When an employee gets hurt on the job and goes on Worker’s Comp, they usually just end up sitting at home all day long waiting for their injury to heal so that they can go back to work. In most cases, the employee’s regular job is a very physically demanding one that keeps them fairly healthy. But when they get injured, their job becomes a far more sedentary one. This sudden shift to a sedentary lifestyle can be detrimental to their body and overall health, including a wide spectrum of different types of diseases and disorders affecting all parts of the body. Some of the risks can be increased by as much as 50% or more.
A few examples of these risks include:
- Musculoskeletal Disorders: Low Back Pain, Osteoarthritis, Bone Fractures, Connective Tissue Tears, Osteoporosis
- Cardiovascular Disorders: Hypertension (High Blood Pressure), Congestive heart Failure, Atherosclerosis (Hardening of Arteries), Coronary Heart Disease, Hypercholesterolemia (High Cholesterol), Cardiomyopathy (any disease affecting structure and function of heart)
- Metabolic Disorders: Overweight, Obesity, Diabetes
- Cancer: Breast, Colon, Lung, Prostate
- Pulmonary Diseases: Emphysema, Asthma, Chronic Bronchitis
- Psychological Disorders: Depression, Mood, Anxiety
It is important that we don’t allow our employees to get to this point while they are injured because if they do, they will still be ‘broken” when they are released by their doctor to return to work. By that, I mean that they will not be able to come back and start right where they left off when they got injured. They will be weaker and less resilient to injuries than they were before their injury. This increases the chance that they will sustain a repeat, or an entirely different injury, soon after returning to regular duty work. How do we combat this effect you ask? With properly supervised physical activity.
It is a widely accepted rule of thumb within the health and fitness industry that every person should accumulate a minimum of 30 minutes per day of moderate physical activity. By exercising and strengthening the rest of the body, as well as rehabilitating the injured area, employees will see faster healing results and may be able to return to work at an earlier date, thus saving their employers time and money. A healthy employee is far more productive than an unhealthy one who puts in the same amount of effort.
Physical activity assists the body in:
- Building and maintaining healthy bones, muscles, and joints
- Developing strength and agility to help prevent slips, trips, and falls
- Reducing soreness, aches, and pains from the stresses that are put on the body in everyday life
- Controlling body weight
- Preventing pulmonary and cardiovascular diseases
- Preventing metabolic disorders
- Preventing psychological disorders
- Increasing the length and overall quality of life
At Proof:Positive, we have certified fitness professionals who will work with your injured employees by developing workout programs that are tailor fit to their needs, limitations, and goals so that they do not end up returning to work in a “broken” state. The goal of our fitness professionals is to not only assist the injured employee in getting better, but to also instill a lifestyle change in the employee that will continue long after they have fully healed and have returned to regular duty.