Canada’s Healthy Workplace Month is here. Upgraded from a one week event to four, it is meant to introduce workplace health to organizations and reward those who already have programs in operation.

Some of the contributors to healthcare costs seen in Canada include factors ranging from stress, poor nutrition, inactivity and long hours. It is things like these that cause heart attacks, strokes, and diabetes, among other maladies.

There’s one company in particular that saw the benefit of focusing on other companies’ employee health. Licious Living is focusing their efforts in such places as Vancouver and Toronto with nutritious meals with the added convenience of quick, fast-food style service—minus the bad stuff of course. Indeed, Licious Living takes this fast-food concept to a higher-quality level. “It’s all in the use of fresh ingredients, the care that goes into the meal preparation and balancing of the nutrients,” says Katie Rogers of Licious Living. “And then getting the foot to the consumer in a convenient way.”

People simply don’t have the time to prepare nutritious, time-conscious meals due to strict workplace environments and hectic lives in general. Licious Living ultimately aims to eliminate the harmful effects of traditional fast food products.

If you’re considering getting a flu shot this year, the CDC agrees. About 5% to 20% of Americans get an annual flu. However, if average Americans would simply take the opportunity to take a flu shot or influenza vaccine, deaths and hospitalizations would decrease. Over 200,000 people are hospitalized and nearly 36,000 people die annually.

October through May is typically influenza season, so from the beginning of the season to November are the best times to get the influenza.

Two versions of flu shots are available for adults and children. There is the less frequent nasal influenza vaccine named FluMist (LAIV), which typically doesn’t cause any side effects but there are exceptions, of course. Then there is the traditional flu shot, which utilizes a live virus. It contains an inactive virus given intravenously.

Both versions spur antibody development in the body. These in turn creates protection against the virus, although it can cause muscle aches and general fatigue during antibody production.

The best candidates for flu vaccination are those 50 years or older, adults and children 6 months or older with lung conditions, diabetes, chronic kidney condition and asthma as well as women who will be pregnant during the flu season.

Advice about dieting can come from many different directions at once. How do you sort out the good advice from the bad?

Laughingly, many believe that celery and chewing sugar-free gum can burn calories. Give your mouth a rest and get your body moving instead. Studies from prestigious organizations like the Mayo Clinic have debunked the “negative-calorie” myth that has upheld the gum and celery whispers.

Coffee, on the other hand, can rev up your metabolism significantly. Two cups of coffee, for instance, can cause the female body to expend 50 extra calories (in a 145 pound woman). Be careful though: sugar, cream and milk lessens the metabolic effect of black coffee because it can cause insulin levels to rise.

Eating after 8 p.m. may or may not cause increased body fat. Caloric intake throughout the day determines what happens when that late-night snake is consumed. Be careful to not overeat at night, however, if your day meals are light. This will reverse any beneficial effect.

Exercising on an empty stomach can burn more fat, but a better workout awaits if one eats a good meal beforehand. University of Ottawa researchers asked test subjects to treadmill until 400 calories were eliminated. While those who skipped breakfast burned 58 percent more fat, although fasting doesn’t always turn into significant weight loss.

One in four Americans suffer from allergies according to the Center for Disease Control. Shockingly, one in three report witnessing family members on vacations exhibiting allergies too.

What can travelers do when in strange hotel rooms during vacations? PURE Solutions has the answer. Through hypoallergenic bedding, bacteria-free surfaces, filtered and freshly-circulated air, PURE Allergy Friendly hotel rooms can greatly reduce the likelihood of triggered allergies by as much as 98 percent.

While hotel chains like Wyndham offer PURE Solutions, these rooms are not available everywhere yet. PURE Solutions offer some simple tips for allergy-free traveling:

1) Ask for no smoking hotel rooms that are pet-free.
2) Despite the ‘fresh air’ suggestion many Americans here, air conditioning is a smart allergy-free idea when traveling, be it in a hotel room or car.
3) Advance research about your final destination will go a long way in determining what you can expect once you get there, especially in terms of allergens.
4) Care when it comes to new culinary delights can go a long way in ensuring that your vacation is problem-free. Exotic destinations, for instance, should prompt you to get some solid advice from friends or colleagues about locations and particular dishes that are safe to eat.

“With modern lifestyles, the typical person can spend as much as 90 percent of his or her time indoors where invisible pollutants may be as much as 100 times as plentiful than outdoors,” says Brian Brault, the CEO of PURE Solutions.

Following Governor Schwarzenegger’s signature of SB 1420, California became the first state in the country to require menu labeling for nutritional purposes. The bill will require all of California’s 17,000 restaurants to list calorie counts. This is in response to the state population’s increasing obesity rate.

The legislation contains a two-year phase-in period, where brochures listing nutritional information including caloric value, grams of saturated fat, carbohydrates and sodium milligrams will be required by July 1, 2009 and on menus and indoor menu boards by January 1, 2011. Only restaurants with 20 or more locations will be affected.

The legislation was inspired by a Field Research Corporation poll highlighting how only 10 percent of state residents were able to pick the healthiest item from a short list of the most common fast foods. Authored by Senator Alex Padilla (D-Los Angeles) with Senator Carole Migden (D-San Francisco) and Assembly Members Marc DeSaulnier (D-Concord) and Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), actual sponsorship came from the California Center for Public Health Advocacy and the American Cancer Society.

“Menu labeling is good common sense,” says Dr. Harold Goldstein of the CCPH. “Just like smoke-free restaurants, I expect menu labeling will quickly sweep the nation as other states recognize the benefit of providing consumers with basic nutrition information. Menu labeling by itself won’t end the obesity epidemic, but it sure is a good place to start.”

A new, small study has shown that men who consume soy every couple of days have lower sperm counts than men who don’t eat soy.However, there is a debate about this study because Asian men, who traditionally eat a great deal of soy, do not appear to have any problems with their fertility. They have been having children with no difficulty for some time.

Those who refute this most recent study say that the reason for the differences in the sperm count must be attributed to some other factor, such as the high rate of obesity in Western men and normal variations in sperm counts that are seen in men.

More studies are needed to determine whether soy really affects fertility or if the lower sperm counts come from something else.

There are many things that you can do to help you stay on track while you are dieting. First thing you need to remember is to accept yourself and love yourself for who you are and stop beating yourself up over being overweight. This will go a long way in helping you get through your diet. If you are comfortable with who you are no matter what, those rough moments when you slip off the diet won’t be such a big deal.

One of the most important things that you can do is watch the amount of water you drink and make sure it is enough especially when you are exercising.

Reward yourself when you do well or meet a goal. This goes a long way towards keeping you motivated to continue. Write down your goals starting with little ones that you can accomplish quickly. Avoid the obvious like chocolate and alcohol. Snack on nuts when you do feel the need for a snack. Nuts are cholesterol free and full of nutrients that will help your heart. Eat negative calories, which mean foods that take more calories to digest than they are worth like Brussels sprouts, broccoli, carrots, celery, apples, kiwi’s celery and strawberries.

Every woman that has ever been pregnant has come to know various myths about pregnancy. For example, one of the classics is holding some type of pendulum over the pregnant belly to determine the sex of the baby. Sorry, but this is just not quite as accurate as the good old sonogram. You also can’t tell by how fast the heartbeat is. You can’t even tell by the way the mother carries the baby, like if it is low it is a boy.

Most mothers would also agree that the amount of heartburn you had while you were pregnant had absolutely nothing to do with how much hair your baby had. Mothers to be everywhere can feel better about raising their arms over their head. This act will not cause the umbilical cord to wrap around your babies neck.

There is a slew of theories of what a pregnant mother can’t do when they are pregnant like taking a bath or exercising and these are totally not true either. Pregnant women everywhere relax in nice warm baths without cooking their children.

There are so many popular diets out there today for people to try it can be a full time job just distinguishing between them. Along with tons of diets comes tons of diet myths.One of the most popular myth is that a no fat diet is good for you. You must have some fat in your diet for energy among other things. Also, it doesn’t matter what time of day you eat even if it is ten o’clock at night. What does matter is how much you actually consume in one day.

Think vegetarians can gain muscle? Think again. Vegetarians can get more than enough protein from other source such as cheese and beans. What’s more, you can actually cause your body harm in the future by consuming too much protein.

It is said that fattening foods make you fat faster. This is not true. Weight gain is a slow process and the couple extra pounds that you see on the scale after dinner are from fluids not weight gain.

A favorite myth for many is that you will automatically gain weight if you quit smoking. Well, it makes a great excuse to not quit smoking but really isn’t true. As a matter of fact, some people actually lose weight when they quit. If the cravings are handled with food, you will gain weight. If they are handled by chewing sugar free gum or on a straw or toothpick, you won’t.

Weight loss is a critical issue in today’s society with obesity on the rise and people finally realizing what being overweight is doing to their bodies, their health and eventually their lifestyles.

When you are overweight, your body is obviously not in the best shape it can be in and therefore does not function the best that it can. Diseases caused by being overweight are becoming more prevalent and people are starting to take notice. They are also trying to figure out ways to do something about it. One way that they can help increase their weight loss is by eating lots, of what some people call, super foods.

These foods are basically foods that actually burn more calories digesting them, than the food had to begin with. So if you eat one of them and it has 50 calories and it takes 75 calories to burn those 50 calories, you have lost 25 calories by eating that food. Some of these super foods are green tea, soup, green salads, yogurt, beans, water and grapefruit. Incorporate some of these foods into a healthy, balanced diet and you should start to see an increase in weight loss.