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Understanding the Stress – Skin Connection: Managing Stress for Healthier Skin

Our body and mind are intricately connected, and even a slight imbalance in one can significantly affect the other. A common example of this is stress. Psychological stress can be challenging not only for the mind but also for the body, particularly the skin, which is one of the largest organs. The connection between stress and chronic skin diseases like Atopic Dermatitis (AD) is profound.

Stress impacts many neurological, metabolic, and immune pathways linked to the progression of chronic skin diseases like AD. It can impair skin barrier function, trigger pro-inflammatory factors causing redness and inflammation, and alter the immune response, compromising disease resistance. Consequently, stress worsens AD, and the deteriorated state of the skin further exacerbates stress. This reciprocal relationship underscores the importance of managing stress as a vital part of AD management.

It is crucial to seek professional help for stress management and skin care. Consulting a dermatologist and, if necessary, a psychiatrist can ensure both stress and skin health are properly addressed. Meanwhile, indulging in hobbies, taking prescribed medications regularly, exercising, practicing yoga, and establishing a bedtime ritual can all contribute to better skin health.

A happier mind leads to happier, healthier skin.

We hope this article helps you. For further information or guidance, reach out to your GOQii Skin Coach.

#BeTheForce

Reference –

Evers AWM, van Beugen S. How stress affects the skin: from designs to mechanisms. Br J Dermatol. 2021 Jul;185(1):12-13. doi: 10.1111/bjd.20397. Epub 2021 Jun 11. PMID: 34114221; PMCID: PMC8361690.

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Effective Ways To Improve Gut Health

How to improve gut healthGut health is a familiar concept, and it’s widely recognized that maintaining a healthy gut is beneficial for our overall well-being. Beyond just aiding digestion, a healthy gut supports our immune system, heart health, brain function, weight management, and numerous other facets of health.

How Do We Know That Our Gut Health Is Optimal?

A healthy gut requires a balanced interaction between beneficial and harmful microbes within our digestive system. Our body’s microbiome, which includes trillions of bacteria, fungi, yeast, and other microbes—with bacteria being the predominant group—is vast. In fact, bacterial cells outnumber our own human cells! It’s accurate to consider the microbiome as an essential organ, critical to maintaining our overall health.

When our gut health suffers, we may experience a variety of symptoms such as indigestion, bloating, constipation, acidity, acid reflux, chronic fatigue, acne, joint inflammation and pain, as well as anxiety and depression. It’s crucial to identify and address the underlying causes of these symptoms instead of merely resorting to temporary solutions.

Effective Ways To Improve Gut Health

improve gut health

  • Include Fibre in your diet: Fibre helps to regulate bowel movements by absorbing water into the colon, making the stools soft and easy to pass through the intestines. Good sources of fibre include – fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans and pulses.
  • Have foods rich in Prebiotics: Prebiotics are basically food for the gut microflora that humans cannot digest but keeps the gut bacteria healthy. These include fibre from legumes, beans, oats, banana, berries, asparagus, apples, garlic, onion and leeks.
  • Include Probiotics in your daily diet: Probiotics are live bacteria found in certain foods and supplements. These include Curd, Yogurt, Fermented food items like Kombucha, Kimchi, Sauerkraut, Kefir and Pickles. Before taking probiotic supplements, it is advisable to consult your physician first.
  • Drink plenty of water: Drink eight glasses (about 2 litres) of water each day to keep yourself hydrated during the day. This is a general guideline, the exact water requirement depends on your body weight, activity levels and the environmental condition.
  • Reduce/Manage stress levels: Stress can have a major impact on our gut health because it affects the regulation of hormones and neurotransmitters that control your gastrointestinal function. So, if you are feeling stressed, seek help or try to manage it with meditation, yoga, exercise, pursuing a hobby, talking to family and friends.
  • Avoid Processed/Sugary food items: Sugar feeds bad bacteria in our gut which can cause bloating, discomfort and gas. So avoiding or reducing sugar intake can help promote good bacteria growth. Similarly, processed foods are stripped of the majority of nutrients and are loaded with artificial colours, preservatives, sweeteners, trans fats, all of these increase inflammation in the body and impact gut health.
  • Exercise regularly: Regular exercise is one of the best ways to improve your gut health, as it helps build immunity to fight against viruses and bacterial infections. So, the more active you are, the healthier gut you will have!
  • Sleep well: The quality of your sleep can affect your gut health, so get your 7-8 hours of good quality sleep. Follow a good sleep hygiene, avoid using electronic gadgets before sleep and avoid caffeine late in the day. You can also practice deep breathing or meditation to induce sleep.
  • Antibiotics: Avoid taking antibiotics unnecessarily, as they kill the bad as well as good bacteria in the gut. In case it is unavoidable, do include probiotics in your diet, to replenish the lost good bacteria.
  • Avoid Alcohol: Alcohol causes depletion in the gut bacteria and inflammation, so it is better to avoid or limit your intake.

These simple yet very effective ways will help you keep your gut healthy and contribute to your overall wellbeing. If this article helped you, let us know in the comments below!

For more on maintaining and improving Gut Health, check out Healthy Reads. You can also speak to an expert by subscribing for GOQii’s Personalised Health Coaching here.

#BeTheForce

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Overcome Worry – The Biggest Obstacle To Weight Loss & Your Health!

Overcome worryDo you eat food peacefully or with worry on your mind? Do you exercise happily or with worry on your mind? Do you also go to bed worried? Are you low on energy through the day and only the thought of outside food or entertainment can cheer you up? Are you unable to overcome worry?

Do you accept defeat when:

  • Your weight does not budge
  • You have a restless night sleep
  • You give in to food cravings
  • Your friends around you seem to lose weight faster or look better than you

A roadside advertisement for a certain brand of motor oil read “A clean engine always delivers power”…

So will a mind, free of negative thoughts, and very positive or in other words, a clean mind will deliver power! Therefore, flush out your negative thoughts, give yourself a clean mental engine, remembering that a clean mind, can always deliver power.

Why You Need To Overcome Worry

Overcome worry - obstacle to weight lossMost of our obstacles to weight loss and health are mental in character. You might say, “mine are not mental, they are real”, perhaps so, but your attitude towards them is clearly mental. “Worry” is the most subtle and destructive of all human diseases. Through “worry”, we have the dangerous ability to manifest diseases, stress, failure, defeat, anger, frustration and depression.

Do not accept defeat so easily. When your weight does not budge, be patient and instead of giving up, be more consistent with the things you should be doing to lose weight. It took you months or years to pile on fat, what makes you think it will go in few weeks without some sacrifice and effort?

Are you being honest with yourself when it comes to your food, exercise and eating outside?

Ask yourself, if the defeat that you have accepted is because you keep comparing yourself or your body to those around you? Your friends? Your social circle? If yes, then you will never be happy with the progress you make, you will get further depressed and you will fail. Have you even seen any two actors with the same body type? How can you ever have the same body as someone else then?

Comparing ourselves with others is the most drastic mistake one can make when it comes to our health or weight. Your benchmark for progress should be you and what you did yesterday, compared to what you will do today and tomorrow. Keep getting better, getting consistent and that will get you to your goal and peace of mind.

If you struggle to sleep, filter your thoughts and your mind. Easy to say, but hard to do. However, you must make the effort if you want to sleep well again. Worry stems of our insecurity, greed, fear, low confidence, guilt and other factors. Sometimes, you have to let go and if you don’t, your health will make that decision for you.

One of the best exercises to combat insecurities is to count your blessings

overcome worry - gratitudeTake a paper and write down all the things that you have and are grateful for. This should come from your heart. When you are done with this, your problems and insecurities will suddenly seem less. When you begin to eliminate worry, your energy levels automatically increase.

You see, we have over 60,000 thoughts running through our heads everyday. So it’s difficult to focus on what we have (which is usually enough) and instead fill our minds with chaos, which in turn stems worry and negativity. This causes stress and we all know by now that stress causes disease, a weak immune system, and is the biggest – I repeat ‘THE BIGGEST’ obstacle to fat loss and sleep.

Don’t see yoga or breathing as just an exercise. Use that one hour or 45 minutes to actually reflect, count your blessings, pray or analyze the goodness in your life. It is being proved today that the best way to cure a disease or a pain, is not to focus on it, instead focus on everything else that’s going well in your life.

To reach our goal, just have faith. All religions preach this and most people fail to follow or believe in that. Use a day or a weekend in a month for you to weed out negative thoughts, detox your mind, relax your body and count your blessings. Worry is a down payment on a problem that may NEVER occur and worry has never been known to solve a problem.

We hope this article helps you stress less and overcome worry! To know more about how you can beat stress, check out Healthy Reads or ask a GOQii Coach for further guidance by subscribing for Personalised Health Coaching here.

#BeTheForce

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Sleep Series: A Primer On Circadian Rhythm

sleep series

  • Circa – Circular – meaning the one going round and round – repeating itself 
  • “Di”an – Pertaining to Day – or Daily 
  • Rhythm – A regular & repeated pattern of movements (ups & downs) occurring naturally 

Circadian Rhythm (CR) is driven by consumption of light – (light again!) – however, research has proven that light is not necessary and it was observed that the rhythm works more or less correctly even if someone is locked in a very dark place for a long time. But it is also proven that light can drive/influence the rhythm.

Trivia: CR is not exactly 24 hours – it is approximately 24 hours + some 15 minutes! 

The Third Eye/Body clock – known technically as “Suprachiasmatic Nuclei” (why not a simple name?) – of just 10,000 neurons (brain has 100 billion) situated in the hypothalamus area of brain, exactly above the place where the optic nerves from the left and right eye do the “X over” to the other side of the brain, is the main controller of the Circadian Rhythm. It is impacted by the “light” signals coming from the eyes. 

Be very clear, the Third eye controls the “sleep-wake” cycle and it is sensitive to “light”!

Not all people have SAME CR!! They fall into either of the 3 types: 

  1. The Early Birds (25%) 
  2. The Night Owls (25%) 
  3. The Commoners (50%)

There is approximately 1-2 hours of difference in the rhythm between the Early Birds and the Night Owls and the Commoners fall in between. To check your type, google it – web has several free tests.

One’s energy levels, alertness, body temperature, heart rate all have clear correlation to the CR. It is proven that core body temperature falls by up to 2 degree Celsius and heart rate by up to 20 beats per minute. Modern day work environment requires one to have an average to above average energy level and alertness throughout the day. But it is a natural fact that it is NOT. So, we resort to coffee or tea (impact of caffeine in a separate note later). 

If we can closely observe and keep our key meetings in alignment with the CR, we may actually get more productive. In my personal experience I have observed peak productivity between 11-1 in pre-lunch and 4-6 in post lunch sessions. HR processes in companies could use such simple tests to identify rhythm types and create groups of people that complement each other to boost productivity. As I have often seen in boardrooms, there’s always one person presenting with lots of energy and some are following and some are behind! It could simply be the difference in their CR type.

Jet lag is primarily a result due to change in CR. Time clock of the geography and your CR are not aligned, hence the lag. It is said that the lag adjusts @ 1 hour per day.

Circadian Rhythm & Sleep – How To Make It Work For You

  • Observe your CR and understand your CR type, hours of peak productivity – they remain the same throughout your life. Use the natural surge in alertness to your advantage.
  • One tip to get sleep is to start on time and send clear signals to the CR system in the morning by standing in clear sunlight for at least 10 minutes (you might get Vitamin D in the bargain) – When CR registers that signal, it will promptly align the clock to trigger sleep in the night – I tried this as many days as possible
  • World over, people keep an alarm to wake up – Reverse the process – If only you can keep an alarm to start sleep at same time of the night, then you WOULD NOT need an alarm to wake up – that too grumpily – Stick to SAME time (or in a range of 30 minutes) to go to bed, even if you do not get sleep in the beginning.
  • One should reduce exposure to light post 7:30PM – send clear signals that it is night time – Candlelight dinners are a brilliant way to signal Melatonin secretion. 

We hope you enjoyed reading this article so far. Stay tuned for more from the Sleep Series! To read more about sleep and sleeping techniques, check out Healthy Reads or speak to a certified expert by subscribing to GOQii’s Personalised Health Coaching here.

#BeTheForce 

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