one on a kitchen cutting board.” He went on to assert that the kitchen is actually the most bacteria ridden place in most homes. He found from his study that there are 10million bacteria per square inch of a kitchen sponge and 1m per square inch on a dish cloth.
Understandably, most people would react in a similar way as my friend when such statistics are read.

 My first thought when I read the report was actually that of disagreement. I quickly waved it aside as some form of scaremongering as I reasoned how impossible it was for the kitchen to be more bacteria ridden than a toilet seat. However, upon serious thought, it then dawned on me that for most people, extra efforts are put into disinfecting our toilet environment because we easily see it as a polluted environment from the activity that goes on there, but not so much attention is given to the kitchen due to the assumption that washing the dishes and cleaning off wet surfaces automatically translates to disinfecting of the kitchen, and as such we leave the kitchen in a less than hygienic state, and a breeding ground for bacteria. The thought of it becomes even scarier when one thinks of the fact that everything that we ingest into our system is prepared in there.

The irony of the study was that most of the bacteria found in the kitchen are actually fecal bacteria (Bacteria normally found in excreta) including E Coli and Salmonella.

It gets even more interesting…

As a follow-up study, NSF International, a non-profit science organization set out to find out the most bacteria-ridden spots in the kitchen. The findings from their research is going to make up the subjects of evaluation for this write up. According to the NSF report, the hotspots for bacteria in the kitchen are;

• Dish sponges

Scary isn’t it? Yes. All our utensils, dishes, pans, pots and silverwares must have to at one point or another pass through our sponges. Interestingly, it is the very fact of that, which makes the sponge one of the highest breeding ground for bacteria. Very tiny food particles are often inadvertently left on sponges even after rinsing with water and washed. This tiny food particles upon decaying (sometimes unnoticeably because of their small sizes) form attractions for flies and eventual breeding spots for bacteria. In most sponges, the very tiny crevices which are mostly invisible to the naked eyes are perfect hideouts for tiny food particles, which eventually become breeding spots for germs and bacteria.

To eliminate the prospect of our sponges serving as potential sources of diseases, regular disinfestation should be done. One way that this can be achieved is through heating. Our sponges could be put in a pot of boiling water or microwaved to kill bacteria which are mostly very susceptible to high temperature.

• The kitchen sink

Food particles from plates left to soak or rinsed from dishes can serve as a breeding ground for pathogens including E. coli and salmonella. From kitchen sinks, bacteria can get in our hands or spread to foods. In most cases when we rinse off our kitchen sink with water and they appear to be clean, very often they are not. The drains on the kitchen sink are perfect hideaways for germs and bacteria that should be disinfected regularly.

To banish the germs and bacteria that is harbored in your kitchen sink, it is recommended that you wash your kitchen sink with a solution of bleach and water.

• Cutting board

Yes, this for me stand out…

Tiny particles of meat and other food stuff are very often left on the cutting board unintentionally. Many people just rinse their cutting board after cutting poultry products and meat, thereby leaving behind salmonella which is one of the commonest cause of food-borne illness. Unfortunately, the same cutting board used for cutting meat is used for cutting vegetables and salad resulting in cross-contamination.

For elimination of bacteria, it is important that we disinfect our cutting boards after cutting poultry or meat in it. It is also advised that different cutting boards are used for cutting meat and cutting vegetables.

• Bottom shelf of the refrigerator

A quick glance at the refrigerator will reveal that the bottom shelf serve as drains for most of the moisture in the fridge; water drops from defrosted meat and other food items at the top shelf settle to the bottom of the refrigerator to form a cocktail of moisture laden with environment rife for bacteria growth.

Once every 2 to 3 weeks it is important to wipe every aspect of the refrigerator with disinfectant that is made for the kitchen. Importantly, raw meat should be placed on the bottom shelf tucked away in a drawer from everything else.

Now you know, as we celebrate this season, our kitchen should rightly be the place of joy and a safe haven free from germs and pathogens. Meal time should be happy times as we enjoy the food we love and not one of those times when we second guess on whether we are stuffing ourselves with bacteria that makes us sick.