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Better Health Solution, Health Tips and Information: What Is Heart Disease?: "Bring up heart disease, and most people think of a heart attack. But there are many conditions that can undermine the hearts ability to do ..."

People who exercise regularly are better at creative thinking

People who exercise regularly are better at creative thinking. This is the outcome of research by Leiden cognitive psychologist Lorenza Colato. She published an article on this subject in the scientific magazine Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

Taking a stroll

We know that authors like Søren Kierkegaard, Henry James en Thomas Mann used to take a stroll before they sat down behind their writing desk. Apparently, this helped them to get new ideas and insights. But is it possible to prove scientifically that physical exercise makes creative thinking easier?

Divergent and convergent

To find this out, Colzato investigated whether regular exercise may promote the two main ingredients of creativity: divergent thinking and convergent thinking. Divergent thinking means to think up as many solutions as possible for a certain problem. Convergent thinking leads to one single correct solution for a given problem.

Thinking tasks

The psychologist gave thinking tasks to two groups of test persons: people who do physical exercise at least four times a week -- i.e. cycling -- and people who do not exercise on a regular basis. The first assignment was a so-called alternate uses test, in which the participants had to note down all the possible uses for a pen. This was followed by a remote associates task: the test persons were presented with three non-related words, like time, hair and stretch, and had to come up with the common link, which in this case was long.

Healthy body = sound mind

On the remote associates task, people from the group of frequent exercisers appeared to outperform those who did not exercise regularly. Colzato: We think that phsysical movement is good for the ability to think flexibly, but only if the body is used to being active. Otherwise a large part of the energy intended for creative thinking goes to the movement itself. Colzato believes that these results support the famous classical idea of a sound mind in a healthy body: Exercising on a regular basis may thus act as a cognitive enhancer promoting creativity in inexpensive and healthy ways.

Better with small business health insurance

When there was a survey of 1000 people regarding waiting times for the NHS it was pretty evident that the British public under estimate the waiting times for operations on the NHS, The poll revealed that the majority would expect a 5 months wait for most operations when it is actually closer to 11 months per op.

Although there is surprise at these health care waiting times there was even more surprise that these waiting times are getting better from previous NHS generations and thanks to government initiatives to reduce times they are getting better overall.

With the highly competitive private health insurance industry now being more affordable and accessible to the public - it would always be recommendable to join one of these companys and we are finding more and more people are opting to do so.

When a separate survey was done we also discovered that more and more companys are offering Small Business health insurance to there employees to the delight of everyone involved in health care as it gives there workers better and more affordable treatment and also takes the wait off the NHS so it can continue to get better treatment to our countys disadvantaged patients.

Health at work could it work better

How often have you or your colleagues been off work sick in the last year?

Most of us will have been off at some point for one reason or another - be it with the kind of cold or mild flu that lays us low for a day or two.

Thankfully much less common is the need for long-term sickness absence. And an article in the Telegraph recently shows that, while not as common as the odd day or two off ill here and there, its still a pretty considerable expense - with long term sickness absence being estimated at a whopping £3.1 billion yearly cost to the private sector.

However, the picture isnt quite as bad as it may seem at first sight. Sickness absence as a whole is less than it has been at times in the past. According to this release by the UK Press Association, 178 million working days were lost to sickness in 1993 compared to 131 million in 2011, this is based on official figres from the National office for Statistics.

There are various means by which businesses can help to minimise sickness absence generally - these can include some measures such as the following

• providing an employee assistance program
• promoting health and wellbeing within the organisation
• draw up and put into practice an occupational health scheme
• provide private healthcare insurance for staff

For more info on sickness absence management, check out the CIPD website (Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development) - and theres also some good online resources from the Health & Safety Executive and the governments Business Link site.