Wellness – Impakt Health

Workplace Fatigue

Written by Josh on January 11, 2021. Posted in Age Management, Lifestyle, Wellness. Leave a Comment

What Is Work Fatigue and How Can You Fight It

Anyone who has ever spent their days drudging away on a keyboard, just counting the seconds until they are able to head home, knows that the experience of work fatigue is undeniable. This compounding mental, physical, and emotional fatigue, often brought about by our desk-bound modern job environments can be simply inconvenient for some people, and entirely debilitating for others.

There is good news, though.

Work fatigue has begun to be taken much more seriously, both in the workplace and clinical research. Thanks to this, real-world actionable advice to prevent it from becoming disruptive to your personal life, work productivity, and your job as a whole exists, and we have curated some of the most important aspects of it here. Rest assured, fatigue and strain you feel at the end of each workday are real and more widespread than you might think. Luckily, our advice to help prevent it is simple, straightforward, and you can begin implementing (at least parts of it) right away!

What Causes Workplace Fatigue?

There are, almost certainly, many factors contributing to that extreme tiredness and reduced functional capacity that you often experience during, and at the end of your workday.

Some common causes of workplace fatigue include:

Poor sleep quality and generally dysregulated circadian rhythms.
Not enough downtime outside of work, caused by working long hours or poor time management (limiting our ability to overcome the mounting levels of fatigue).
Improper light environment (too much artificial light, not enough time outside).
Work schedules are often out of alignment with when our circadian rhythms allow us to be most alert, focused, and motivated (known as our productivity curve).

It is because of this diverse etiology that scientists haven’t been able to exclusively implicate work fatigue with any specific cause(s). This less-than enjoyable experience, can actually be broken down further into three separate classifications: physical, mental, and emotional work fatigue.

You have no doubt experienced each of these unique strains at some point – especially if you are entrenched in our modern work environments, and expectations on a daily basis. Each of these three forms of fatigue can reduce your ability to perform tasks that are required of you at work. Physical and mental work fatigue can be enough of a problem by themselves (by inhibiting your ability to perform both physical and cognitive tasks, respectively). But emotional fatigue appears to be of particular concern as it can be more broadly depleting and places a drain on resources, both physical and mental, as well as emotional.

Fatigue is generally more complicated to overcome than just being tired. This state can be unrelenting, and if left unchecked it will become a nearly constant experience where you lack motivation, the ability to concentrate, and it seems like your energy levels will never return. This is a scary place to be, as many of you can probably attest.

The Dangers of Work Fatigue

Besides just being inconvenient and unpleasant, unmanaged work fatigue can have real, detrimental effects on your professional and personal life. If left unchecked, workplace fatigue will almost inevitably lead to you feeling dissatisfied with your work, cause you to withdraw from coworkers, degrade your ability to perform your job well, and all of this places a drain on various resources for both you and your employers.

Outside of working hours, the consequences for ignoring the signs of mounting workplace fatigue are no less dire. Because fatigue is accumulative, you simply won’t be able to leave it all behind you once you leave the office. Those who have become burned out at work are more likely to abuse drugs or alcohol, withdraw from family and friends, express unfounded anger towards loved ones, make poor financial decisions, and generally take out their frustrations in less-than productive ways.

As fatigue continues unmanaged, you can expect your mental, physical, and emotional health to continue dissipating right along with it. Our immune system is especially impacted by psychological stress and fatigue – leading to decreases in immune function and an increased likelihood of developing disease or dysfunction. As you can see, there are legitimate and serious negative consequences to the very real problem of work fatigue. It wouldn’t be fair however, to present this problem without providing some actionable steps to prevent workplace fatigue from disrupting your life.

How To Fight Fatigue At Work

Luckily, there is a lot that we can do to prevent this mounting problem from impacting our mental, social, and physical health. A lot of which is simply remembering to do the small things like prioritizing sleep, moving more, and taking a break (when we already know we should). Here are a few key ways to start fixing the burned-out feeling you commonly experience during, or at the end of every workday.

Shake Up Your Schedule

We all know some people are night owls, while others have to be in bed before 9 or they will be in full zombie-mode the next day. This disparity is at least partially explained by differences in what is known as “chronotypes”.

Discovering for yourself where you fall on this spectrum can allow you to hone in your most important work, and most demanding tasks within those hours of the day in which you will be most productive. Have an energy lull every afternoon around 2 or 3? Capitalize on this fact by making that the time of day that you work on less important tasks such as answering emails or organizing. Whenever possible, save your most cognitively-demanding tasks for the time of day when you are able to be most productive. Aligning your work with what is known as your “productivity curve” can allow your work day to flow much more easily, and reduce the likelihood of you feeling overwhelmed or burned out.

Focus On Work/Life Balance

American workers are in the office, or otherwise on the clock significantly more than any other developed country – 140 hours more annually than Japanese workers and 260 hours more every year than our friends across the pond in the UK.

Part of this is due to our cultural gravitation towards production and advancing ourselves socioeconomically, and the rest may be due to social pressures to maintain employment. Though it seems obvious to schedule time outside of work, this is rarely done in America.

Taking time to take care of yourself should be at the forefront of your mind if you are hoping to prevent, or begin reversing the ill-effects of workplace fatigue. Research has shown that individuals experiencing burnout had higher rates of depression, insomnia, hospitalization for mental disorders, and much more. Further than just planning time off though, taking care of yourself means eating right, sleeping right (more on this in a moment), exercising, and generally focusing on what is most important for human health.

Take More Breaks

American office workers are notorious for working incessantly. People worldwide are afforded many breaks throughout the day, something our workplace culture has apparently forgotten about long ago.

Swedish workers, for instance, have an extended break during the workday called a fika – where they often have coffee and socialize. Our collective propensity for gluing ourselves to our desks continues during lunch time as well. Only an estimated 1 out of every 5 workers in the United States takes time away from their desk, and their work during lunch time. This is in stark contrast to other countries where lunch nearly never takes place in front of a computer screen.

To tap into the increased productivity, reduced fatigue, and enhanced well-being that workers in other countries seem to have found, simply plan to take breaks more often. Even standing, or going for a short walk, which can take only a few moments can do wonders for your circulation and thus helps improve your overall health. Schedule more breaks at work, then hold yourself to it.

Use Natural Energy-Boosters

There is a reason why the line at Starbucks is always long, and their drive-thru is always full. Caffeine works phenomenally well at suppressing fatigue, increasing alertness, and making you generally feel better. What caffeine does not do well is allow for proper sleep, and circadian rhythm function. Excessive caffeine consumption will disrupt sleep – leading to increased fatigue, increased caffeine intake to compensate, and the vicious cycle continues.

Because of the potential for sleep disruption, it is wise to look elsewhere for a natural way to boost your energy levels whenever possible. There are quite a few options for you to try next time you feel that afternoon slump.

Adaptogenic herbs like ashwagandha, and rhodiola rosea are two common tools for improving energy, balance, and focus without being stimulating.
Stimulants such as maca, guarana, ginseng, and bacopa monnieri are excellent options to improve energy and cognitive function without many of the potential side effects of coffee or other sources high in caffeine.
Other natural energy boosters such as Vitamin B12, CoQ10, and tools to improve sleep such as CBD, magnesium, melatonin, or valerian root can work wonders for helping to manage fatigue.

Optimize Your Workplace

With all the talk about optimization in the health and wellness space, it is curious that not much emphasis is placed on optimizing your workspace.

Creating a designated workspace allows you to focus on your work, and less on distractions. This has become increasingly important as the COVID-19 pandemic has made it necessary for many of us to work from home. Not having a clear separation between your working space, and your living space can blur the lines between work and rest, leading to further fatigue and disruption.

Beyond just creating a designated workspace, you can set yourself up for success by managing the kinds and amount of light you are staring down. The artificial blue light from our LED computer screens is stimulating, but incessantly so. Whenever possible, working outside in natural light, dimming or filtering the light on your devices, and introducing different light sources such as red or near-infrared can work wonders in the battle against harmful light exposure.

We don’t need (or want) the perpetual stress hormone release we experience when our eyes are locked onto a computer for hours on end. Managing your light exposure is absolutely vital for protecting our health in the 21st century, not just for managing work fatigue.

Improve Your Sleep

Much about our modern lives’ inhibits our ability to get enough quality sleep. Stress, Netflix, stimulants, light, Instagram, and much more seem to be fundamentally opposed to us getting to bed on time, sleeping well, and waking up full of energy like we should do every day.

We have written extensively about how to improve both the quantity and quality of your sleep, but we can sum up the importance of it for managing work fatigue very concisely:

Getting enough (quality) sleep is the number one tool you have available to manage fatigue of any kind.

Unfortunately, many of us don’t get enough sleep to support their overall health – let alone to be able to thrive. The reasons for your sleep (either duration or quality) being less-than optimal can be entirely unique to you, and so can the plan to fix the situation. But what matters is that you actively experiment and find ways to improve it before work fatigue develops into the mental, physical, and emotional effects that we are all hoping to avoid.

Workplace fatigue and the ill-effects it can bring about are nothing to scoff at. Taking the time to take care of yourself, and managing the diverse sources of friction in the workspace that can make matters worse are two excellent and obvious areas which you can start making meaningful improvements in your mental, physical, and emotional health.

The Connection Between Gut Health and Mental Health

Written by Josh on December 2, 2020. Posted in Digestion, Immune & Body Defense, Wellness. Leave a Comment

Your brain and your gut have a unique relationship that makes them inseparable from one another. They are bound to one another, physically, and biochemically – to a degree that science is only just beginning to appreciate. The sum of these connections and interactions is referred to as the gut-brain axis (or GBA) – though the name doesn’t quite fully illustrate just how deeply important the strength of this bond is for us to live healthy, and happy lives.

As a people we seem to have intuitively known this connection existed – even if we weren’t able to fully comprehend its full complexity and importance. Phrases like “gut feeling”, or getting “butterflies” in your stomach when you are nervous exist for a reason. They suggest that our inherent wisdom had long ago established the existence of a link between the brain and the gut. Now the science clearly shows that the link is real. Its infrastructure includes aspects of the nervous system (the gut is now often referred to as the “second brain”), as well as countless bacteria and microorganisms (we need them!), and more. If you are craving a deep dive into the research to learn the intricacies the gut-brain axis, we recommend this article published in the Annals of Gastroenterology, which explores every aspect of the connection between our mind, gut, and health.

Research articles can be dense and redundant at times however. So, we have taken the time here to explain what exactly is the gut-brain axis, and how it pertains to you in relevant, relatable, and actionable chunks. This article will go over what makes up the GBA, how the gut and brain interact, the extent of gut bacteria’s role in the GBA, and we will wrap things up with some actionable steps to protect, or even improve the capability and capacity of this connection to enhance your health and wellness overall.

There is much more required to create lasting balance and health, and you can read our approach to tackling this daunting and perpetual task here. Before we start explaining how to improve it, it is best we begin by detailing just exactly how there is a connection in the first place.

How the Gut and Brain Are Connected

Whether you know it or not, your health and vitality rely upon a delicate, yet strong synergy between your brain, your gut, and the estimated 100 trillion microbes that are living inside your digestive tract at any given moment.

This recently discovered, bidirectional relationship between your enteric nervous system (ENS), and central nervous system (CNS) involves crosstalk between your endocrine system, immune system, and obviously, your nervous system. Explaining every component and their specific roles in the GBA can get very complicated, very quickly. Luckily, there are some major players that you can focus on to get a decent understanding of how it all works, and how you can make steps to improve your own GBA.

The Vagus Nerve

If there were a highway running straight from your brain to your gut, it would be your vagus nerve.

The vagus nerve is the primary nerve leading to and from your digestive tract. It is also the main component of your parasympathetic nervous system – often referred to as the “rest and digest” side of things.

There have been many studies demonstrating the relevance of the vagus nerve for communication between the gut, microbes, and the brain. One study concluded that a more complete understanding of the functioning of the vagus nerve may lead to new nutritional and microbial interventions for mood disorders. This hypothesis is supported by the fact 80% of the nerve fibers that comprise your vagus nerve are headed to your gut from your brain, and the remaining 20% are leading back to your brain from your gut. That means there is a direct line of communication from the 500 million neurons in your enteric nervous system and your brain. An understanding of this fact makes it much easier to comprehend just how two seemingly separate parts of the body (your brain and gut) are able to work in synergy with one another – when everything is going right that is. So if the vagus nerve is the highway that connects your brain and your gut – neurotransmitters can be thought of as the cars that drive on it.

Neurotransmitters

By now everyone has at least heard of neurotransmitters. They are tiny chemical messengers that have an enormous influence on both our psychology and our physiology.

And though we tend to more closely associate neurotransmitters with structures like the brain and spinal cord, there are more than just a few reasons why we may need to rethink that notion just a bit.

There are 5 times as many neurons (these cells use neurotransmitters to communicate) in your enteric nervous system as there are in your central nervous system. That fact alone means we better start thinking of our gut as our “second brain” – as many scientists are already doing. But there is another reason neurotransmitters may be even more of a “gut thing” than a “brain thing”, and that is that the microbes living in your gut make neurotransmitters and other molecules that your body uses everyday.

95% of the serotonin in your body is produced in your cells in your gut, and this process appears to be stimulated and regulated by specific kinds of bacteria according to this study published in the journal Cell. This powerful neurotransmitter is heavily involved in sleep, your circadian rhythm, and many aspects of mental health.

Additionally, the neurotransmitters GABA and dopamine, both of which are needed for overall health and a properly functioning brain, are created as byproducts by certain kinds of gut bacteria. These two facts alone seem to make it a foregone conclusion that the health of your gut, and the microbes within it, can have a much further reach than we ever thought possible.

Gut Microbes

The conversation about gut microbiome and just how interconnected with the rest of our body it is, has been happening for well over a decade now.

Relative to other health-related topics though, this is very very new – and also very uncertain. The Human Microbiome Project, started back in 2007, is a much needed initiative dedicated to discovering and understanding the diverse array of microbes that live on, and in us.

Researchers have learned a lot thus far about how the gut microbiome in particular may impact your physical and mental health. Most of the research has been done in rodents so far, but the totality of evidence suggests that an imbalance or dysbiosis amongst gut microbes is associated with allergies, autoimmune disorders, metabolic disorders, and many neuropsychiatric conditions. This detrimental effect is either contributed to or compounded by intestinal hyperpermeability, or “leaky gut syndrome” which is becoming increasingly common in modern societies.

The name leaky gut illustrates precisely the malfunction that is occurring within the intestinal tract and the issue can lead to increased levels of systemic inflammation – increasing the likelihood of countless issues you can read about here. When you are experiencing leaky gut syndrome, you are far more likely to experience an inappropriate immune response to your beneficial gut bacteria, as well as the undigested food particles that find their way into your bloodstream.

The impact that the health of your gut, and the microbes in it can have on your mental health is based on two pillars. The sufficient production of neurotransmitters and other signalling molecules that takes place there, and the ability for inflammation in the gut to cause systemic issues including depression, anxiety, and more. Clearly, our mental health is highly dependent on having a healthy, and balanced microbiome within our digestive tract.

Gut Bacteria and Mental Health

We have a tremendous ability (and perhaps responsibility) to influence our health through our diet and lifestyle – and we can influence the health of our gut bacteria in exactly the same way. One of the more popular methods to alter or improve our microbiome is through the use of probiotics – but they may not always be the answer.

Probiotic supplementation has been all abuzz in recent years. But it is likely that most people aren’t even sure what is actually in the capsule they are taking. Probiotics are actual live microorganisms, and supplementing with certain kinds of them has been shown to hold the potential for a ton of beneficial effects. It isn’t an exact science yet, however. And it is difficult to know what bacterial strain to use, how much of it, what combinations work best, etc. Basically there is still a lot left to figure out. Luckily, researchers are hard at work figuring it out for us, and it seems that more and more data comes out every day.

Besides supplementing with probiotics in a capsule, you can just as easily get some beneficial microorganisms from food like:

Yogurt
Kefir
Natto (fermented soy)
Kombucha
Sauerkraut and other fermented veggies

In a study published in the prestigious journal Nutrition, it was found that individuals with major depressive disorder can have observable, positive changes after 8 weeks of supplementing with specific probiotics. They also had notable improvements in markers of inflammation, endogenous antioxidant activity, and more signs that point to enhanced health.

Prebiotics are a little less cool, yet no less beneficial. Prebiotics are compounds that are typically found in the parts of plants we can’t actually digest ourselves – but our gut bacteria love it. Examples of prebiotic foods include:

Legumes, beans, peas
Oats
Bananas, berries, and other fruits
Asparagus, leafy greens, and other veggies
Alliums like garlic, onions, leeks

You’ll notice that none of these foods are processed or in a package. This backs up our own admitted bias towards whole, natural foods – we’ve even posted more than one article about the topic of whole foods and fiber intake. Likely resulting from the downstream effects of it feeding our beneficial microbes, this study determined that prebiotic intake has the ability to both reduce stress, and improve attention placed on positive compared to negative stimuli. Based on these studies, it seems pretty clear that getting both probiotics and prebiotics in your diet or through supplementation can be one of the more important things you do for your gut health and mental health. Your work doesn’t end here though, there is much more that you can however to improve your gut-brain connection.

How to Improve Your Gut-Brain Connection

Many of the diet and lifestyle principles for creating health and improving longevity must owe at least part of their power to the effects they have on your gut and digestive health. These are just some of the many proven strategies to enhance or strengthen your gut-brain axis – but you may have to experiment and do some research of your own to find what works for you. If that is your goal, it is probably best to focus first and foremost on what you are putting on your plate and in your mouth.

Diet

As we just explained, a diet based on whole foods will take care of most of the nutritional requirements for a healthy gut-brain axis. This is because you will find nutrients like protein, fiber (both kinds that each have unique benefits for gut health), and micronutrients in whole foods that you simply don’t get from processed and packaged foods.

More specifically, look to incorporate foods that are:

High in omega 3’s (they have been shown to improve good bacteria and they are crucial for the health of our brains)
Fermented (the fermentation process creates probiotics)
High in both soluble fiber, and insoluble fiber (both of which are needed for a healthy gut)
Rich with polyphenols (anti-inflammation/antioxidant compounds)
Good sources of the amino acid tryptophan (required for serotonin production)

You are going to need to experiment and find foods that work best for you and your digestion. This is important because individual variances in dietary requirements can vary widely. Also, you may have an intolerance to certain foods, or have an altered need for certain nutrients at certain times. Above all else, it is important to get a wide variety of protein sources, fat sources, fiber sources, and maybe include some fermented foods at least somewhat often to get some good probiotics. Many people in modern society fall short of fulfilling these dietary requirements for a healthy gut strictly from food however.

Vitamins and Supplements

Which supplements to take to help improve the health of your gut-brain axis is going to vary from person to person.

Many of the vitamins, minerals, and other supplements you can take to improve your health are the same ones that you should likely be paying attention to already. For instance, the following minerals are crucial for a healthy gut:

Zinc
Magnesium
Selenium
Iron
Vitamin D

Vitamin C

All of these are vital for overall health and play various roles in the gut specifically – varying from reducing inflammation to repairing your gut lining. This further enforces the notion that eating a diet based on whole, natural foods is an excellent course of action to begin improving gut health.

Perhaps the most important aspect of maintaining a healthy GBA is the lining of your gut itself. This relatively thin membrane has the paramount role of deciding what comes in and what doesn’t. Hence the increasingly common “leaky gut syndrome”, and its associated disease states, are simply caused by the gut lining letting in stuff that it shouldn’t – for whatever reason. Proven supplements like glutamine, deglycyrrhizinated licorice, and collagen peptides all work to improve the lining of your gut so it can better control what actually makes it through and into our bloodstream – but an extremely interesting peptide called BPC-157 seems to currently reign supreme at the job of restoring a healthy gut lining. BPC-157 (body protection compound 157) is a gastric peptide with an amazingly safe track record, and a growing body of research behind it. One research article exploring existing research on BPC-157 postulated that because it has been so effective at treating certain gastrointestinal issues that it may soon be used strategically to ameliorate some of their associated mental health issues.

Talk To Your Doctor

There really is a ton that you can do on your own to improve the health of your gut, brain, and the microbes that live in it. But in some instances, working with a medical professional will almost certainly be necessary and beneficial. Conditions like Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colitis, and more can be more than just a little serious and should be handled by someone with the proper training and experience. That being said, in some ways Western medicine has done quite a bit of harm to our guts.

Your microbiome is a living organism – one that works with you to keep you healthy. But that also means that the antibiotics (the opposite of a probiotic by every definition) can and often do decimate the microbes in your gut. Though they are entirely necessary at times, antibiotics have been shown to consistently and significantly alter the gut microbiome – negatively. Either by reducing the overall number, or eliminating entire species altogether, antibiotics can wreak havoc on our microbes, and the gut-brain axis as well.

Consider Alternative Treatments

Slightly more fringe treatments like fecal transplants or coffee enemas are usually not common dinner table talk. But with gut issues becoming increasingly common,it is important to mention some alternative approaches to creating a strong gut-brain connection. If you are trying to further reduce gut inflammation, improve associated mental health issues, and enhance your overall gut health, take a look at alternative options like:

Fecal transplants (think of it as a good bacteria transplant)
Coffee enemas (stimulates bile production in the liver)
Colonics (these will really clean you out)

None of these treatments are likely to significantly improve the connection between your brain and your gut unless you are doing the most important things for overall health.

Get enough sleep, every night
Manage your stress
Eat a diet full of actual nutrients
Move!

What Are the Eight Dimensions of Wellness?

Written by Josh on December 2, 2020. Posted in Age Management, Athletic Performance, Digestion, Exercise, Immune & Body Defense, Nutrition, Stress & Anxiety, Weight Management, Wellness. Leave a Comment

As modern Americans, we tend to share an extremely limited ideal of what real health actually means.

The pursuit of the inextricable duo of health and wellness requires much more than simply avoiding illness or disease – it demands exploration and development across multiple dimensions of the human experience.

Western society by and large has been conditioned to look at things in reductionist terms. Black and white, good or bad, healthy or sick. But the World Health Organization, seen by many as one of the primary authorities on human health, has developed their own standards (they go as far as to call it their constitution) for what they believe comprises actual wellness – and it covers far more than just avoiding disease of dysfunction. They believe that real health requires a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and that governments worldwide have a responsibility to provide the right atmosphere, resources, and opportunities for each and every one of their citizens to realize their full potential.

To achieve a state of physical, mental, and social well-being, attention must be paid to each and every dimension that contributes to creating this state. As it turns out, there seems to be either entirely unique, and yet interconnected dimensions that collectively contribute to overall wellness. These dimensions are physical, emotional, social, intellectual, environmental, financial, spiritual, and occupational wellness. None of these can create a sense of overall wellness alone – they all feed into one another to achieve balance and harmony. Each must be cultivated and nurtured over time.

As human beings we are extremely adaptable, and we can survive without fulfilling many, or even most of these dimensions – but we won’t thrive. This disparity is precisely why we have written this article – to illuminate each of these dimensions as well as to provide you with a few actionable steps for each to help you begin to curate and maintain more thorough health and wellness habits and practices into your daily life. Each dimension may have more or less importance than others, depending upon who you are and where you are at on your health and wellness journey, but the very nature of these unique aspects is that they are all deeply and fully interconnected with each other.

Physical Wellness

Something that we need to recognize about our modern lifestyles is that they just aren’t very conducive to good physical health. We sit far too much and move far too little. We are overfed but undernourished. We are fully displaced from our ancestral ancestors in these ways. But our internal biology is still basically the same! It is no wonder we are experiencing an astronomical increase in chronic disease and dysfunction. So once we acknowledge this context, the necessity for prioritizing better sleep, more movement, and a more whole-foods based diet becomes increasingly apparent.

There are an endless number of ways that we can improve our physical health. But the good news is that there are a few key points to focus on that will get you most of the way there. Prioritize the following aspects for physical wellness:

Move, alot.
Eat food with actual nutritional value.
Sleep, well.

There is, of course, much nuance that applies to each of those. For example, how much movement, and what kinds are appropriate for each individual might vary a bit – but generally these three statements apply to each of us to some degree.

You may need to look deeper into each of these points to determine how they specifically apply to you. Moving more is something that most modern humans can benefit from – it should be no surprise to hear that. Finding what kinds of movement you enjoy and can do consistently is a good place to start. And tracking your daily steps appears to be one of the most effective strategies for losing weight or maintaining a healthy weight for long periods of time. Once daily activity is one of your non-negotiables, perhaps the logical next step is to begin resistance training. Lifting weights has been linked to a whole host of beneficial effects, some of which will last a lifetime.

Eating food with actual nutritional value is crucial for many reasons. You need vitamins for enzymes to work and cells to function properly. Some minerals are utilized by your immune system to get toxins out of your body. Your brain needs fatty acids and beneficial plant compounds to thrive. Specific amino acids are required for certain tissues, hormones, and neurotransmitters to be built. Whole, natural foods and the wide variety of nutrients they contain are an enormous part of how we can maintain our physical health. You can also utilize supplementation to procure certain nutrients that are difficult to get from the diet.

It also might be beneficial to verify that your gut is in proper working order. With the rise in chronic inflammation and gut-related dysfunction, consider strategies with proven gut-healing properties like fasting, certain diets, drinking bone broth, collagen, BPC-157, colostrum, or zinc may just do the trick.

Sleeping well means more than just being in bed for 8 hours a night – though that would be a big step in the right direction for most people. To make sure we are getting the most out of having a free healing/restoration mode, we need to put in actual effort to protect the quality of our sleep as well. Reducing light exposure at night, and waking up at the same time everyday seem to be the two biggest requirements to entrain your circadian rhythm and guarantee you are going to enjoy the countless benefits that sleep provides us.

Emotional wellness

It is tough to say if the world is becoming more or less stressful for the people living in it. Life has become easier for most people, but it has also become more demanding, busy, and distracting at the same time.

We are (virtually) connected with more people than ever before – with the COVID lockdown only increasing the digital nature of these relationships. But most of us aren’t exactly designed to be as isolated as our modern society is, especially as we have been for the last year or so. Humans evolved with social interaction and dynamic relationships at the core of our how we coexist and grow with one another. These modern shifts in the human experience bring with them an increased need for finding coping strategies that are, at the very least, not destructive. This is what emotional wellness means to those of us living in modern society., and we can look towards some basic principles of wellness to help kickstart the development of emotional wellness. If you need to improve this dimension, start doing the following:

Reduce stress.
Learn to simply acknowledge and cope with emotions – good and bad.
Give your brain an edge.
Manage inflammation to improve emotional resilience.

The general stress response is an extremely beneficial part of life – chronic stress on the other hand, couldn’t be less beneficial for our long term health. There are countless psychological and physiological reasons why stress is bad for us, but most everyone is aware of these by now. It is more important that we direct attention towards stress management practices that will help ameliorate some of the harmful effects of chronic stress. Practicing meditation or another mindfulness approach, get enough sleep, engage in breathing exercises often, do some yoga, and move enough everyday. These stress management techniques will often have the added benefit of helping you on a fundamental level to deal with all kinds of emotions.

Social Wellness

The relationships we have with other people can have an unbelievably deep impact on our overall sense of well-being.

If you wish to develop a sense of connection, belonging, and rock-solid support system that you can count on no matter what, forging relationships is a big part of where you should focus your energy.

This dimension often goes overlooked because we live in a very work-focused culture. We all know we should spend time with family and friends, but that can always wait – or so we seem to think. Social wellness is absolutely crucial to building emotional resilience as well (though it is entirely unique from the emotional wellness dimension) and it allows us to better communicate with the people around us. Here are just a few ways that you can start to build up your sense of social wellness:

First, take time to reflect on yourself and your unique social needs. What aspects of your current social life do you actually enjoy? What parts do you wish you could improve upon?
Make an effort to keep in touch with supportive friends and family – especially during times of increased isolation such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Become a better listener – practice!
Join a club or organization with like-minded people.

Intellectual Wellness

Your brain is like a muscle – it needs to work in order to thrive. This is the essence and basis of developing intellectual wellness. We are inherently curious creatures, and acknowledging that fact allows us to find ways to satisfy this drive in productive and creative ways.

Curating a state of intellectual wellness will likely be lifelong pursuit – as is the case with all other dimensions. Yet, we tend to stop seeking intellectual development as we age. We are never too old to benefit from engaging in creative and mentally stimulating activities. It is never too late to expand your knowledge or skills, and share it with your friends, family, or community.

Every dimension of wellness will take work to develop, and intellectual wellness is no different – it will take effort and focus to create balance. What is most important of all however, is that you remain open-minded and receptive to new situations. If you aren’t open in this way, no amount of work will manifest intellectual wellness in your life. Some more useful tips to begin curating intellectual wellness within your own life include:

Be more mindful and listen. If you aren’t actively listening, fully present, and engaged, you won’t fully receive the information being given.
Find a hobby that allows you to learn, develop skills, and grow your capabilities.
Traveling to experience other countries and cultures will change your perspectives and allow you to grow intellectually.
Find a way to be creative. This can be fulfilled by a hobby, or even a career (which we will discuss again later). Remember, we are creative beings – express yourself.

Environmental Wellness

Nobody would argue that the environment around us can’t have a profound impact on the way that you experience life. Environmental wellness is about recognizing this potential for your surroundings to either enhance or degrade your life, and taking action to redesign them to benefit you, and those around you.

Environmental wellness is really quite a broad term. It can refer to that which is in close proximity to you like your home, bedroom, office space, cubicle, etc. – or it can be expanded to the world at large. The concept is all the same, though. We must be inspired and intentional about living a lifestyle that is respectful of our surrounding and practice habits that promote a healthy environment. Some more tips to help develop a more complete sense of environmental wellness include:

Do your part to conserve energy, recycle, and limit your footprint on the world.
Volunteer with, or donate to organizations dedicated to improving the environment.
Appreciate and understand our earth’s finite resources.
Spend time in nature by camping, hiking, or just generally experiencing the natural beauty of our dwindling natural resources.

Spiritual Wellness

The realization of the profound importance behind cultivating spiritual wellness escapes more people than perhaps any other dimension. It may be because this dimension is shrouded by an intersection of religious beliefs and convictions – but it shouldn’t be.

Spiritual wellness can, and often does, have absolutely nothing to do with organized religious practices. Though traditional religious practices can fulfill the need for developing spiritual wellness, and often do so extremely well, having this somewhat limited perception of what this dimension means can perhaps dissuade people from cultivating it in the first place.

At its fundamental core, spiritual wellness is about finding meaning and purpose in life, developing your own personal morals and beliefs, and exploring your inner self. This exploration and development can allow you to create balance, become more resilient to obstacles and setbacks, and find a more comprehensive appreciation for the human experience.

As we said, organized religion can play a major role in developing this dimension, but spiritual wellness doesn’t have to exclusively come from this avenue. What is most important for developing wellness in this dimension is the practice and exploration of your inner self. To start cultivating your own sense of spiritual wellness, try doing the following:

Take time to be alone, and think about your inner self.
Reflect and explore life changing events. Consider your perceptions of each situation, whether they are productive, and whether or not they are congruent with reality.
Practice meditation or engage in another mindfulness approach.
Actively practice acceptance of situations.
Remain curious as you age. Explore new topics and ideas that interest you.
Consider traditional religious faiths and find one that you align most with.

Occupational Wellness

Many of us work to earn a paycheck, so we can do what we enjoy on the weekends with the ones we love. But this may not be enough. Not enough of us derive actual satisfaction and fulfillment from our work. Developing occupation wellness in our lives requires us to acknowledge this fact and inspires us to work towards finding a profession that satisfies this itch.

Our occupation can be more than just a paycheck. Some of us may find our calling in life almost by accident. Maybe you’ve always wanted to be a nurse, and no other occupation will allow you to be fulfilled in the same way. Perhaps a career in law enforcement or firefighting will enrich you each and every day – and you’ve known that was your path for as long as you can remember. For some of us however, it can take much more time. The occupation that helps you derive a sense of meaning and purpose in life may be something you haven’t even considered yet. This is why it is absolutely essential to keep trying, and keep searching. More tips to enhance your sense of occupational wellness are:

Take an honest assessment of yourself and your occupational needs. What kinds of tasks do you enjoy? Which would you rather never do again?
Consider both paid and volunteer opportunities that interest you. (remember you may find a path you had never even considered)
Actively practice communication and proper conflict management with your coworkers. Perhaps better work relationships can help create a greater sense of fulfillment in the job you already have.
Set career goals for yourself and constantly work towards improving and accomplishing these goals.

Financial Wellness

Though the financial and occupational wellness dimensions seem quite similar, they are quite different in reality. Financial wellness focuses on developing a sense of satisfaction and security with current and future financial situations – whereas the occupational wellness dimension is a bit more existential in nature.

Financial stressors are one of the more common pitfalls of modern life for many people. We aren’t commonly taught how to manage our finances by tracking expenses, budgeting, or becoming financially disciplined in general. Setting both short and long term financial goals is a great first step towards developing wellness in this dimension, but to take it further than that, consider trying:

Actively work to analyze finances to identify problems before they occur.
Maintain organized records of your finances.
Plan ahead. Set budgets, and stick to a plan to reach your goals.
Take classes to better understand your financial situations and learn to create discipline.

8 Dimensions of Wellness

By now it must be abundantly clear that each of these eight dimensions of wellness are entirely connected and dependent on one another to reach their full potential – and for you to reach yours as well.

Each of these dimensions will take work to develop and maintain, but that isn’t to say that the process won’t be enjoyable. Keep in mind that every bit of progress you make will help to balance your wellness overall and create a sense of congruence within different aspects of your life.

CJC-1295 & Ipamorelin Combined

Written by Josh on September 1, 2020. Posted in Age Management, Athletic Performance, Exercise, Lifestyle, Weight Management, Wellness. Leave a Comment

CJC-1295 is an incredibly safe and effective compound that is able to stimulate the production and release of growth hormone from your pituitary gland.

If you are searching the internet in order to find a way to naturally increase your levels of growth hormone, CJC is probably just what you are seeking to improve your overall quality of life.

WHY WE NEED TO INCREASE GROWTH HORMONE

After we reach the age of 30, our growth hormone levels drop by as much as 15% on average, for every further decade of life. CJC-1295 is able to provide an increase in growth hormone levels naturally by binding to receptors designed for growth hormone releasing hormone (GHRH) on your pituitary gland. This helps turn on a switch in your growth hormone factory that otherwise loses its ability to function optimally as we age. In a study conducted with healthy men and women between the ages of 21 and 61, CJC-1295 was able to increase serum growth hormone levels by 200-1000%. In these subjects, improved growth hormone production and release continued for up to 6 days. This extended capacity for improving hormonal function is due to CJC-1295 having a half life of about 6-8 days – an impressively long duration when compared to other peptides that also act on the GHRH receptors. Interestingly, it’s potency as a growth secretagogue is just one reason that CJC-1295 has become such an effective tool for safely increasing growth hormone levels.

WHY CJC-1295 IS SO RELIABLY SAFE

Thanks to the fact that CJC-1295 stimulates your own body to produce and release growth hormone in a biologically harmonious way, it is possible to achieve increased growth hormone levels without having to resort to traditional hGH treatment. Introducing GH directly through injections is notoriously rife with major side effects. In contrast, the side effects of CJC-1295 are generally mild and transient, with the most common being irritation at the injection site, headache, flushing, and dizziness. Understanding the benefits and side effects of CJC-1295 will help you make an informed decision about whether starting treatment is right for you.

DYNAMIC DUO: CJC-1295 & IPAMORELIN

Though at first glance it may seem similar to CJC-1295, Ipamorelin is a completely different kind of growth hormone secretagogue.

Yes, it accomplishes the same task as CJC-1295, but it does so in an entirely unique and complementary way.

While CJC-1295 binds to GHRH receptors, Ipamorelin stimulates the production and release of growth hormone by binding to receptors for the lesser-known hormone named ghrelin on your pituitary gland. Ghrelin is one of three hormones that act to regulate the release of growth hormone (the other two being somatostatin which stops release, and GHRH which CJC mimics). Because they turn on completely different hormonal switches, CJC-1295 and Ipamorelin are often stacked together to create an even more profound effect than either would in isolation.

Before you buy Ipamorelin online, consider the pros and cons of using this incredibly effective peptide for increasing growth hormone. Side effects of Ipamorelin are relatively mild and include headache, flushing, dizziness, and more – similar to CJC-1295, Ipamorelin is widely regarded as safe and highly effective.

COMBINING CJC-1295 AND IPAMORELIN

CJC-1295 and Ipamorelin work together well for many reasons. One you should already know; they activate separate switches (receptors) on the pituitary gland – resulting in the increased production and release of growth hormone in a natural and biologically regulated way.

Well, that’s one reason they are so effective at elevating growth hormone levels – the other is that CJC-1295 takes 1-4 hours to reach peak serum levels, while Ipamorelin works much more rapidly, and is essentially cleared from your system quickly as it’s half life is about 2 hours.

Ipamorelin gets to work quickly and begins stimulating growth hormone release before being broken down in your body, right about when CJC-1925 is beginning to take effect, a one-two punch for increasing growth hormone levels.

Unlike some other treatments that are used to increase growth hormone levels, these two peptides are incredibly specific (this specificity is exactly why peptides are gaining traction in precision medicine). Neither Ipamorelin nor CJC-1295 have an effect on other hormones, particularly cortisol which is commonly elevated as a result of many anti-aging or hormonal replacement treatments.

WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT?

When you use CJC-1295 and Ipamorelin, your growth hormone levels will rise, resulting in the potential for a myriad of health benefits.You should expect an increase in muscle mass, lower body fat levels, increased appetite, and better sleep – the importance of all these factors for long-term health cannot be overemphasized.

Recent research has found that increased levels of lean body mass (primarily muscle, but also bones, and organs to a lesser extent) plays a causal role in promoting health and longevity – especially in the latter half of life

Overall, the combination of CJC-1295 and Ipamorelin is an effective way to increase vitality and quality of life for those of us who are experiencing the unwanted effects of aging and decreased growth hormone levels. Because there is the potential for some very mild side effects, Ikon Health will put you in touch with our medical professionals to help you determine if treatment is right for you. Peptides like CJC-1295 and Ipamorelin are by no means the only route to health and fitness, and a sound training, nutrition, and recovery plan are all invaluable in the process. Ikon Health can help you determine exactly how tools like peptides, IV therapy, injections, sauna, and more can be used to optimize your uniquely individual transformation process.