Many corporations have gotten on bandwagon as a way of adding value to employee package and hopefully limiting health care costs. Some programs include onsite medical care and bag lunch classes on nutrition and exercise. Very progressive programs may have lifestyle consultants or personal coaches. But most merely house onsite exercise equipment that employees may use in spare time.

Unfortunately, these elements do little to improve overall health and well being except for most avid and health conscious employees. Why? Because physical condition and nutritional intake is only a small part of whole person.

The number one killer in this country is heart disease. Yes, food and exercise play a part in maintaining health. Obesity is a health issue. But a major cause of heart disease as well as many other chronic and deadly illnesses, is chronic stress. How many people even know exactly what stress is and what it does? The fact is, if strenuous exercise is only solution used for stress, it can be deadly.

Wellness programs would be much more effective if employees were given concrete information regarding stress, what it is, how it impacts body and mind, and what they could do about it.

Employees would benefit from understanding that source of their stress is not lack of exercise, but emotion resulting from real life problems. Problems including relationship conflict, finances, parenting, life/work balance, negative thinking, and other issues cannot be solved merely through meditation, relaxation, exercise or a hot bath. Stress producing problems must be solved and they can be eliminated. They are source of life-threatening chronic stress.

Like a war hero who becomes an anti-war activist, this turnaround is both curious and inspiring. His story underscores complexity of concept of belief and our need to hold on to some form of validation.

Shermer is publisher of Skeptic Magazine. He is quick to point out that what many people think of as skepticism is really cynicism. Being skeptical has nothing to do with being a grumpy curmudgeon who discounts any idea that disrupts his world view. It is less a position and more an approach using science and reason.

Skeptics are open to looking into anything and everything, but are reluctant to latch on to theories without sufficient evidence to back them up. Skeptics don't sit around trashing ideas of others--that would be a waste of thinking time. Instead, they luxuriate in opportunity to further explore interesting notions.

The motto of Skeptics Society and Skeptic Magazine is a statement made by 17th-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza: "I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them."

This is a fabulous approach to life, even though it may require more patience than most of us can muster. If we can't count on any absolute truths and we don't want to get bogged down by muddy thinking of relativism, we've got to do our best to establish what Shermer calls "provisional" truths. He uses word "provisional" a lot to refer to those pretty good truths and almost universal ideas we tend to think of as fairly consistent. Is infanticide bad? Yes, almost always. There could be, in some cultures and in some specific circumstances, ethical reasons to justify infanticide, but we recognize that those are few and far between. Provisional ethics allows for continued discussion and exploration in a way that a black and white view never will.