Health Benefits of Meditation and Prayer
In the past twenty to thirty years, we’ve seen a resurgence of public interest in the healing powers of prayer and meditation, and medical professionals are taking note as well.

Starting a Walking Program
One of the best ways to ease into a more physically active lifestyle is to start walking. This low-impact exercise is great for just about everyone and can be done anywhere, anytime.

Healthy Eating at Work
It’s not impossible to stick to a sensible diet at work, but it will take a little planning. Coretta Chaffin, a registered dietitian, offered these tips for maintaining your healthy eating strategy.

Digest the Facts: Burgers
Ever have a craving and only a burger will do? Check out the best and worst in the fast food industry as well as WCA’s picks for your best options when eating at home or away.

Kids Corner: How Safe Are Your Kids?
There's no greater devastation than losing a child, but the loss is compounded when it's due to a preventable accident. Here are some ways to eliminate the hazards and reduce the risks.

Summer Picnic Food Safety
When you plan a picnic in the summer, you need to give some extra thought to properly handling and storing your food. To keep it simple, just remember to clean, cleave, cook, chill!

Exercise Playlist: Fun Songs of Summer
As summer gets into full swing, take a break from that indoor treadmill and find some new ways to get moving outdoors to these fun songs of summer.

Culinary Corner: A Picnic With Panache
If you’ve invited guests to join you this year for a Fourth of July picnic, why not surprise them with a healthy menu that’s as appealing to the eye as it is to the taste buds.

Pandemic Pandemonium
If you’re in the habit of watching or reading the news, you’ve heard a lot of reports lately about a possible H1N1 flu pandemic. Just how much should we be concerned?

Benefits of Group Exercise
For many people, exercising solo isn’t enough to keep them motivated to reach their fitness goals. One way to increase your commitment to your workout is to join a group exercise class.

Relaxation Through Play
Many of us leave play behind as we assume adult roles and responsibilities, but play is one of the best ways to relax, reinvigorate, and get those creative juices flowing again.

Preventing Skin Cancer
With summer around the corner, visions of lounging by the pool or on the beach may be distracting you at the office. But also top of mind should be protecting your skin from sun damage.

Combating Stress in the Workplace
Stress can have a negative effect on employees and the overall business, so making an effort to reduce workplace stress makes sense from both a human capital and balance sheet standpoint.

Digest the Facts: Sugar Cravings and Carbohydrate Addiction
Food cravings can be a very natural response by the body when blood sugar is low. Carbohydrates are the body’s preferred source of fuel because they are a quick energy source.

Exercise Playlist: Dance Music
Whether you are getting ready for a high-energy cardio workout or a night out on the town, this month's playlist of up-tempo dance music will be sure to get you moving!

Culinary Corner: Super Foods
This month’s Culinary Corner recipes feature two nutrient-rich ingredients that have been rated as 'super foods' for their ability to fight disease and boost energy.

Gardening for Your Health
Tired of the same old workout? Treadmill got your spirits down? Before you totally give up on working out, try gardening on for size. It's rewarding in more ways than one!

Double Time: A Garden Workout
With beautiful weather on the horizon, skip the gym this weekend and work in your garden! Check out this calorie expenditure chart to see how much your efforts will pay off!

Green Up Your Workout
Why not care for the Earth while caring for your health. All you need to do is get outside, unplug at home, fill up, and change your clothes.

Flexibility Training
While a well-balanced exercise program should incorporate three components—cardiovascular, strength, and flexibility training—flexibility training is often overlooked.

Know Your Family History
Knowing your family’s medical history could save your life. That might sound like an overstatement, since your genes are one health factor you cannot control. But “knowledge is power.”

Benefits of Social Networking
You’d probably agree that spending time with friends makes you feel good, but did you realize your social network is also a key to improving your health and to overcoming life's challenges?

Fast Food Dining Do's and Don'ts
The key to eating healthy away from home is to steer clear of high-fat meals that are packed with calories and have little nutritional value. Use this chart to help you navigate!

Exercise Playlist: Loud, Fast, Intense
For all you rockers out there, this month’s playlist focuses on songs to get your adrenalin flowing and your intensity level through the roof.

Culinary Corner: Fresh Produce
Produce stands across the country will soon be brimming with fresh fruits and vegetables for your spring and summer table. These recipes help you take full advantage of the seasonal fare.

Maintaining Healthy Skin
You’ve probably heard a lot about protecting your skin from the sun, which is extremely important, but it’s just one of many ways to keep your skin looking and feeling its best.

Keeping a Wellness Journal
Self monitoring or keeping track is often the key to losing weight, being more active, adhering to a medication regime, or maintaining other healthy lifestyle behaviors.

Conquering the Pit
Ever have a feeling in the pit of your stomach that something is not right? That's a warning sign—a red flag that you can use to your advantage if you know how to act rather than react.

Fitness Challenge
This month, I challenge you to train your body without using any equipment. Here is a full-body circuit, which can be performed three times per week at home, on the road, anywhere.

Kids Corner: Allergies in Children
Your body may be exposed to allergens from foods you eat, elements you breathe, or direct contact with your skin or the lining of your nose. The scope of the problem is tremendous!

Digest the Facts: Artificial Sweeteners
A Purdue University study suggests that artificial sweeteners may affect the body’s natural ability to estimate caloric intake, contributing to increased food intake and weight gain.

Healthy Home: Indoor Air Quality
All too often, we take the air we breathe for granted. Except for the occasional ozone alert in the heat of summer, we don’t give much thought to what goes into our lungs.

Exercise Playlist: Country Music
For those of you who would rather tug on your cowboy boots than lace up a pair of sneakers, here’s a playlist to inspire you to get moving!

Culinary Corner: Breakfast Recipes
Looking for a fast, nutritious way to start the day? Try these delicious breakfast recipes from 3-A-Day of Dairy. They're low in calories and fat but loaded with healthy ingredients and taste!

Finding the Right Gym
A wide variety of fitness centers are available—from very small local gyms to large fitness centers offering every kind of class imaginable—so how do you find one that meets your needs?

Eating for a Healthy Heart
An unhealthy heart may be the result of genetic factors, but it can also be blamed on modifiable lifestyle factors. The way you eat is one of the easiest factors to change.

Mindful Eating
Some of the most common reasons we eat when we are not hungry are boredom, depression, anxiety, anger, stress, and habit. Do any of these excuses sound familiar to you?

How Vein Problems Affect Health
Unattractive leg veins are often ignored altogether or they draw attention solely for cosmetic reasons. But varicose veins can be a symptom of a major health problem.

Take Time to Rejuvenate
Taking a vacation removes us from the familiar stressors of our everyday lives (both work and home) and is crucial for “recharging” our batteries, creating a sort of stress “detox.”

Supporting Your Spouse in Tough Times
During tough economic times, you may need to work extra hard on your marriage, especially if one or both of you are worried about losing your jobs or you’re already unemployed.

Kids Corner: Upper Respiratory Infections
Wintertime is the height of the respiratory illness season. It seems like you or your child just finishes with cold symptoms and once again you are faced with another episode.

Medical Myths: About Heart Disease
By dispelling some of the medical myths, we can make more informed decisions and improve our chances of preventing, detecting and treating heart disease more effectively.

Culinary Corner: Stir Fry
Stir frying is a cooking technique that’s quick and only takes a couple of pans and small appliances that don’t generate much heat. It’s also a very healthy way to cook.

Kids Corner: Healthy Resolutions for the Family
Now that you have finished making New Year’s resolutions for yourself, think about incorporating those same ideas into the lives of your children.

Managing Stress in Today's Economy
It's normal to feel stressed when major work and life changes occur. While a major economic recession can lead to even more stress, we can still learn to deal with it in a productive way.

The Role of Stress in Eating Disorders
Eating desserts and other comfort foods is one way we choose to soothe or distract ourselves from uncomfortable feelings and thoughts. Here are a few ways to stop stress eating.

Healthy Eating on a Budget
If you’re trying to feed your family a healthy diet but struggle to do so on a budget, take heart! Check out registered dietitian Coretta Chaffin's Top 10 Tips for cutting costs.

Medication Adherence
Not taking medications as directed accounts for 10% of hospital admissions, $300 billion in additional healthcare costs annually, and 125,000 deaths each year.

Stretching for Low Back Pain
You can prevent low back pain and injuries by stretching and strengthening your low back muscles as well as the other muscles that support and oppose your back.

Exercise Playlist: Get Pumped for the New Year
Kick-start the New Year by downloading a soundtrack for 2009, and setting attainable goals to go with them. Connie Norris provides a list of tunes to get your head in the right place!

Good Nutrition and Exercise at Work
By following some of the suggestions in these two lists, you and your co-workers will be able to eat a healthier diet and get more exercise during the workday.

Culinary Corner: Healthy Super Bowl Treats
Most Super Bowl partiers have two things in mind—food and football. This year, let us take care of the menu and give you some healthy alternatives to traditional football fare!

Outdoor Exercising
Aside from the obvious benefits of exploring and connecting with nature, taking your workout outdoors instantly adds variety to even the most mundane regimen.

The Relaxation Response
By identifying things that cause us stress and looking at the ways we’re coping with them, we can begin to change unhealthy behaviors to healthier ones and elicit the relaxation response.

Connect With Your Goals
Do questions like “What do you want from life?” and “Where do you see yourself in ten years?” leave you speechless and feeling overwhelmed? Here are some tips that can help.

Importance of Hand Washing
December is the time of year when people share more than holiday joy. They often spread germs and get each other sick. One of the best ways to stay well is to keep your hands clean.

Food Safety for the Holidays
The last thing you want to serve family and friends is a dose of food poisoning, yet sometimes in the rush to "get it all done," shortcuts in the kitchen lead to digestive disaster.

Healthy Holiday Snacks and a Movie
When the weather outside is frightful, what better way to spend an evening than curled up in the warmth of your home with a great healthy snack and a fun holiday movie?

Exercise Playlist: Holiday Favorites
Happy holidays, loyal music fanatics! I'm sure more than a few of you are getting in some additional exercise sessions—not at the gym, but in the shopping malls and discount stores!

Culinary Corner: Favorite Holiday Recipes
The chatter around the office these days is usually about family holiday traditions. This month, The Wellness Coalition staff is sharing some of our traditional (and healthy) family recipes.

Strength and Core Training
The United States Department of Health and Human Services has released new guidelines on exercise, which recommend at least two sessions of strength training each week for adults.

Reading Food Labels
If you want to eat a healthier diet, you need to have a basic understanding of good nutrition principles and how to read food labels. Here are some tips to get you started.

Managing Stress Through the Holidays
During the holiday season, do you often feel so overwhelmed and stressed out that you can’t focus on the things that are really important? Take note first of the source of the problem.

Connecting With Self
Taking time to deepen and strengthen your connection with self will provide you with more than peace of mind—it will help improve your overall health.

Motivating Yourself to Kick a Habit
You don’t have to feel motivated all of the time to make healthy choices. Here are some things you can do to prepare yourself for the days when motivation is non-existent.

I Kicked the Habit
I got addicted in my twenties and continued to smoke until my late forties at which time problems started to appear—particularly allergies and asthma.

Digest the Facts: Holiday Choices to Save Calories
Try our “Holiday Revision Menu" that emphasizes the flavors of herbs, spices, and fresh fruits and vegetables—your guests will never miss the extra fat, salt, sugar, and calories!

Exercise Playlist: Back to the 80s
This month's playlist is Wellness Coalition America’s tribute to neon, slap bracelets, Jams shorts, leg warmers, and all things totally eighties. Enjoy the time warp!

Culinary Corner: WCA Holiday Favorites
The WCA team is sharing some of our favorite family recipes for the holidays. Not only are these dishes delicious, most are lower in calories and fat than the usual holiday fare.

It's All About Mom: Tips for Total Body Health
It is very important for mom to take care of herself, because women are actually at greater risk for certain diseases than men. These tips can help mom improve her total body health.

Cardiovascular Exercise for Heart Health
By committing to a program of regular, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, you can reduce your risk for heart disease and stroke.

Organic Foods and Farming
It's true that organic fruits and vegetables are often a bit pricier than their conventionally grown counterparts. Are they worth the extra expense?

Managing Stress at Work
On-the-job stress is more strongly associated with health issues than any other form of stress. A great way to get that workplace stress under control is through exercise.

Do You Need a Primary Care Physician?
Your primary care physician is your first contact in most medical situations so having a good relationship is extremely important. To get the most out of a visit, you need to be prepared.

Attitude of Gratitude
Keeping a positive attitude can be a challenge but the benefits are worth the extra effort. In addition to changing your outlook, it can improve your overall health and wellbeing.

Senior Corner: Memory Impairment and the Holidays
Regardless of which holidays you celebrate, if you are the caregiver for a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease or another type of dementia, your holidays may take on special challenges.

Exercise Playlist: Girls' Night Out
In honor of this month’s focus on women’s health, we have compiled a list of songs from female performers, or at least women who front the band.

Success Story: Rob Loy
Rob Loy, an employee of the SC State Ports Authority, was aware he needed to make some lifestyle changes. However, other obligations and excuses got in the way.

Culinary Corner: Recipe Makeovers
Fortunately, there are many ways to alter recipes to make them healthy—either by substituting ingredients or decreasing the quantity of less healthy ingredients.

Three Basic Components of Exercise
Many of us say we don’t have enough time, money, motivation, equipment, etc. to include daily exercise in our lives. But the good news is that everything counts!

How to Make Sure Your Produce is Safe
Food safety and health concerns related to buying and consuming fresh produce have been on the rise, especially regarding bacterial contamination and pesticide residues.

Impact of Sleep Deprivation
We often take sleep for granted until something happens that prevents us from getting enough rest. If you're not waking up refreshed, ask yourself these questions.

Know Your Numbers: Blood Pressure
Hypertension has no symptoms and is detected by screening blood pressure measurements. That's why everyone should have his or her blood pressure checked annually.

A Relationship Workout
Research has proven that your health and longevity improve if you are involved in a healthy and stable marriage. Here are some very basic steps to maintain the health of that relationship.

Kids Corner: Health Education for Kids
Our role as parents is to prepare our children to live in the real world and this includes helping them achieve health literacy. But what we teach them needs to be developmentally appropriate.

Senior Corner: Lifelong Learning
Many organizations encourage lifelong learning to help their employees perform at their absolute best. The benefits include an improved memory and a boost to self-confidence.

Healthy Home: Green Glossary
This edition of Healthy Home features a top ten list of green terms that are now making their way into our mainstream conversations.

Exercise Playlist: Tracks for the Treadmill
Thanks to Suzanne Root for submitting her list of favorite "Tracks for the Treadmill." Also, thanks to our loyal readers for making this one of the most read columns in our eZine!

Culinary Corner: Keep Produce at its Peak
Fruits and vegetables can lose some nutrients when exposed to air, water, and heat. Fortunately, you can do several things to make sure your produce holds onto its healthy qualities.

Balanced Nutrition for Active Families
Who has time to eat (let alone cook!) a nutritionally balanced meal with the family? We have some great suggestions to preserve your family mealtime and ensure that you get a nutritious meal, too!

Sleep and Balance for Students
As the school year creeps up on us again, sleep should be a main focus—not only for children but also for their parents. The proper amount of sleep is necessary for all of us to function well and stay healthy.

Kids Corner: When to Keep the Kids Home
Anyone with children knows that awful feeling at 6 a.m. when you're getting ready for work and you realize that your child is ill and can’t go to school. What are working parents supposed to do?

Self-esteem and Student Success
Students of all ages who have high self-esteem are more likely to be successful in school than those whose confidence may be lagging. Here's what you can do to bolster the self-esteem of the students in your life.

Healthy Home: Green Schools
Why should you care if your children attend school in "green buildings"? One 2005 survey found that 70% of school districts with green buildings noticed less student absenteeism and better student performance.

Fitness in Your 50s (Your 40s Too): Exercising Outdoors
The summer is rapidly coming to a close, but there are still many weeks of beautiful weather—perfect for exercising outdoors. Living in the Southeast has its advantages!

Shape-up Shakedown: August 2008
Make physical fitness a family affair with these tips on incorporating fun activities into your daily routine. Be sure to watch the video to learn ways you can train young children for a life of total body wellness.

Exercise Playlist: Get Fit Hits
This month's playlist was submitted by one of our readers, Lauren Staley. Thanks, Lauren, for sharing the "Get Fit Hits" that inspire you to work out. What are YOU listening to while you’re sweating it out?

Culinary Corner: Kid-friendly Breakfast Recipes
The best breakfast choices include whole grains, a low-fat source of protein or dairy, and some fruit. Try these kid-friendly breakfast recipes from the 3-A-Day of Dairy campaign to get your kids ready for a successful school day!

Corporate Wellness Programs 101
Healthcare costs are through the roof and we have no one to blame but ourselves. Statistically speaking, we’re sicker and heavier than we should be, and we're often thoughtless consumers of healthcare services.

Healthy Communication at Work
Communicating effectively at work may sound simple but it can be challenging at times. Here are a few things we all can do to improve our workplace communication.

Healthy Eating in the Workplace
Our health is influenced by what we eat, by how we live, and by our environment. Since most of us working folks spend a quarter of our time at work, we should watch what we eat there.

Relief for Common Workplace Stressors
The first step in managing stress is to identify the stressors in your work environment. Here are some common culprits and a few helpful tips for dealing with them.

How to Navigate Your Healthcare Plan
Health insurance helps to protect you from rising medical costs by providing coverage for various healthcare services, which can be very costly if you have to pay them fully out of pocket.

Healthy Home: Green Workspaces
You may think you’re doing all you can to help the environment at home. But odds are you spend more waking hours at the office. What are you doing to green up your workspace?

Shape-up Shakedown: July 2008
Here are some ideas for incorporating movement into your day at work. Watch the video for a demonstration of some simple exercises you can do at your desk to relieve stress.

Kids Corner: Sports Physicals
Sports physicals ideally should be performed at least six weeks before the beginning of a scheduled activity or season so any follow-ups or referrals can be completed prior to that date.

Senior Corner: Care Options for Seniors
Older adults are living longer, healthier lives thanks in large part to advances in medicine. But this year about nine million men and women over age 65 will need long-term care.

Exercise Playlist: Curls, Dips, and Crunches
This month's playlist is geared toward lifting weights and/or pushing you through your abs workout. Now it's your turn. We'd like to hear what's on your MP3 player during your workouts.

Culinary Corner: Healthy Brown Bag Lunches
If you’ve been taking your lunch to work for a while and need some fresh and healthy ideas for lunches, check out these recipes from 3-A-Day of Dairy.