Mental Health Awareness Month: How 9-to-5 Workers Can Improve Their Mental Health
Kasparas Aleknavičius, MD, Head of Medical Affairs at digital health and wellness accelerator Kilo Health, together with his team, has been researching the topic of mental health and sedentary lifestyle correlation. They seek to educate 9-to-5 workers to pursue a physically and mentally healthy life even if the circumstances can be aggravating.
Over 80% of all US jobs are predominantly sedentary, and 8.4% of all US adults have faced a major depressive episode at least once in their lives. Various studies outline the correlations between lack of physical activity and emotional well-being. The co-independence between the increase in sedentary jobs and the increase in depression rates in the US suggests that not all individuals are capable of adopting the new normal, and physical and emotional health will suffer.
K. Aleknavičius urges people to consider the complexity of their well-being instead of focusing on certain areas of their body: “People tend to think about the body and mind separately. Gladly, this situation has slowly been changing over the past decade. The Latin phrase mens sana in corpore sano, which is usually used in various sports contexts to stress the importance of physical exercise on our psychological well-being, reminds us that physical health problems significantly increase our risk of developing mental health problems and vice versa.”
According to him, a sedentary job impacts one’s physical and mental health in uncountable ways. It is rare to find an individual whose physical health is suffering while mental health is striving.
“In fact, 68% of office workers say the stress of their job has contributed to their weight gain, with 61% saying they tend to eat more unhealthy foods when they are stressed at work,” says Aleknavičius, MD.
K. Aleknavičius mentions that sedentary behavior is significantly associated with higher prevalence rates of anxiety, depression, obesity, and suicide ideation; this comes both from a constant focus on work challenges and the lack of physical activity.
“Let’s start with the situation where sedentary workers are more often overweight than non-desk workers. Almost twice as many sedentary workers say that they have gained weight in their current position compared to non-sedentary jobs. That by itself is an incapacitating condition to be in – diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, arthritis, cancer, various internal organ damage – you name it. You double the risk,” says the Head of Medical Affairs.
As Aleknavičius puts it, people should be more cautious about the co-dependence of their mental and physical health. It is never too late to start, but it would be most beneficial to perform prevention and avoid serious impact on health. 9-to-5 workers should have two pillars in order to sustain and maintain their healthy body functions. The first pillar is the physical body state, and the second pillar is emotions. A harmonious balance of a healthy body and a healthy mind is the key to fulfillment. These two pillars can hardly be achieved separately.
For sedentary 9-to-5 workers, K. Aleknavičius suggests experimenting, testing, and tracking. In other words, to find an enjoyable activity that would dissociate the mind from work. Starting with small and incremental steps as there is no need to turn your life upside down.
“Run, but don’t do 5 miles in your first run. Meditate, but don’t meditate for 50 minutes in the first week. Do yoga, but don't take three classes in the first week. All of these first pushes are getting you towards straining, not training. It goes on and on with all the approaches, including various diets or fasting.”
As K. Aleknavičius mentioned, intermittent fasting is a convenient way to sustain a healthy mind and body because fasting activates autophagy. Autophagy is a process when the body clears away damaged cells and regenerates new ones. With the "auto" meaning “self,” and "-phagy" meaning "eat," the name of the process aptly describes the mechanism.
Inducing autophagy will remove any dysfunctional cells from the body and recycle any damaged cell components that can be spared to regenerate newer, healthier cells.
“Fasting is proven to get rid of excess weight in many cases. But of course, you have to start small – don’t jump right into the 16:8 regimen because most people fail – it is too much for the first time. Start with 10 hours and slowly increase the fasting window because that’s how you build a habit,” explains K. Aleknavičius, MD.
All health-related practices such as intermittent fasting should be rehearsed with extreme caution. Consistency and professional assistance are crucial in order to improve health matters. For this reason, Aleknavičius, together with his team, has created the DoFasting personal fasting assistant.
Often, 9-to-5 workers are based in a social medium where high performance is the goal, forgetting that life should be a marathon, not a sprint. High performers focus on goals and superior results while leaving behind their mental and physical health.
“People should keep in mind that every task – physical or mental – has the same principles. You have to train to perform better. And training includes stress + rest. If you are not having enough rest between your performance sessions, you are just going to strain instead of train.
This is greatly shown in China’s 996 working culture and in other high-performance work countries and cultures. Singapore has one of the highest youth suicide rates because they are straining themselves and burning out working,” says Aleknavičius.
The essential idea to sustain a balance in life among 9-to-5 workers is to comprehend that emotional health and physical health are not separate entities. Lack of oversight of one pillar will eventually deteriorate the second one.
About DoFasting
DoFasting consists of three integrated product lines: the DoFasting app, the DoFasting Supplements, and the DoFasting Smart Scale. DoFasting creates integrated intermittent fasting solutions for people looking to improve overall health, boost immune responses, and lose weight. The DoFasting products offer continuous support, education, and guidance on intermittent fasting, nutrition, and training.
Contact
Ugne Sineviciute
ugne.sineviciute@dofasting.com