Congratulations to Stacy Jo Dierolf for winning the signed Hodgson Sabres Jersey!
Stacy was randomly selected out of everyone who posted their Blue & Green Day pictures to our Facebook page. Thank you to everyone who participated, showing your support of Unyts and our mission to raise awareness of organ, eye, tissue & blood donation!
You can see everyone who participate in our Blue & Green Day Photo Album on Facebook!
Welcome to the Unyts Health Blog! Through this blog, we hope to get you thinking about healthy choices that we have the opportunity to make everyday in life. Our mission here at Unyts is to save and enhance lives, and on that, we’re following through with our message here. We hope that you’ll continue to read our weekly blog. You may just read some life-saving information.
Quitting smoking will likely be one of the most challenging experiences many people face, but is so essential to having a healthy relationship with your body! Talking with your doctor is a great place to start, once you’ve decided to quit. It will help you to get started and will also give you some insight into all of the amazing health benefits you will reap as a non-smoker. Once you’ve resolved to quit, here are some tips I gathered from my parents, who both recently became non-smokers after smoking for more than 30 years!
1. Ask family and friends for support. The same way a fitness buddy helps to keep you motivated, telling your close circle that you’re trying to quit will help you stay on track. Since your family and friends want to see you live a long and healthy life, they will be great support on your quit-smoking journey.
2. Ease into an exercise regimen. Since people who smoke often find cardio exercise difficult, beginning an exercise regimen, even if it is just taking daily walks, will help you feel great and make you less likely to reach for a cigarette after you’ve done all that hard work
3. Make a list of your personal reasons for quitting. Whether you’d like to save money, improve your career outlook, or change your social image, most people have multiple reasons to quit smoking. Make a list and read through it every day, and picture what your life will be like as a non-smoker. Tell yourself that each day without smoking is living your goal!
We are starting something new here at Unyts, to pay tribute to our heroes of organ, eye and tissue donation. It seemed fitting to call this new endeavour “Honoring our Heroes”. We know that for the families of these donors, they really are heroes, and we certainly feel the same way.
We are truly honored to share these very touching personal stories each month. If you would like to honor a hero, please read below. The month of August, we honor…
Tyler was an outgoing, fun loving 19 year old. He loved the game of baseball and just hanging out with his friends and bonfires. Tyler loved golf, four- wheeling and just hanging out with his sister or family. Tyler was attending Niagara County Community College with 1 class left before winter break. He and his friend were in a tragic car accident. His friend made it, but Tyler did not. Tyler always spoke of how he wanted to donate his organs if anything was to happen.
Tyler was always grateful for the things he had in life. I think we all could learn something from his short life. He stated on facebook, “thankful for the things I have in life, family, education, learning new things, being with people I love. I will never forget what some people go through in life; I am grateful and hope better things happen in the future. Achieve your goals, do new things, live your life”.
Tyler was a cornea and tissue donor. The donation of Tyler’s cornea’s have changed the way we see things- life is too short. Talking with the recipient who received one of Tyler’s cornea’s has showed us how special life is. We are proud he has donated and we have all signed up to be donors as well.
Since 2009, the Gabbey family has been hosting a Memorial Golf outing in his Memory, raising money for the scholarship that was sent up for a graduating Senior from Akron Central School by his close friend Sean.
*If you would like to nominate a hero of organ, eye or tissue donation, please fill out a form (click on the link below). We will be sharing these stories each month on Unyts blog and on our Donor Family Services page.
We’re so excited to take part in the competition “social media madness”. The whole idea is to boost our recognition in the social media world. We hope to increase brand awareness, engage the social community and increase the scope of our social reach. We think Unyts has a pretty good shot of winning this thing, but we need your help!
Share, retweet, “like” and most importantly-VOTE!!!!
Unyts has been selected to take part in the Social Madness Challenge. We’re asking people to help us boost our social media numbers by “liking” us on Facebook, following us on Twitter, and connecting with us on LinkedIn.
This is a contest that’s taking place in 43 cities across the country.
Voting starts June 1st-Tell all your friends!
Stay tuned for more information….
On May 1st, Mark Zuckerberg announced a new “Organ Donor” feature on Facebook. You can now share with your family, friends and the rest of the social network your donor status. This is the response by Sandy Shih Andrada, the President of Multicultural Affairs in Transplantation.
On behalf of the Association for Multicultural Affairs in Transplantation (AMAT), we applaud Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook for elevating the vital importance of organ and tissue donation among its millions of users . The increased transparency into one’s status as a registered organ and tissue donor will surely spark lively discussions regarding the decision to donate and save lives. Indeed, this discussion is especially timely within the African American community, which suffers disproportionately from myriad health disparities (high blood pressure, diabetes) that can lead to end-stage organ failure. Yet, there continues to be a widening gap in the percentage of African Americans saying “yes” to donation and those in need of life-saving transplants. This trend can also be seen in other multicultural communities. We have already noted an exponential increase in the number of people signing up to become donors on the heels of the Facebook announcement May 1st; our hope is that we will see more communities of color exploring the possibility of organ and tissue donation, making their donation decision and sharing their decisions with their families, friends and loved ones.
Sandy Shih Andrada
President, Association for Multicultural Affairs in Transplantation (AMAT)
Earlier this week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that users can now declare their “Organ Donor” status on their timeline of their Facebook page.
That Facebook announcement caused quite the spike in enrollments nationwide, including here in New York.
Typically, NY has been averaging about 17 online enrollments per day, and on the announcement day, we had 754, an increase of 4394%!
If you’d like to share your “organ donor” status, it’s easy…(just click below)
At Unyts, we know how important it is to become an organ donor. One single donor can save or enhance the lives of up to 50 people. Now, the rest of the world is beginning to see how easy it is to save a life.
ABC’s Nightline aired a special program on transplants following the announcment by Facebook that you can now add “organ donor” to your timeline. The Nightline crew spent a considerable amount of time at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota over the past couple of months interviewing physicians and patients.
If you missed the program, take a few minutes out of your day to watch these 2 segments from Nightline and see why it’s so important to sign the organ donor registry.
Watch the entire Nightline episode:
This is a very exciting time for Unyts and organ donation organizations across the country. Facebook has partnered with Donate Life America to save lives!
We know that over 114,000 people are awaiting organ transplants right now…
Facebook users can now share their decision to be an organ, eye and tissue donor on Timeline.
**Go to Timeline, click on “life Event,” select Health and Wellness,” choose “Organ Donor.” And make sure to click on the “Officially register” link to make your decision to be a donor official by registering. It’s that easy!
Or click here to watch an instructional video on how to let the world know you are a committed donor on Timeline.
Share this information with everyone you know and remind them to “like” the Donate Life America Facebook page, once they’ve checked their donor status on Facebook or through their state registry, if they have not officially registered in their state.
Watch Mark Zuckerberg’s interview with ABC News
Wear Blue & Green to win!
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