Health and the Olympics: Top 10 Health Concerns for Olympic Athletes

Janeiro, Brazil, and they’ve got more on their minds than just the competition. The first Olympic Games to be held in South America come with some unique challenges, along with the usual threats to health and safety that every Olympic Game presents.

“Approximately 10 percent of Olympians get hurt during their days at the games, either while training on site or in actual competition,” reports Scientific American. In addition to injuries, viral, and bacterial infections are creating a serious international buzz. Let’s look at 10 health concerns each athlete in attendance faces this year.

Read more at Top 10 Health Concerns for Olympic Athletes | University of Utah Health

Health: How Gardening Can Help Your Overall Health And Wellbeing - The Best Of Health

If you want to stay fit, are intimidated by gyms, but enjoy theoutdoors and want to benefit from fresh air, then gardening may be the perfect choice for you. As the weather improves and the days lengthen,many people think about heading out either into their own outdoor spaceor to a public allotment. Research has shown that regular energetic gardening provides the same positive health benefits as exercise programmes such as jogging or swimming:

• Half an hour of digging burns 150 calories
• Half an hour pushing a lawn mower burns 165 calories
• Half an hour raking a lawn burns 120 calories

While running or exercising in a gym may burn slightly more calories, doctors are increasingly trying to encourage people to take up lighter activities that can be fitted into a daily routine. The key principle in any fitness regime, is sustaining the exercise habit by doing something enjoyable such as gardening.

The Royal Horticultural Society asked 2,000 gardeners about their experiences in a campaign to get more people using gardening for fitness. 80% of the respondents said gardening had improved their
fitness, 60% said they felt physically energised after gardening and 53% said it improved their mood.

Around 70% said that gardening helped tone their forearms, 52% that it toned their thighs and nearly a third that it toned their bottom.

Read more: How Gardening Can Help Your Overall Health And Wellbeing - The Best Of Health

EU Parliament - Chemical Industry - Monsanto: Glyphosate -- Crushed it!! and Avaaz made it happen

Europe just took an extraordinary vote, refusing to grant Monsanto a license for its main product and cornerstone of its empire - the cancer-linked weed killer glyphosate.

Monsanto thought renewal of glyphosate was a done deal. But now, after over 2 million of us joined the biggest global petition against glyphosate ever and massive targeted public pressure, the future of the Monsanto model is more in question than ever before.

Together we forced this from a formality for a new 15-year license into a heated political debate that ended up as a vote on an 18-month emergency extension. This week, European nations rejected even that.

Leading EU parliamentarian Pavel Poc just said: “Avaaz is indisputably the driving force of the fight for glyphosate discontinuance." Here’s what we have done together to make what seemed impossible, possible:

When it came down to the final vote, all our work paid off - leaders representing half the EU population refused to authorise glyphosate, even for the trimmed down 18-month proposal we had helped reduce the license to!

All of this effort was funded by over 86,000 Avaazers worldwide who donated generously to make this campaign mega.

Throughout this fight, Avaaz was joined by great allies and partners who played invaluable roles. Our view is only partial, but here’s our top list to express gratitude to:

• The Socialists and Democrats, and Green parties in the EU Parliament were crucial in this fight. Particularly Bart Staes and Pavel Poc who were instrumental.
• French Environment Minister Ségolène Royal, who was a central leader in this fight.
• Pesticide Action Network, a great coalition of national action networks that has long campaigned on glyphosate and provided great advice and insight to Avaaz.
• Greenpeace, always a wonderful force on these issues, which did a lot of lobbying and media work on glyphosate.
• Campact ran a brilliant campaign in Germany, and matched massive open letters, polling and bird-dogging to play a key role in flipping the German government on glyphosate.
• And many others! Like HEAL, WeMove.eu, Global 2000, and a great coalition of Italian NGOs on this.

Note EU-DigestL Once again the above result shows that people, once they can get out of their comfort zone and join together in a common cause, can still make a difference and overcome just about any hurdle that is politically, economically ,industrially, environmentally dangerous to their health or lifestyle. 

EU-Digest supports Avaaz  and recommends AVAAZ  - a global web movement to bring people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere
 
Read more: Avaaz - Glyphosate -- Crushed it!!