New World Wellness: Beyond a Gym membership

We hear the phrase “New World” a lot these days because we live in uncertain times. One thing, however, is certain – and more so than ever – health is the ultimate wealth.?This is why we need to talk about New World wellness.

The world as we know it is shifting and changing rapidly. Gone are the days of easy access to a gym or any access at all. And the same goes for corporate meet-ups and check-ins with colleagues or HR. In this changing world, we need a rapid change in wellness practices.?

I am a firm believer that Biohacking is the future of corporate wellness. So, dive in with me and see how your wellness can go beyond a gym membership. Here are 6 proposed New World Wellness Hacks:

Cryotherapy

Cryotherapy is a medical technique involving exposure to very cold temperatures (-130° C to -140° C) for 3 minutes.?It’s also called cold exposure therapy.

The controlled exposure to extreme cold causes rapid cooling of the skin leading to vasoconstriction. This triggers the nervous system, which stimulates an autonomic response that promotes anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory responses in the body.?

Just one treatment is enough to boost your wellness. But with regular treatments, you’ll start to see great benefits to your whole body and mind.

You can even provide your employees with a cryotherapy membership, like the ones?London Cryo offers! And the scientifically validated benefits of Cryotherapy?

Reduces Inflammation ?– Cold exposure increases the presence of anti-inflammatory proteins and decreases pro-inflammatory cytokine levels circulating in your body. therefore, reducing inflammation and pain in the body. This means cryotherapy can be effective at improving the symptoms of many inflammation-related ailments which affect many corporate workers such as exercise recovery, auto-immune conditions,?joint dysfunctions, and low back pain.??

Improved Immune System Response ?– Cryotherapy boosts the immune system by increasing white blood cell count, including pro and anti-inflammatory proteins. Regular cold exposure can help make you more resilient to colds and flus, which in the corporate context means fewer days lost to sick leave.?

Brown Fat Activation ?– Cold exposure activates Brown Adipose Tissue (BAT); these fat cells are mitochondria rich and when activated increase your metabolism and energy expenditure. This means the rate at which you burn calories skyrockets! So, activating BAT with cryotherapy can help you lose weight.?

Helps with mental health ?– Studies have shown cryotherapy can improve the symptoms of depression and anxiety. It can also improve your mood, which in turn, often makes you more able to deal with and manage difficult situations and problems.?

Red light therapy ?

A corporate office may have a meditation room but how many have a red light therapy room? Red light therapy also known as photobiomodulation, uses two waves of light: red light and near-infrared light.?The Target Light Combo ?is a great option for this.

Red light delivers light readily absorbed by surface tissues and cells, leading to enhanced skin health and healing; whereas, near-infrared penetrates deeper into the body, leading to enhanced recovery and inflammation support. The combination of both wavelengths can improve cellular health across the whole body. These are the benefits in greater detail:

• Brain Health ?

Long stressful hours in front of a computer screen erodes one’s mental sharpness. Where long workdays become long workweeks, and long work weeks blend into months, your brain performance–how you process information, recall memories, and respond to external stimuli–will deteriorate. And as we age, age-related cognitive decline starts to set in also.?

Light exposure plays a vital role in affecting the biological pathways that impact your sharpness of mind. Light for your brain is a key signal for when you should be awake or asleep.?

Most of us spend hours and hours in front or under blue light (especially now), and that can seriously impact the biological signals our brains need to function and age optimally. Chronic exposure to blue light means the biological pathways needed for mental rest and recovery?are not activated optimally.?

This is why red light therapy is almost indispensable when it comes to New World Wellness. Including red light into one’s daily routine supports better mental acuity as it stimulates the mitochondria within the cells, enhances blood flow to the brain which helps heal stressed and damaged tissues.?

Some studies prove red light to be a powerful antioxidant, which helps to scavenge, neutralise and eliminate free radical PUFA metabolites. One of the leading reasons we see age-related cognitive decline is due to a buildup of free radical PUFA metabolites; a process that exacerbates the build-up of junk cells and starts the pro-ageing process known as?garb-ageing .?

• Performance & Recovery ?

Quality recovery time helps you build back stronger from acute soreness and inflammation, so you can perform better. Recovery is not just about healing from exercise-related stress; all stress that the body goes through requires effective recovery time.

Just like an athlete can overtrain, a person can overwork at their job – inducing mental and work-related stress. Intermittent stress is effective at building resilience but chronic stress, and the absence of adequate recovery, promotes inflation that can accelerate ageing-related conditions.??

Red light boosts your body’s ability to process inflammation thus, boosting your ability to effectively recover. Red light improves cellular energy production and increases blood flow to tissues; this means a greater amount of fresh, oxygen-rich blood, which is essential for proper healing and recovery reaches over-stressed and damaged tissues in the body.?

For what is a comparatively small time and energy investment, red light helps you prioritise recovery and thus allow you to recover stronger. Over time this improves longevity and helps avoid chronic pain problems.

• Healthy Skin?

The skin is our largest organ and it does a lot more than make us attractive. Skin health plays a vital role in one’s mental and physical wellbeing.?

It’s essential for your immunity, blood circulation, CNS signalling, heat regulation, nutrient synthesis, and self-esteem. Many of these functions are sensitive and responsive to the light in our environment; so, taking in light at the right times is crucial for optimal skin health and overall health and wellness.

Red light is a powerful signal to the skin that works to enhance cellular function. When the mitochondria in skin cells absorb the red light it upregulates the cells ATP production, producing more energy which increases blood flow; stimulates the synthesis of collagen, basic fibroblast growth factors (bFGF), and proliferation of fibroblasts.?

This is why the skincare community and leading experts are big proponents of making light therapy an integral part of their recommended skincare routines. Using red light regularly will, over time, translate to healthier, glowing skin that looks & feels smoother and softer.

• Eye Health ?

The average office worker will spend almost 1,700 hours a year in front of a computer screen,?a poll found ; and this poll was done before 2020 when remote working became the norm! The average is likely much higher and doesn’t even include hours of mobile screen time.?

Spending lots of time in front of a screen negatively impacts our eye health. Including red light therapy into daily work, schedules is a cutting edge way to help offset the negative effects long screen time is having on our eye health.?It’s TLC for the eyes!

Red light improves mitochondrial function in the eyes. Many concluded and emerging studies show how red light is effective in healing several retinal diseases, including age-related macular degeneration and amblyopia.?

One study ?showed red light therapy significantly improved visual acuity in 95% of eyes with cataracts and 97% of eyes without cataracts. On top of that, these improvements lasted 3 – 36 months after treatment.

Another study ?looking into how red light therapy can successfully treat several retinal diseases, concluded by saying red light therapy is “well-poised to become an important player in the treatment of a wide range of retinal disorders.”

• Sleep Optimisation ??

Sleep is essential for health, wellness, and performance. Your health can’t be optimal if your sleep quality is poor. The negative effects of poor sleep is described very well, especially in Matthew Walker’s book?Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams.?

Walker shows how poor sleep can disrupt your overall metabolism, lead to weight gain, poor digestion, and nutrient absorption. Great sleep, on the other hand, improves mental health, levels of attractiveness, weight loss, and wards off metabolic diseases.?

The?blue light ?from computer screens is a potent disrupter of the hormones that regulate our circadian rhythm. You can block a great amount of blue light out with these?Blue Blocking Eyewear .

Red light therapy improves sleep as it acts as a light supplement of what you would otherwise get from the sun. Since our circadian rhythm is designed around the sun, exposing ourselves to red light helps to balance the production of melatonin and its counterpart cortisol; which helps us fall asleep and stay asleep.?I highly recommend the?Target Light Combo ?for red light therapy.

Additionally, red light fights inflammation and so can counteract the negative effects that accompany poor sleep.?Large meta-analytical ?studies have shown light therapy to be effective in the treatment of sleep problems in general.

IV infusions?

One key to optimal health and wellness is having sufficient vitamin levels. This means not being deficient in the important vitamins and minerals our bodies need. The modern environment is a leech on our vitamin and mineral levels. Even modern medicine, which does wonders to heal ailments can leech essential vitamins and minerals from our bodies.?

Living and working in high EMF environments is also?shown ?to nip away essential nutrients from our bodies. The traditional way to overcome these issues is with supplements, and many people respond positively to vitamin supplementation.

However, vitamin supplementation is great for everyone.?This is because vitamin supplements often take several weeks before they take effect. People can forget to take them, and it’s?estimated ?that we only absorb around 20% of the nutrients we take orally; even less if one suffers from gut issues.

Most of these issues can be overcome with intravenous (IV) vitamin drips. They are a fast and powerful way to improve your overall health. IV vitamin drips deliver vitamins directly into your blood, bypassing your digestive system which leads to more effective and instant results. With so many treatment options available, you can personalise treatment to support your body’s unique needs.

Here are some of the most popular IV drip treatments at?LondonCryo :

• Immune system boost?– these drips are chock full of NAD+ and Glutathione which are master antioxidants that upregulate antiviral pathways and bactericidal mechanisms in the body.?
• Nutrient deficiencies?– depending on deficiencies, these drips provide the most biologically available nutrients to give your body the nutrients it needs.?
• Performance?– containing vitamins, minerals, and amino acids that boost hydration and optimize your body’s energy-producing capacity.???
• Detox & anti-ageing?–?antioxidant-rich drips that help fight off premature signs of ageing and help your body flush harmful toxins out of your body more effectively.

Journaling?

The last thing anyone wants in the corporate world is more homework. But, making journaling a daily practice is a strategy that has helped brilliant and successful people become better at what they do! Why not capitalise on this success and make journaling a daily business practice??

There are many innovative ways to implement a daily journaling practice. You could create a special 5-minute daily journal tailored to your business. Or you could bring in experts to create workshops or webinars to teach journaling. You could also provide subscriptions to journaling apps.?

No matter the way, journaling is adaptive and its results are effective at both the level of personal wellness and business performance.

A?Harvard Business School ?study found that those who journaled at the end of the day had a 25% increase in performance when compared against the control group who did not journal.?

Stanford University ?researchers found journaling to improve communication skills such as writing reflects clear thinking, and in turn, clear communication. Another study in the?Journal of Experimental Psychology ?found that journaling boosts working memory; as it helps to remove intrusive and negative thoughts, which can often leech our cognitive resources.?

Cambridge University ?also looked into how journaling can help with traumatic and stressful events. It found that writing about such events for 15–20 minutes resulted in improvements in both physical and psychological health. Similarly,?The Journal of Experimental Psychology ?found that journaling before bed decreases mental chatter and worry, allowing you to fall asleep faster.?

These studies show that journaling is a powerful mechanism behind learning, optimising performance, and stress management. Integrating journaling as a daily business practice will not only positively impact the health and wellness of the employees, but also boost the overall performance of the company.?

Tracking wellness

Integrating wellness trackers into your daily business practices can help empower employees to better understand their health and state of wellbeing. Wearables provide actionable insights that lead to better wellness choices and can act as a powerful preventative healthcare measure.?

Wearables such as an Apple Watch, Fit Bit, Whoop Strap, or Oura ring help a lot. These devices track metrics like steps, daily calorie burn, HRV, and sleep cycles.?

For example, a lower HRV is associated with poor fitness, mood, and increased risk of disease. Whereas, a higher HRV indicates better cardiovascular fitness and more resilience to stress. With data insights like HRV, you get direction, making it much easier to build good habits in line with your body’s unique potential.?

Tracking can go deeper than skin, and it’s now relatively cheap and easy to track key biological and physiological indicators with do-it-at-home blood tests. Blood testing can be done semi-regularly as a?preventative health service for employees, as it helps employees know what’s going on inside them before it’s too late.?

Since most people wait until something goes wrong before they react, having regular blood tests that analyse cortisol “stress” levels, thyroid function, liver function, vitamin, and mineral levels, gives accurate insights which allow for proactive steps to be taken. In the long term, this can minimise the risk of long-term chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes.?

Remote Access to Wellness Coaching?

Although meeting in person has become near impossible it does not follow that wellness has to be put on hold. Quite the opposite! With growing physical isolation, it is ever more important to keep a strong bond going between colleagues and executives at all levels in an organisation.?

This is where I come in, providing online workshops, webinars, and virtual classes either live or pre-recorded, which can involve team-building exercise if carried out as a group or done individually with private coaching.?

I am no stranger to the corporate world –?once a lawyer, always a lawyer. I have done the long days, nights, weeks, months and pushed myself to my mental limits; and also burnt out! I know the demands of corporate life. I understand the pressure people put on themselves to achieve excellence. There is nothing wrong with this. Achieving excellence in one’s profession is a virtuous goal. However, it can become all too toxic quite quickly.

This is where I think Biohacking Corporate Wellness, and using a coach like myself to help optimise company performance is essential. It will help your company to avoid the pitfalls that can come with toxic work practices.

It is all about working smart and hard. I have worked with many Execs, who in their work-life are sharp and intelligent investors, but don’t apply the same investment logic to their own mental and physical health. Neglecting your mental and physical health is like leaving money on the table. How much more success could one achieve if their mindset and physical health are optimised for corporate performance?

Mindset and physical optimisation are essential for high performance. And I pride myself on my ability to help my clients, business teams, and companies transform out of a fight or flight mindset into a growth and opportunity mindset.

A problem I encounter many times with clients is the apathy that comes from vast amounts of conflicting health and wellness advice, concerning what to do and what to avoid.

I help ?take away the guesswork by bursting conventional bubbles by offering truly innovative and tailored biohacks to the clients and businesses I work with. I always bear in mind the corporate environment, and the digital-normal reality of the world we live in ( Zoom sessions, online modules, and remote Workshops either group or individual).

My first main focus is often always with mindset because the body goes where the mind leads it. Most people fail to cultivate wellness habits due to mindset issues. It is very difficult to make changes alone. So, I work?close and personal?so no client of mine or individual in a company I’m working with feels isolated. Great and powerful change is possible and easier with personal connections and coaching.

Optimise your health to upgrade your performance!

Check out more ways to optimise your health, life and work?here