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In a world full of visible dangers, the last thing anyone in North Carolina wants to think about is the invisible ones. But they're there and, believe it or not, many of them may be lurking inside your home. According to the CDC, each year, approximately 430 people in the U.S. die from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning and more than 50,000 are treated for it. Mold is prevalent in an estimated 70 percent of American homes. And the EPA and Surgeon General attribute more than 21,000 annual deaths from lung cancer in the U.S. to radon exposure.
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Successful small businesses are often the result of the proverbial blood, sweat, and tears of the owner. They require no small measure of risk, sacrifice, and commitment. Long hours, unpredictability, increased responsibility, financial insecurity, and a host of other factors all make running a small business a challenging and taxing endeavor.
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Nobody likes to go to the doctor, especially when they aren't sick. But preventative healthcare is a huge piece of the long, healthy, and happy life puzzle. Annual wellness exams often include a general screening, vitals check, labs, and maintenance for chronic health conditions. In fact, it isn't uncommon that these annual exams identify early-stage diseases like cancer, concerning blood pressure and cholesterol levels, thyroid dysfunction, and a host of other common deficiencies and abnormalities. And, since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) mandated 100 percent coverage for preventative care, there's no excuse for missing your annual physical.
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Anymore, it's an expectation: New Year's Day rolls around and a laundry list of resolutions lies before us. Gym membership and self-help book sales skyrocket. The revelry of the holidays gives way to Dry January, "clean" meal planning, and the next best diet. Entrepreneurs recommit to the hustle. A growth mindset is on the tip of everyone's tongue. It seems that everyone is looking to fix, improve, and ascend the latter of some self-determined actualization or another.
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Roadside breakdowns can be more than a mere inconvenience, emergencies of this nature, if not prepared for and handled correctly, can be dangerous for all involved, including other drivers. Following a few basic steps can ensure that you and your vehicle make it through the breakdown as easily and safely as possible.
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Little in life is as important as healthful, restful sleep, and lots of it. But little in life seems to evade American adults as pervasively. Insufficient sleep, health, lifestyle impacts nearly two-thirds of Americans. And, according to a recent study by the CDC, one in three adults doesn't get enough sleep on a regular basis.
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Holiday traditions are not only a part of our respective regional celebrations, but they're also a distinctly integral thread woven through each of our families. Whether it's holiday cookie-making parties or Christmas Day sledding, Christmas Eve mass, or the lighting of the menorah, we are a diverse people rooted in traditions. While some of those traditions are deeply enmeshed in the spirituality of the season, others are about gathering, creating, and feasting our way into the new year. And still, others are just, well, we're not entirely sure what they're enmeshed in, but we're here for them.
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Few can forget the epic expletive-rich scene in which Clark Griswold is given a jelly of the month membership in lieu of his expected bonus in the holiday classic National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. A longstanding tradition among small and large businesses alike, holiday bonuses provide a well-earned gift for valuable employees in appreciation for their hard work and commitment. Employees plan on these bonuses to offset increased holiday expenditures and often include them in their compensation expectations.
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We've said it before: the distinction between a small and large business is somewhat arbitrary. At what point in the business growth life cycle do you cross over? One way to answer the question is when your business no longer qualifies for a Business Owners Package Policy. The BOP bundles up several kinds of insurance protection in one policy. But as business become larger the risks they pose become more varied and difficult to address in one policy.
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It's an invisible facet of the aging process, but more critically linked to maintaining health, functionality, and autonomy than perhaps all else: brain health. From infancy to adulthood, the brain is in a constant state of growth, forming more than a million new neural connections every second in the earliest years of life and achieving 90 percent of its adult volume by age 6.
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