We spend most of our week working, so why not take advantage of this time to help optimise our health. Here are some simple tips to show you how.
Stand up
We’ve all been in this situation – we’re madly busy at our desk or just engrossed in a task and all of a sudden we realise we’ve been sitting for a couple of hours hunched over our computers.
Sitting for long uninterrupted bouts can have a detrimental effect on our metabolism, circulation and even bone health. Being in a seated position for extended lengths of time can create muscle imbalances – our posture and back health can be impacted and over the long term it can leave us more susceptible to uncommunicable diseases such as heart disease or type 2 diabetes.
Office workers in particular will spend 70-80% of waking hours seated.
The good news is standing and moving around for 2-3 minutes every hour can help remedy long hours at our desks. My issue here is wandering off for half an hour and not being able to remember what I was doing when I come back.
There’s an app that can help us – of course there is, in fact there are a number of them. I use ‘Stand up’. It’s free, you can set the hours you want to work within and how often you want it to go off to remind you to stand up and move around.
Another option of course is standing / walking for your phone calls or standing for your zoom or in person (ACTUAL IN PERSON!) meetings. In fact holding ‘standing meetings’ has another advantage – they tend to get wrapped up a lot quicker. Standing more often burns more calories and can have a positive impact on our sleep.
Introduce some house plants
Indoor air pollution can be caused by VOCs – volatile organic compounds, are tiny chemical particles in the air from the likes of aerosols, cleaning productions, plastic, furniture as well as carbon dioxide.
Plants can improve air quality by absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen through photosynthesis, they increase humidity by transpiring water vapor through their leaf pores, and they can absorb pollutants like the aforementioned VOCs, on the external surfaces of leaves and on the plant root-soil system.
In the past studies have shown adding plants to office space to can help employees improve their mood, memory and concentration and possibly contributing to a reduction in headaches, coughs and other chest related illnesses.
In a small room with high levels of natural light, 5-6 plants can have a positive impact. The fast growing, thirsty plants work best e.g. Peace lillies and devil’s ivy.
Mobilise Your Hands!
Reduce the wrist of carpal tunnel syndrome and repetitive strain injury by the some simple hand and wrist exercises during the day. Shake out your hands, interlace your hands roll your wrists, make a fist and then stretch your fingers out as far away from each other as you can. Interlace your hands and push your palms away. Try ‘spiders doing push ups against a mirror’ touching your finger tips to each other and splay them in and out.
Exercise your eyes
There’s nothing like staring at a screen for to make your peepers feel tired. Exercise those ocular muscles with the 20-20-20 rule. Look at an object 20 metres away from your screen for 20 seconds every 20 minutes. I was delighted to find out that eye rolls are also beneficial, I’m pretty sure I’d get into the medals in the eye-rolling competition.
Make the most of your lunch hour
Sometimes it’s easier to stay at your desk and work, get a bit of online shopping done, some life admin or just have a rummage around on social media. But if you can, get moving. Get out for a walk. If the weather isn’t lending itself to outdoor activities, get some stretches or even a few strength moves at your desk. Try some seated cat cows, side stretches, some gentle twists, a seated (on your chair) forward fold where you rest your trunk onto your thighs and enjoy that yummy back stretch. Or if you’d like to get a little more energetic, some squats to your chair, single leg squats, tricep dips against your chair or push ups off your chair or desk.
Stay Hydrated
You don’t need to guzzle gallons of water to stay hydrated but keeping a bottle of water on your desk serves as a nice reminder. We need water to hydrate the brain (it’s 90% water!), digest food and flush out our kidneys and to replace the water we lose through exhaling and sweating. Try drinking a glass of water before a meal, which can not only hydrate us but can also stop us overeating. Staying hydrated can help can help reduce headaches and fatigue as well as support our cognition and overall performance.
Men need about 2l of water a day women about 1.6l, if you’re exercising / sweating profusely, you may need more. Herbal teas and milk are also hydrating. Peeing around 5-7 times a day is about the norm – and it’s another way of getting us up and moving.
