If the farthest you travel in an average day of work is to the second page of a Google search, your body might be feeling the consequences.

By GENEVIEVE KNAPP
CTW Features

If the farthest you travel in an average day of work is to the second page of a Google search, your body might be feeling the consequences. Luckily for your waistline, researchers at the Mayo Clinic just finished a study that converted a real-life office into a workplace workoutland.

The six-month study introduced walking tracks, desks attached to treadmills, mobile phones and games to the office of SALO, LLC, a Minneapolis-based staffing firm. As the SALO team conducted walking meetings, monitored their movement with high-tech equipment and talked about nutrition, productivity went up and people dropped pounds.

James Levine, the Mayo Clinic endocrinologist who conducted the study, says employee benefits mean employer benefits too.

“Health-care costs are exceedingly high and the rate of increase in healthcare costs is crippling,” says Levine, M.D., Ph.D. “So if we can find win-win situations whereby employees are becoming more healthy, this will have positive money-saving benefits for firms as well.”

Company officials say revenue rose nearly 10 percent during the first three months of the study, and the company recorded its highest-ever monthly revenue during the study’s midpoint. Levine says the company directors were convinced that the higher levels of productivity were due to the “dynamic and happy environment.”
Shedding pounds can certainly cause joy. The individuals who were studied for weight loss and other changes lost an average of 8.8 pounds, and 90 percent of that was fat. Triglycerides decreased by an average of 37 percent. With numbers like that, bicycle-powered computers might be on the horizon.