Trainee - Lachy Adamson

Hey, my name is Lachy Adamson.

I am currently in year 12 at Iona College. Sports I participate in are Rugby, Sailing and I am completing my Certificate III in Fitness at Fitnance located at East Brisbane.

The appeal of this course was brought on by a desire to further my knowledge of the human anatomy, the completion of the Cert III would also open doorways into the health and fitness industry.

What is the single best thing to improve your health?

Dr Mike Evans presents an informative, visual answer to the question:

'What is the single best thing we can do for our health?'

Revised Nutrition Guidelines

The National Health and Medical Research Council last week released new nutritional guidelines for Australian adults, adolescents and children. The new guidelines were released to highlight new research into appropriate dietary choices and to promote good nutrition and health. This comes at a time where obesity and type-2 diabetes are at an all-time high in Australia, with numbers set to rise further.

The guidelines recommend regular consumption of fruits and vegetables. Though this is nothing new, recent studies have shown a variety of vegetable types and colours can reduce the risk of some cancers. Similarly, consumption of a wide range of fruits has been shown to decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Perhaps more obviously, the guidelines suggest strong evidence exists that sugar-sweetened drinks are associated with weight (fat) gain.

There is also new evidence suggesting eating whole grain products can decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease, excessive weight gain and type-2 diabetes. Milk and other dairy products have also been shown to decrease the risk of heart disease in some cases.

Committee chairwoman Doctor Amanda Lee summarises -
"We need to eat double the amount of vegetables and fruits, double the amount of wholegrain cereals, much more milk, yoghurt and low-fat cheese, and increasing our lean poultry and fish,"

Detailed guidelines can be found at http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/_files_nhmrc/publications/attachments/n31.pdf

A simplified poster can be found at http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/_files_nhmrc/publications/attachments/n32.pdf

Should healthy people be rewarded?

Should healthy people be rewarded?

If 61 percent of Australia is overweight or obese and increasing each year, shouldn’t the minority (the healthy population) get an added benefit for staying trim. In 2008 the total annual cost of obesity for both children and adults in Australia, including health system costs, productivity and carers costs, was estimated to be around $58 billion of tax payers hard earned money. Why should healthy people be charged for staying healthy and using less government resources? By implementing a reverse health scheme with a focus on health promotion, encouragement and reward rather than just cleaning up the mess once it’s already been made benefits the population doing the right thing.

Ideas anyone?

One proposal could be a healthy population reward scheme to reward good health. An annual health checkup would determine your health status with simple BMI and fitness tests. Once found healthy a decreased tax threshold would be rewarded.