Peak Health Wellness Insights Issue 3
Mental Resilience
This recent meta-analysis suggests that forest bathing (walking through or spending time in a forest) can be an effective tool to reduce stress.
As more and more people live in urban environments, it is increasingly important to deliberately stay in touch with nature as it can boost your mood and reduce cortisol levels in the body.
Sleep
This study investigates the implications of inadequate sleep on work performance. The results showed those who had poor sleep experienced more distracting thoughts and cognitive interference throughout the work day. This inevitably lowered productivity and raised stress levels in study participants, which then impacted sleep the subsequent night (becoming a cyclic issue!).
Takeaway: Sleep is vulnerable to daily stress and a contributor to stressful situations during the work day, making it all the more important to prioritise every night.
Nutrition
This research (also here) further supports the health benefits of a plant based diet, especially in regards to cardiovascular disease. The study investigated incidence of heart failure in those consuming 5 different diet models: convenience (fast food, pizza, pasta etc), plant-based, sweets, Southern, and alcohol/salads (wine, beer, leafy greens and salad dressings). Results showed those who consumed the plant-based diet had an impressively lower rate of heart failure.
In summary, plant-based diets continue to demonstrate positive benefits for heart health.
Fitness
This latest study (reviewed further here) shows that moderate morning exercise improves working memory, cognitive function, and serum BDNF (important for healthy neurons in the brain) throughout the rest of the day, even if the rest of the day is spent sedentary. However, for boosted short-term memory and optimal brain functioning, it is advised to also break up the remaining part of the day with brief walking breaks.
Productivity Tip
Group similar routine tasks instead of interrupting a project to do them piecemeal. Set a few times a day to blast through your email responses, returning phone calls, entering data into a spreadsheet, etc.
Habit Hack of the week
Try to hack phone addiction with an environmental hack, such as turning off notifications and uninstalling time-wasting apps. Put your phone on Do Not Disturb if you are in the middle of a project and put it away in a drawer. This strategy will work more powerfully than your willpower to not look at your phone when it next buzzes.