In a prior post, we introduced the six lifestyle pillars of health, both mental and physical:

  • Exercise: increase physical activity
  • Nutrition: eat a healthy diet
  • Recovery: rest and sleep
  • Psychology: improve your mood, manage your stress, and practice mindfulness (know yourself and be self-aware)
  • Relationships: form & maintain meaningful relationships
  • Substance abuse: avoid risky substances

We recently published posts about exercise and nutrition. This post will discuss how the remaining pillars impact our health and what to do about it.

Recovery

Over the years, as we started to understand it better, recovery has attracted more attention. Athletes of all levels tend to overtrain, have too few rest days, and lack quality and/or quantity of sleep. Balancing rest and exercise workload on the different body parts is essential if you want to improve your performance while reducing your injury risk. Devices like the Whoop or Garmin watches help you track your strain and recovery to obtain a better balance.

Psychology

Tracking and taking action to improve your mood and stress level are essential for your mental and physical health. If you feel sad a lot or most of the time, it is time to reach out to a mental health professional. It sounds obvious, but too many people do not. But even before you reach a clinical level, there are many things that you can do regularly to improve your mood and/or manage your stress level: eating a healthy diet, being active, especially in nature, practicing mindfulness and meditation have all shown many mental (and physical) health benefits. Regularly check in with yourself to see how you feel and determine what works best for you.

Relationships

Humans are social animals. If anything, Covid has shown how much isolation takes a toll: every age group has seen a dramatic increase in mental health issues. As far as health is concerned, we can never understate the importance of our social network, which can act as a support system: if you want to live a healthy life, surround yourself with like-minded people. You will naturally eat healthily, be active (walking, hiking, exercising…), and it will help your mood. But be careful, as this works both ways: healthy relationships help, but you cannot afford toxic ones. Fix them or terminate them.

Substance abuse

Beyond the obvious reasons why abusing illegal substances is detrimental to your body, legal substances can be as damaging, and in many cases, their abuse and addiction are promoted by the same biological pathways, namely, reward mechanisms in the brain (dopamine, for example). These include a wide array of substances like alcohol, tobacco, medical drugs (like opioids, for example), and sugar. 

Studies have shown that there is no safe amount of alcohol or tobacco consumption, and they have both been linked to chronic diseases like cancer and cardiovascular disease. Regular, even moderate, consumption of alcohol (especially beer and spirits) can also lead to increased uric acid levels, which raises your risk of developing gout and many chronic conditions like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, chronic kidney disease, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Sugar is highly addictive as it hijacks our brain’s reward circuitry. It has been said that getting off of sugar is more difficult than getting off of cocaine. Sugar has been linked to many chronic conditions like type-II diabetes and Alzheimer’s Disease.

The best way to keep things under control is to avoid having anything on a regular basis and take frequent breaks. For example, if you are a heavy coffee drinker, abstaining for a few days can help you see how your body reacts and assess if you have become addicted: if you get intense headaches, it might be time for you to reduce your daily intake. Coffee has health benefits, but, like any other substance, too much of it regularly can become an issue, especially if you are not a fast caffeine metabolizer.

References