Is it time you considered a digital detox?
For those of your who don’t know I have a background in IT. This means I am very comfortable with technology and love my smartphone. However I am for once a month to do a digital detox the reason is that I recognise that I live in an “always on” society. I am inundated on a daily basis with social media updates, text messages and emails. What’s worse are “always on” society ecpects us to be contactable at all times and to respond immediatley. Its no surprise that research has found a link between heavy smarphone usage and increased anxiety.
Did you know that smartphones are actually designed to distract us? They rob our brains of vitally important downtime preventing them from being creative. A digital detox allows my brain to reachage and focus on the present. No one needs to give you permission to go off grid for half a day and you don’t need to feel guilty either.
A digital detox can start simply as 45 minutes without using a smartphone, laptop, tablet or other device one evening a week and then build up slowly to a couple of hours. I find regular digital detox is hugely beneficial to my state of mind and can be easily incorporated into your routine.
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Is slouching that bad for you? – part 4
In previous blog posts I have explored the following reasons for not slouching
So finally I would like to focus on how slouching affects your breathing. You’ll notice that people don’t sigh when they sit slumped — they have to sit up to take a deep breath,’ observes Professor Stephen Spiro of the British Lung Foundation. ‘That’s because the lungs work best when we’re vertical. If you’re slumped forward you don’t fully breathe and ventilate the lungs, because they’re compressed and the diaphragm is coming up into the chest — so you won’t breathe as easily and efficiently.’ This can cause particular breathing problems for anyone with asthma or lung disease. ‘If you’re an asthmatic you probably don’t have bad posture because people are quite clever at correcting themselves,’ says Professor Spiro. Physiotherapist Sammy Margo adds that slumping can mean less oxygen gets to the brain. ‘Slumped or C-shaped people complain of being tired and fatigued all the time and it’s because the lungs are squashed and cannot get enough air in, and the brain needs plenty of oxygen to function at its best.’ In addition, if you slumped you are breath with be short and shallow from your upper chest. In order to relax and digest food your body needs the parasympathetic nervous system to be dominant. A quick way to do this is to sit up right and take deep breaths and this simulates the parasympathetic system. So slumping may be contributing to you feeling anxious and finding it hard to relax and switch off when you leave work!
