Peak Health Wellness Insights Issue 35
Op Ed: The New Normal
Written by Rose Davis
A series to discuss new lifestyle changes brought about by the effects of a global pandemic
I am overwhelmed by how quickly a community can be derailed. We are stubborn creatures of habit, routine, and predictability. This is not to say we do not adapt and change as a society, we do. However, when these changes threaten our habits, routines and life's predictability, instability ensues quite quickly. Coronavirus is just one example of this.
What might the impact of this ultimately be? What is going to change and will it cause forever change? This situation currently calls to question how we eat, sleep, socialise, work, interact with others, exercise, and more....
Focus: The office meeting
Research has shown that the average office worker spends approximately 31 hours per month in meetings that are unproductive. However, now that most of us are working remotely, those meetings are largely being re-examined. Not only do virtual meetings save hours of commuting time per week, but group Zoom meetings, with only one person able to speak at a time, make chit chat more concise and the agenda adhered to with more rigour.
As the informal office meetings for which we struggle to define a purpose have come to a halt, we are no longer wasting precious work hours. As we discussed in Issue 16 (link here for anyone who missed it: https://www.peakhealth.ch/blog/2019/11/12/peak-health-wellness-insights-c9lr4), experts suggest that meetings that do not define what “problem solving stage” should be addressed, are huge wastes of time and achieve very little. As we are all becoming more mindful about the purpose of our Zoom meetings, are we also achieving more?
Will this new structure change forever how we approach meetings? Will adults of all generations become increasingly more comfortable with virtual meetings? And will remote meetings with defined agendas become the new normal in our workplaces?
Mental Resilience
Feeling burned out? The contributors could be more related to depression than you think
This study has found that workplace factors that contribute to burnout also heavily predict depression, more so than we previously thought. This research even suggests that burn out and depression are so interlinked that measuring depression could be the key way to measure burnout reliably. This is incredibly helpful because assessing burnout has historically been unclear and hard to measure. Lastly, the study also suggests that this overlap in burnout and depression, means that interventions to mitigate burnout in the workplace will likely also help to mitigate depression (and vice versa).
Sleep
Evidence that human brains replay our waking experiences while we sleep
This new study is the first done in humans to demonstrate the way in which the brain replays waking experiences when we rest. The findings demonstrate that during a rest period directly following a task, the brain replays the exact same neural firing patterns that were activated while performing the task. This suggests even rest after completing an activity could be helpful for learning. The next step in this research will be to confirm that this brain activity plays a role in memory consolidation.
Nutrition
Revealing links between education and a healthy diet
New findings show that higher education level is associated with improved nutritional intake, especially in lower income European countries. This suggests that policies and strategies to support education in lower income and lower education groups, could likely reduce the risk of noncommunicable diseases such as obesity, hypertension and cardiovascular disease, which are a leading cause of death, disease and disability in the European Region.
Fitness
Exercise boosts motor skill learning via boosting brain plasticity
This study shows that exercise switches on specific neurotransmitters in the brain responsible for learning motor-skills. This means exercise enhances brain plasticity that improves one’s ability to acquire future motor coordination skills such as balance, speed, and agility. These benefits are important for children and adults of all ages.
Productivity Tip
Take advantage of your peak productivity
Tune into the times of the day in which you are most productive and try to organise your day so that you have uninterrupted time to work during those hours
Habit Hack of the week
Try staying away from your smartphone for the first hour of every day
Your phone is a major distractor and can also be a source of stress. Allowing one hour every morning to yourself without your phone will likely boost your mood and productivity