TECHNOLOGY AND MENTAL HEALTH

 

Today, we live in a fast-paced world where there is lot of competition and peer pressure. We always feel that the world around us is running too fast, and we also necessarily need to catch up with them. As a result there is always stress building up in us, which even leads us to other illnesses like hypertension, depression, etc. This stress has been building up in people of all ages.

We have school children who are much stressed these days because of factors like tough curriculum, extended time at school, followed by tuition and pressure to over perform. Then we have teenagers who are stressed due to multiple circumstances like peer pressure, unhealthy competition, and career development, etc. We have working professionals who are stressed because of the daily travel to work, and then the tough work itself, financial pressure, and pressure to take care of one’s family. We have the retired people who are facing stress due to family pressure, financial pressure, etc.

Everywhere we look in this world today, we see people are completely stressed out. Today, the entire world is more stressed that ever because of a multitude of other reasons like inflation, economic woes, financial woes, wars, etc. Checking daily news headlines itself adds to our stress considerably All this leads to health disorders like depression, anxiety, burnout, binge eating, cravings, emotional eating, etc. Most people who are stressed these days resort to smoking & drinking to either forget bad experiences or cope up with extreme stress. In fact, our teenagers and young people resort to even drugs to escape stress and depression.

Added to all this, today we have a world that is moving superfast technologically as well. Everything is virtually possibly today. We can order food, groceries and even do payments online. Are mobile touch screen devices are quite large so much so, that even a television has become out-dated. Then we have multiple kinds of social media too, which keeps the world hooked to online interactions. This situation sharply worsened especially in the COVID times.

So, in spite of all the ease of life that technology provides us, there is a huge downside to overuse of this. Even when we are financially secure and living a comfortable life, life still looks very stressful. And this has resulted in many millions suffering with anxiety, depression, burnout and numerous other mental issues. Though diseases like obesity, hypertension, thyroid, PCOD, diabetes are some of the most common lifestyle disorders today, its mental health crises or mental disorder is biggest problem facing humanity today.

When we discuss about health, mental health is one of the most important side of it. Everything in our lives start with our mind - all the sicknesses, the stress & tension, physical ailments, our intellect, productivity, achievements, contentment and also our lifestyle. Again the advancement of technology is the major culprit that has accelerated stressful conditions and mental disorders among most of us or even all of us.

The problem with social media is that almost everyone gets hooked to it. There are many eye and mind captivating videos and messages. Everyone wants to see and hear all of that. People constantly enter other’s accounts and check their status, photos, videos and friends list. All that they see depresses them. They start comparing themselves to others & start feeling low. They see their numerous likes, followers and comments, and then get disheartened.

One thing about our generation is, they like to show off a lot. There are people who like to show themselves in a variety of apparel and then they want the likes of people. They want appreciation. That gives them an artificial boost. They never mentions about their sad and bad times. They only show off the places they visited, their numerous friends and so on and so forth. Many of the things there may not even be true. Everyone only likes to show their good side.

Probably, these people started doing this, because they learnt it from some other of their social media friends. These days too many people are trying to sell their short reels and YouTube videos online. And with increased earning potential, everyone wants to try all this stuff. People have become desperate. And a result people spend more time on social media or online than thinking about the best diet or involving in some physical experiences.

All this comparison and stress has created wrecked complete havoc of one’s mental health. As a result the number of suicide case and broken marriages has been on the rise. Hence, social media and technology has been more of a bane than a boon. All these social media and technology companies wanted to make a lot of money at the expense of people’s mental health. Today we have several millions suffering due to all of this.

Those, who are completely drenched in social media, are not realizing how much it’s affecting their mental health. How much they cannot leave without social media and their mobile handsets anymore. They have millions of followers but they are not realizing, that their mental health is been severely impacted.

Also people have become more interconnected online than offline. This case has been on the rise ever since the COVID Pandemic. With most companies functioning online even today, there is very few face to face interactions between people. Most people prefer to connect online with their friends than visit their homes.

So, let’s not get carried away or get bogged down by all that we see in social media. I would rather say, one should practise staying away from their mobile handsets. This is very important as apart from social media that are numerous other things in a mobile handset that can permanently destroy a person mentally, emotionally & psychologically. Understand that there are numerous other things like news headlines, songs, videos, etc. only to name a very few that deeply affect people’s lives and even drive them to despair and suicide.

If we truly want to live and manage a healthy lifestyle, we must focus on a set of things in our life and lifestyle. This we should not just follow for just a few months, but in our everyday lives. Listed below are a few things that we can start doing for improving our mental health.

● Stay away from social media as much as possible. Stay away from your mobile handsets as much as possible. Use our handsets only for basic calling & messaging purpose

● We could involve ourselves in a basic daily exercise like walking especially morning before going for work. This is very useful in increasing blood circulation and over all confidence. We could also try and hit the gym once in a while, this gives lot of confidence. We could also try other exercises like swimming, cycling, and jogging, etc. Even playing other outdoor sports like cricket, football, and basketball, etc. once in a while can be very useful.

● And of course we should have a proper healthy diet and fitness programme, which would definitely help in the overall physical and mental development of a person.

This changed lifestyle will help us greatly in our day to day lives. It will reduce our stress levels (the cortisol and all other stress hormone levels) would reduce significantly. This would help us to look and feel better. We start to eat healthy, our skin texture improves and we start to lose weight. And this leads to a promising and healthy lifestyle.

- by James J.

HEALTHY LIFESTYLE MANAGEMENT

Lifestyle management programmes are closely linked to the concept of health promotion, which is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health. Based on this, a lifestyle management programme is defined as a structured, action-oriented health promotion initiative designed to help individuals improve their health, reduce health risks and promote healthy behaviours.

In today’s fast paced world, daily office work has become more taxing and task driven. Alongside that daily travel has become very cumbersome and time consuming. Life has become very difficult. As a result people maintain very poor food and fitness habits. In other words, people begin to develop lifestyle disorders. Lifestyle disorders can happen due to many factors such as hypertension, diabetes, stress, obesity, and psychological disorders, etc. to name a few.

Now that we know what are the causes of these lifestyle disorders, we should be definitely try and find out how we can prevent these lifestyle disorders. A healthy lifestyle should be our way of life. It’s not that we follow this lifestyle only for a short while and then go back to our old food and fitness habits. We should plan our daily food and fitness in such a way, that we enjoy following this every day. These days very few people concentrate on following a regular food and fitness regimen. These are mostly sportspersons & those whose professions demand proper health and fitness. As a result, the remaining who does not follow a regular food and fitness regimen have started developing major illnesses at a very young age.

An amateur person would say good health is solely an absence of sickness and diseases. This is not at all true as the term ‘health’ is much more inclusive. A person is said to have good health only if his all-round physical, social, mental and spiritual well-being is good. There is an age-old popular phrase, “Health is wealth”. So, Health and fitness are very important aspects of a person’s lifestyle. Being fit and healthy is not as hard as climbing a mountain; just changing a few simple things will be of substantial help. A person can start by doing small changes in diet, and that would start to yield the benefits.

When we are concentrating on developing a healthy lifestyle, there are 2 major areas we have to improve i.e. diet and fitness. We will first talk about fitness. Fitness or physical exercise is also important to develop and maintain good health. Daily physical activity offers benefits like improved blood circulation and a healthy body. We need not necessarily hit the gym everyday to have a healthy physique; we can do few physical exercises every day like walking or jogging, cycling, swimming, etc. Physical fitness is very much essential for a healthy life. Note that only physical exercise without adequate diet and rest will create fatigue. So, understand that a proper diet, proper exercises and adequate rest alone can help improve and maintain the lifestyle of any person.

Now, we had already seen the definition of Diet in the 1^st chapter. The food that we daily consume is called diet. But what is important is we need to know what food to eat, how much quantity of food to eat and when to eat. And much of our health depends on these 3 mentioned factors. Therefore, we should ‘eat to live and not live to eat’. We should eat the right foods to improve and health and well-being.

Many people eat at their will, & still don’t show any weight gain. Though this may look harmless now, this could health repercussions in the near and distant feature. So, how much quantity of food we eat daily matters a lot. For Example, curd is good for one’s intestine but too much of curd is not advisable. Similarly, there are multiple other healthy foods which we must consume albeit in the right quantity.

Also, we should not restrict ourselves to just one kind of food for all the days. We have to eat multiple kinds of healthy food, so that our body doesn’t lack on any of the nutrients. Maintaining a healthy diet increases our vigour and vitality. This helps us in involving ourselves daily in some kind of physical activity, which in turn helps us to live a long and happy life.

Each one of us would have different kinds of food working for us. And we really don’t know what all that could be. Also, we don’t know all the foods which are good or not so good. So, it would always be better to consult a dietician and nutritionist, who would guide on this. Remember, the small steps that we take today would be rewarding for us both in the near and the distant future.

Negligence in health and fitness matters is what is of serious concern even for the younger generation. Diseases that were once only known among the elderly like diabetes, cancer, and heart disorders, etc. is today fast affecting even our younger generation.

These days most people are affected by mood swings that come from diets that do not include all the nutrients in the right proportion. There are some people who prefer potatoes daily at breakfast, lunch and dinner. They would not add other vegetables or fruits in their diet. Having too many potatoes can cause digestive issues such as abdominal discomfort, bloating and gas.

Also, as mentioned previously, we should equally focus on diet as well as physical exercises. If one does have a very good diet, but are hardly involves in any physical exercise, that person cannot get healthier. The drawbacks outweigh the benefits. Similarly, a person needs to focus not only on exercise but on diet as well, as having strenuous physical exercises without a proper diet will certainly have negative consequences for one’s health.

So, to summarize, nutrition and fitness are essential for a healthy lifestyle management. In other words, a balanced diet, regular exercise & sound sleep are the prerequisites for a healthy lifestyle management. Note, this is the key to a fruitful and prosperous life. Face or our external personality is the reflection of what we eat. Hence maintaining a healthy lifestyle would make us look and feel good. It would also keep us from very severe ailments and ill health. Though it’s clearly understandable that it is difficult to maintain consistency in following a healthy lifestyle, it is a very important thing to take care of one’s health. It’s is not as cumbersome as thought by many.

We need to take a firm decision in this regards, and follow up for a healthy lifestyle. Prevention is better than cure, so we ought to take care of the bodies that God has given to us. We need to maintain our health well, as we are God’s creation. In the further chapters we would see further how to go about following a healthy lifestyle.

- by James J.

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE WORD 'DIET' ?

Hi everyone, welcome to my new blog titled “Eat Healthy Keep Healthy”. In this blog I will be writing on what exactly is a healthy eating lifestyle & how best to maintain it, so we can eat healthy & keep healthy in the long run. Most often when we suddenly find ourselves gaining weight, we want a miracle to happen. We want a superfast method of weight & tummy reduction. So, we watch some YouTube videos or read through some information on the internet that promises weight reduction in just 15-20 days & we begin to follow the same.

After successfully losing weight, we again begin to follow our otherwise daily food routine which includes consuming excess junk food & other bad food habits. And the impact of the temporary diet regime is lost and a person becomes his or her former self. So, in my blog, I would like to explain why a temporary weight loss program is not useful & just a waste of time and money. What is rather required is both a ‘Healthy Diet’ & ‘Lifestyle’ i.e. a permanent change in the eating lifestyle is required, so that our health itself is simultaneously improving and maintaining.

My first post in this Blog is titled, “What is the meaning of the word ‘diet’”? In this post we shall see the complete meaning of the word ‘diet’, so as we proceed further we can understand better how to develop & maintain an excellent diet and lifestyle. The dictionary meaning of the word diet means, “the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats”. So, in general, all that humans and animals eat can be termed as food or diet. The kind of general diet that humans consume differs from person to person across communities, countries & regions.

In the world of nutrition and fitness, the word ‘diet’ has a more specific meaning. Diet here means following a specific diet program or regimen for improving health. It implies a change in food and lifestyle for a specific period. The several reasons why people follow a specific diet regimen could be weight loss, weight gain, or recovery from diseases such as PCOD, cancer, thyroid, hypertension, mental disorders, diabetes, etc. But, what is important to understand is that every person needs to follow a healthy eating lifestyle to avoid future health issues because, at some point in our lives, everyone has to face the negative consequences of an unhealthy eating lifestyle.

As mentioned previously, the daily food that we consume is also called ‘diet’. But all that we need to do is make some changes in the daily food and make it a part of our lifestyle. So, that we are not unduly conscious & bogged down with the thought that we are strictly following a certain diet pattern. If we have been eating excessively from outside, we should stop this slowly, and make this also a part of our altered lifestyle.

So, when we start coming to terms with this lifestyle, we don’t need to tell anyone that we are on a specific diet regimen. This helps us to be at ease. People in today’s world in general struggle to follow a specific diet pattern by avoiding certain foods like sweets, ice cream, etc. Most consider following a diet program as impossible and very taxing. As, a result they fail to inculcate a good diet regimen and thus don’t follow a healthy lifestyle. This further result in various kinds of health issues in the long run for such people.

So, I am drawing your attention once again to the meaning of the word ‘diet’. Diet is a pattern of eating, a routine that we follow with your food. This pattern or routine cannot be the same for months or years together; it needs to change from time to time according to the weather, one’s health, health goals, nutritional deficiencies, body activity, stress levels, moods, and very importantly one’s likes and dislikes. That’s one reason why trend diets don’t work. And that’s why, when we follow certain diets, we stop losing weight after a particular point.

Each person is different, and that’s why one person’s diet plan might not suit another person. And that’s why we hear people saying that their diet plan did not provide the expected results. It’s not the diet plan itself but the wrong pattern of eating that doesn’t suit one’s body.

So, we need to develop a diet that we very much like and we should make this our lifestyle. It should be a diet that makes us feel fit, healthy, peaceful, and happy. It should be a diet that we follow in and out of season. It should be a diet that we try and follow every day, irrespective of the circumstances, just like we used to have our food every day. This should be a diet that we follow consistently during our breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc.

So, this leads each one of us to be our own nutritionist. In the upcoming posts of this blog, we shall see how this is possible. Meanwhile, given below is a checklist to know whether or not we are really following a healthy lifestyle diet.

✓ I am not overtly bogged down following up the diet plan but I am happy, peaceful & confident.

✓ My lifestyle diet does not feel like a forced routine anymore.

✓ I don’t feel like I am following a structured diet regimen.

✓ My weight is reducing consistently & I am on my way to the desired weight.

✓ I am no longer obsessed with tracking my weight on the weight scale.

✓ I can understand what food suits my body very well.

✓ Eating healthy has become like a hobby for me.

✓ Once in a while, I can have outside food as well.

✓ I feel energetic throughout the day.

✓ I have developed glowing skin & thick and shiny hair.

✓ I have now figured out my ideal lifestyle & easily adapted to it.

So, what is the lifestyle diet and how does it work? The lifestyle diet is a diet that can be a part of our everyday life. It takes care of our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Every individual’s lifestyle diet is unique. We need not follow someone else’s lifestyle diet but instead work out what diet best fits us and adopt it as a lifestyle. In this blog, Eat Healthy Keep Healthy, we will try and figure out what diet lifestyle works best for each of us.

We will also see how to deal with different situations in life in a healthy way. We shall also see different kinds of healthy diets, healthy foods, and healthy food lifestyles. We should make efforts to imbibe these healthy food lifestyles and habits in our daily lives which would in turn make all the difference in improving and maintaining our health in the long run. Indeed, as the blog title suggests, we can Eat Healthy and Keep Healthy.

In the next post, we shall see how we can adopt a more practical approach towards developing and following up on a healthy eating lifestyle.

- by James J.