It isn?t often that reading a label will make you sick Brian Elliott Jersey Sale , but there are exceptions!
Reading labels on medicines has been identified as one cause of phantom illnesses ranging from serious diseases, such as cancer, to minor ailments such as a bout of flu ? the latest is the rise in the number of cases of swine flu which fortunately, turn out to be nothing more than a sniffle. One warning sign is when the doctor writes on your prescription, ?Oink, Oink, Boom!?, which is the sound a flying pig makes breaking the sound barrier!
Medications are big business in the US with billions of dollars spent on drugs which are prescribed or are available over the counter. By law, every medication must come with a label which highlights what the medicine is to be used for and possible side effects or contra indications.
Frequent side effects are quoted as headaches, fatigue, dizziness, feeling sleepy or having difficulty concentrating. All are vague in their nature but when they are coupled with warnings that some patients may suffer from an increased risk of something more serious, a stroke or cardiac episode, the effect of reading the label combined with an overactive imagination can lead people to believe they have something more sinister.
The culprit is how the mind works, and psychiatrists have identified a condition termed the ?nocebo effect?. This is the opposite of a placebo ? a placebo will make you feel better though it may be a pill containing nothing more medical or therapeutic than powdered milk. Nocebos actually invoke feelings of ill health even though there is, in fact, nothing wrong with the patient, but before you think this is quackery, nocebos can be fatal!
One example of the effect of a nocebo is contained in a study conducted in the 1960?s. Patients were given a glass of sugar water and told that this would make them vomit as part of a procedure to study their stomachs. Though there was nothing in the glass except sugar and water, 80 of those taking the drink did in fact throw up immediately afterwards.
Research into nocebos has been limited, not least because with a study group, illnesses will be induced because of the power of suggestion. The Framingham Heart Study followed a group of women over several decades who believed they were part of a high risk group for heart attacks. The result of the study was that those women who believed they were in a high risk group had a fatality rate four times higher than those women in the same risk category but who were not told of this fact. Fear played a part in bringing about the condition precisely because they had been informed of the fact.
An Italian study into men and the taking of medication, found that those men who read the label on the medicine which had been doctored to warn of ?erectile dysfunction?, reported a far higher incidence of the condition. Reading the label and especially, reading about the side effects and what the medication is designed to prevent does in fact result in a far greater incidence of the conditions warned of than those who remain blissfully ignorant ? a case of ?Don?t Read the Label!?
So the call is out for men and women to stick with green ways at home, but imagine if all business enterprises listened to a similar call. It wouldn’t take lots of initiative to generate huge savings in energy, and therefore money, such is the amount of waste in the workplace. It looks we no longer want to be bothered about wastage and being clean. There use to be a time when waste not, want not, was a cherished saying that every person lived.
Going green need not be distressing or expensive for business, given the many simple ways it can be accomplished – but the environmental rewards would be great. An office equipment that could have a policy change would be the printer. Many trees might be spared if less paper was used. Paper usage could be cut by 50 percent just by using both sides of the paper. Trees are important as they change carbon dioxide to oxygen, thereby cleaning up carbon in the environment. Reducing the amount of paper they use is simply one of the ways in which offices can go green.
The vast internet spiderweb that spans the whole world, tying people and commercial enterprises, should mean that a lessening in business travel could be accomplished. Think how much energy and money could be saved by doing away with business conferences in remote places. A huge strain is put on the planet with all of the business travel, and the use of big automobiles, and corporate jets. The expense of jet travel can be replaced with the much cheaper cost of video conferencing. One of the boons of the internet is that many office jobs can nowadays be done from home, which means a reduction in travel by car and lower office expenses. This can make a huge difference, though not each and every job can be done in this fashion.
The most simplistic way to become earth-friendly at work is to do away with a lot of paper by using email. By just paying bills online, a huge amount of paper could be saved. Our planet will be well-off, with more business tasks done electronically rather than with paper. A big way for the office to avoid wasting a great deal of energy is to stop using stand-alone computers and monitors, and switch to laptops instead. A PC plus monitor utilize roughly 270 watts of energy, while a laptop computer uses 50 watts, maximum. Laptop computers can be set to go into sleep mode, saving a further amount of energy, after they have been inactive for some time, typically 15 minutes.