Top Health Tips for 2021

What are your health goals for 2021? 

Due to Covid-19, metabolic health, physical and mental fitness has become even more essential to maintain or improve. 

Here are some tips to help get you started:

Regular movement is essential for immune function, pain management and general physical fitness

• Try to move frequently at a slow pace.
• Walk for 2-5 hours per week.
• Get up from sitting and walk for 2-3 minutes every hour, 10 minutes every 2 hours and for 30 minutes at lunchtime.
• Change your position as often as possible.
• Some discomfort when moving is not a cause for concern; it will usually ease in time.

Developing muscle strength and stability can help prevent injury and improve physical resilience.

• Complete 20 minutes of safe and effective resistance exercise, twice a week. Your physiotherapist will prescribe a selection of exercises as required.
• Try to include everyday activities that will help maintain muscle strength, such as climbing stairs or standing up and sitting down repeatedly.
• Safely carrying or moving heavy objects, ask your physiotherapist about safe technique.

Some types of food promote systemic inflammation and can exacerbate the body's inflammatory immune response to infection.

• Avoid sugar and hidden sugars in processed foods.
• Avoid seed oils, e.g. sunflower, rapeseed oils, especially in cooking.
• Avoid highly processed grains, e.g. in bread, baking etc.

Stress can suppress immune function and slow recovery from illness.

• Try to avoid ruminating about the past and the future, live in the present.
• Try to be accepting of what you cannot change and focus on what you can.
• List three things you are grateful for each day.
• Although sometimes hard to imagine, things could always be worse.

 7-8 hours of sleep is essential for healing and repair as well as regulating the function of the immune and nervous system

• Try to expose yourself to natural light, early in the morning.
• Move as much as you can, preferably outdoors, especially when the sun is out.
• Avoid caffeine after 3 pm (tea, coffee etc.).
• Minimise the use of screens before bedtime.

 I hope you find some of these tips useful; there is much we can do to make ourselves healthier and more resilient actively.

 If you are struggling with pain or physical problems and need help, please give us a call.

 In good health,

Simon Coghlan MSc, BSc Physio, DipMedAc

Practice Principal

References:

Horowitz BN. Exercised: Why something We never evolved to do is healthy and rewarding By Daniel E. Lieberman, New York, NY: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2021. 

Shanahan C. Deep nutrition: Why your genes need traditional food. Flatiron Books; 2017 Jan 3.

Irvine WB. The Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer, and More Resilient. WW Norton & Company; 2019 Sep 3.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay