ENDURE: May 16, 2014

It's a Game of Odds.....Are You Rolling the Dice?

Spoiler Summary:  "No risk no reward?"; If the reward is having a long, healthy life, maybe the saying should be: "no understanding of risk, a low likelihood of reward."

Last week I was asked to be involved in a meeting related to prevention and safety that was going to spend some time talking about the cultural or "group-behavioral" aspects of health and safety.  This topic, being the kind of thing that my team at Pro-Activity has spent most of our waking hours focused on over the last 15 years (and admittedly some of our non-waking hours), made it right up my alley, so I was excited to be a part of it.  Truthfully, it's the type of thing we've done many times before, but what I really liked about this one, the brainchild of a couple of guys who are deeply involved in safety in their workplace in conjunction with the location's manager, was their emphasis on risk and risk-reduction.  From the title slide, to the videos, to the questions & answers, they spent time relating injury to risk - which is really at the heart of prevention......knowing the odds of something happening (good or bad) and then adjusting until the odds are in your favor......actively choosing to avoid games where the odds of losing are much higher than the odds of winning......actively avoiding the random roll of the dice.  This is such an important concept and one that sometimes gets glazed over, so I applaud them for going after it so directly.

What's really cool is that the theme seems to be emerging in many of the places we've been asked to consult. Whether it be the safety leader I recently sat down with who emphasized a focus on risk, to the many people who are starting to talk about and understand their 10-year "risk score" (a mathematical prediction of having a cardiovascular "event" based on certain bio-markers and health-behaviors), to a multidisciplinary effort aimed at identifying and lowering the risks of sprains and strains that we're involved with, the concept of "risk lowering" keeps coming up - and it's like music to my ears.....because that's where ACTION lives.

Accurately judging the "likelihood", i.e. weighing "the odds" and making a choice associated with a predicted result (based on our knowledge and experiences) is one of the most important bits of thinking we do. When we take the time to understand the consequences, and be aware of the risks, putting the odds in our favor gets so much easier.  For example, knowing that staying active is a way to stay healthy well into retirement is valuable but easy to ignore.....however, knowing the specifics, that for every unit of fitness (as measured in "METs") a man maintains into his retirement-years lowers his risk of dying by 11% even with a diagnosis of high-blood pressure (as was reported earlier this week by researchers funded by the American Heart Association), can help guide us to the actions that will work.  Marathons for everyone?  Not necessarily.....but if you have high blood pressure, doing what it takes to maintain an exercise capacity of 8 METs (and therefore nearly cutting your risk in half) would certainly put the odds more solidly in your favor.

The same is true for injury risk.  Knowing for example that repetitive bending has been associated with back pain is definitely helpful, but easy to ignore.  On the other hand, knowing that frequent bending increases your odds of the #1 ergonomic issue worldwide (impacting 26% of the world's population) by more than 200% (as reported recently in two prestigious medical journals) might make it worth the effort of setting up the work, whether on the job or at home, in a low impact manner; to remove the risk entirely or, if nothing else, to plan in a break to "extend" and let the tissues recover.

Lowering risk and playing the odds definitely doesn't guarantee success.....sometimes even the most unlikely situation can happen.....despite a 97+% likelihood that it won't happen, occasionally "snake eyes" comes up......I just don't know if I'd bet my life on it.  As always, let us know how we can help you understand your risks and put the odds of achieving your goals in your favor.

Have a great week,

Mike E.