We're excited to announce the addition of a new Perk to the Nudge platform as well as the opportunity to work together with our friends at Kona Kase. Together, we will provide all Kona Kase subscribers with access to Nudge's website and mobile apps, allowing the Kona Kase community to come together under one platform, with one goal - to help subscribers live healthier.  

In recent years it has come to our attention that although the U.S. is among the wealthiest countries in the world it is also, in some ways, among the most unhealthy. In more impoverished nations children struggle to obtain appropriate levels of nutrition and for obvious reasons, but in a country so well off as ours, children can experience the same malnutrition, and while overeating?! Picture a young American child sitting on the couch while enjoying a fast-food burger and french fries. This meal, while convenient and satisfying in the short term, is obviously missing a smorgasbord of vital nutrients from a lack of healthy fruits and vegetables among other factors. 

If you're seriously considering a wellness program for your company, you may have any number of a myriad of goals in mind. Satisfying these goals, whether quantitative or qualitative in nature, will inevitably be your first measure of perceived value or return-on-investment (ROI) for your initiative. Because so much can be gained from a well-designed wellness program, I will highlight 4 of the less obvious ways that a social wellness can produce significant value for you and your organization. Don't forget to download our whitepaper below for all the statistics you'll need to sell any bottom-line thinker on the benefits of workplace wellness.

A great quote has a way of pulling you out of the narrow focus of the moment, and bringing life back into perspective. Or if you slap one on a poster it's always good way to cover up some empty wall space in the office. For whatever use you may have, here are ten of my favorite health and wellness quotes highlighting rare nuggets of wisdom from the father of modern medicine, Hippocrates, to arguably the greatest actress of the modern era, Meryl Streep. These quotes are sure to enlighten your healthy lifestyle:

I believe in books.  Not a rare sentiment, sure, but I would like to take this opportunity to plug one of the books that has helped us along the way.  Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath is a book about how to achieve behavioral changes; how to affect change in your life, your company and even broader social change.  Specifically, I want discuss just one little concept from the book and how it jives with our way of thinking.  With that said, the book is full of valuable and actionable advice so we recommend you give it a read [or a listen].

A new study published in the Journal of the Academy of American Orthopaedic Surgeons  highlights yet another benefit of weight loss, this time for sufferers of osteoarthritis (OA). In particular, researchers cited their belief that half of all knee osteoarthritis cases are directly tied to obesity, resulting from the added wear and tear of excess weight on the affected joints.

The good news is that the study also showed that weight loss not only prevents the onset of OA, but may also be a highly effective option for treating existing conditions. Researchers even went as far as to estimate that weight loss could prevent over 111,000 knee surgeries each year. 

Our advice: Starting that weight loss plan is never easy, so don't expect to be perfect. Just focus on improving those simple daily habits, one at a time.

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