What does it take to start an exercise program and stick with it?
Will power? Motivation? Determination? A clear goal?
What worked for Ruth Fishbein was peer pressure.
In the spring of 2003, when MIT's Center for Health Promotion and Wellness sponsored the "Tour de MIT," a fitness challenge for MIT Medical employees, Fishbein, MIT Medical's performance improvement and risk management coordinator, joined one of the teams. "Before the fitness challenge, I did try to exercise," she says, "mostly walking, but I was not terribly consistent."
With this year's flu-vaccine shortage has come a barrage of flu-prevention tips, chief among them the admonition to wash your hands often.
Though it sounds like the advice you got from your mother in childhood, MIT internist and infectious disease specialist Howard Heller, M.D., says that "hand hygiene"-which includes frequent hand-washing-is one of the best ways to avoid not only the flu, but also colds. "Most respiratory viral infections, including influenza, are spread through indirect contamination," he explains. "Viruses can live on the surfaces of objects for several hours. So, when you touch a surface that has been contaminated by an infected person, and then touch your nose or mouth, you can spread the virus to your own body."
