New World Wellness for Executives: Beyond a Gym Membership - guest blog by Charlene Bourliout
We hear the words “New World” a lot these days and we live in uncertain times...but one thing is absolutely certain - and more so than ever - health is the ultimate wealth. The world as we know it is shifting and changing rapidly. Long gone are the days of easy access to a gym or even any access at all. Long gone are the days of corporate meet ups and check ins with colleagues and HR. With a changing world and rapid change in wellness practices is needed. I am a firm believer that Biohacking is the future of corporate wellness. Let’s dive in and see how we can go beyond gym membership…below are six proposed New World Wellness Hacks.
1. Cryotherapy
Why not provide your employees with a cryotherapy membership, like the ones LondonCryo offer. Cryotherapy (also known as cold exposure therapy) is a medical technique by which the body is exposed to very cold temperatures (-130° C to -140° C) for 3 minutes. The controlled exposure to extreme cold causes rapid cooling of the skin which leads to vasoconstriction; this triggers the nervous system which stimulates an autonomic response that promotes anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory responses in the body. Even just one treatment is enough to boost your wellness, but with regular treatments you will start to see benefits to your whole body and mind.
Here are a list of 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. The overall effect is that it can reduce inflammation and pain in the body and improve overall recovery. 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 has also been shown to boost the immune system by increasing white blood cell count and pro and anti-inflammatory proteins. Regular cold exposure can help make you more resilient to colds and flus, which in the corporate context means less 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 - meaning the rate at which you burn calories skyrockets. By activating BAT with cryotherapy it 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.
2. 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. Red light delivers light that is 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 has the ability to improve cellular health across the whole body.
Long stressful hours in front of a computer screen erodes away at one's mental sharpness. Where long work days become long work weeks, and long work weeks blend into months, your brain performance, such as how you process information, recall memories, and respond to external stimuli will deteriorate and as we age, age-related cognitive decline starts to also set in.
Light exposure plays a vital role in affecting the biological pathways that impact your sharpness of mind - light to 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 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 being activated optimally.
Studies have shown that 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. Studies have also shown 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 set in 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-aging.
Quality recovery time helps you build back stronger from acute soreness and inflammation, so you can perform better. Recovery is not just about recovering from exercise related stress, all stress that the body goes through needs time to effectively recover. Just as an athlete can overtrain, so too can a person overwork at their job - inducing mental and work related stress. Intermittent stress is effective at building resilience but chronic stress, absence of adequate recovery, promotes inflation that can accelerate ageing related conditions.
Red light boosts your bodies ability to process inflammation and so boosts 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.
Skin is our largest organ and it does a lot more than make us look pretty or handsome. Skin health plays a vital role in one's mental and physical wellbeing. Skin is essential for your immunity, blood circulation, CNS signalling, heat regulation, nutrient synthesis and self-esteem. Many of these aforementioned functions are sensitive and responsive to the light in our environment and 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 of the skin. 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 many leading skin experts have been 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.
The average office worker will spend almost 1,700 hours a year in front of a computer screen, a poll has found; and this poll was done before 2020 when remote working became the norm - it is likely this is much higher and also does not include out of hours and mobile screen time. We now spend a lot of time in front of a screen and evolutionarily this is not the norm, and it is starting to impact 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 is TLC for the eyes.
Red light has been shown to improve mitochondrial function in the eyes and there have been many studies done and still emerging showing how red light is effective at healing a number of 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 in 97% of eyes without cataracts and on top of that these improvements lasted 3 - 36 months after treatment. Another study looking into how red light therapy can successfully treat a number of 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 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 have been described very well and in Matthew Walker’s book Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams. He shows how poor sleep can disrupt your overall metabolism, which can lead to weight gain and poor digestion and nutrient absorption. Optimal sleep on the other hand, improves mental health, levels of attractives, weight loss and wards off metabolic diseases. Moreover, most corporate workers spend most of their day indoors, in front of a screen and under fluorescent light. This type of light is known as blue light and is a potent disrupter of the hormones that regulates our circadian rhythm.
Red light therapy improves sleep as it acts as a light supplement that 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. 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.
3. IV infusions
A key to optimal health and wellness is having sufficient vitamin levels - that means not being deficient in the key vitamins and minerals our body needs. 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 body. Living and working in high EMF environments has also shown to leech 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 not optimal for everyone.
This is because vitamin supplements often take several weeks before they take effect, people forget to take them and it is estimated we only absorb around 20% of nutrients we take orally, and it is even less if some is suffering 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 are loaded with the most biologically available nutrients to give your body the nutrients it needs.
Performance - these drips contain vitamins, minerals and amino acids which boost hydration and optimise your body’s energy producing capacity.
Detox & Anti Aging - these are antioxidant rich drips which help fight off premature signs of aging and help your body flush harmful toxins out of your body more effectively.
4. Journalling
The last thing one wants in the corporate world is more homework, but making journaling a daily practise is a strategy that has helped brilliant and successful people become better at what they do - why not capitalise on the success and make journaling a daily business practise?
A daily journaling practice can be implemented into a business in many innovative ways. You could create your own 5 minute daily journal tailored to your business. You could bring in experts to create workshops or webinars to teach journaling. You could provide subscriptions to journaling apps. No matter the way, journaling is adaptive and its results are effective at both the personal wellness level and its effects on business performance.
A study conducted by Harvard Business School found that those in the study 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 as writing reflects clear thinking, and in turn, clear communication. A Study published 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.
Another Study done by Cambridge University looked into how journaling can help with traumatic and stressful events and found that by 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 reveal that journaling is a powerful mechanism behind learning, optimising performance and stress management - integrating journaling into a daily business practise will not only positively impact the health and wellness of the employees, it can also boost the overall performance of the company.
5. 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.
You can connect to yourself with wearables such as with an Apple Watch, Fit Bit, Whoop Strap or Oura ring. 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, it gives you direction and makes it much easier to build good habits inline with your body’s unique potential.
Tracking can go deeper than skin and it is 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 until they react, having regular blood tests that analyse cortisol “stress” levels, thyroid function, liver function, vitamin and mineral levels, give accurate insights which allow for proactive steps to be taken. Over the long term this can minimise the risk of long-term chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes.
6. Remote access to Wellness Coaching
Although meeting in person has become near impossible it does not therefore follow that wellness has to be put on hold - it’s 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... I have pushed myself to my mental limits and I have burnt out before. I know the demands of corporate life and understand the pressure people put on themselves are their colleagues 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 and this is where I think biohacking corporate wellness and using a coach like myself to help optimise company performance is essential, as it will hep a company to avoid the pitfalls that can come with toxic work practises.
I have worked with many Execs, who in their work life are sharp and intelligent investors, but they 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 is optimised for corporate performance? Mind set and physical optimisation is essential for high performance, and I pride myself in being able 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 have encountered many times with clients is the apathy that comes from the vast amount of conflicting health and wellness advice about what to do and what to avoid. I help take away the guesswork by bursting conventional bubbles and bringing truly innovative and tailored biohacks to my clients and businesses I work with - while always bearing in mind the corporate environment these need to be applied to and the digital normal reality of the world we live in (Zoom sessions, online modules and remote Workshops, either group or individual).
My main focus first is often always with mindset as the body goes where the mind leads it and most people fail to cultivate wellness habits due to mindset issues. It is very difficult to make changes alone and I work close and personal so no client of mine or individual in a company I am optimising is left feeling isolated - great and powerful change is possible and it is done easier with personal connections and coachin