Costly health mistakes and how to solve them

Tim Garrett highlights some of the most common health mistakes employees are making  in the office.

There are certain things that many people can get confused about when it comes to health  principles.

They might be easy mistakes to make, especially during a busy working day, but they could also be having a huge impact on your quality of life.

Here are a few common mistakes and how you can change the situation.

Mistaking junk food for real food

Even diet-conscious or healthy eaters are guilty of this common mistake. Despite been seen as good for you, foods like quinoa, oats, seeds, seed oils and rice can be junk food – or at the very least semi junk food.

If a food has indigestible fibres, as is the case with seeds like quinoa, or is digested slowly, as is the case with rice, then it serves as a perfect food for bacteria to feed off – thus causing a dangerous endotoxin build up and resulting in lowered thyroid function. In this instance the potential health benefits of these foods are outweighed by the negative health consequences.

You should also stay away from food like bread, cakes, biscuits, and sweets at least 80 per cent of the time. We are all human, but they are junk food and not designed for human  consumption.

Leaving long gaps between meals

The vast majority of people have problems in this area and it’s easy to appreciate why. When someone is not focussed on their diet and lifestyle, and has never being taught how important regular meals are, they put their busy life first and eating regular meals a distant second.

When you leave long gaps between meals there is a hormonal consequence that affects your temperament and performance. Your stress hormones such as cortisol and  adrenaline shoot up, and if this happens repeatedly – especially if it coincides with other stressors – it can contribute to adrenal fatigue. This can lead to depression and a number of other symptoms.

You need to balance stress hormones with repair hormones. When your stress hormones are high, your repair hormones are automatically low, and when this happens a number of valuable health markers are killed off. These include energy, the ability to handle stress effectively and the ability to communicate clearly.

When your stress hormones are high they create energy so you can survive the stress. In  doing this they eat into your muscle tissue, fat cells and your thymus gland. This is bad  enough in itself, but it also lets loose the very damaging polyunsaturated fats that are stored in your tissues. These are cell toxic, health toxic and degenerative.

Thinking that fats and all sugars are bad for you

This is widely misunderstood and a lot of people’s health is suffering as a result. Cholesterol from saturated fat is extremely useful for the body – it is essential in making the life-affirming, healthy hormones that help you live a great quality of life.

People have been led to believe that sugars are all bad for you and that fruit sugars are to be included on the danger list. This is simply not true. Glucose is one of the most  protective, stress-beating, degeneration-beating compounds you can have in your body and when you don’t consume enough through your diet, your body will not be able to  cope and start to degenerate.

Working long hours without doing the following:

• Eating a good quality Palaeolithic diet (including vegetables, fruits, nuts, roots and meats)  at least 80 per cent of the time.
• Getting enough good quality fats from foods like milk, cheese, eggs, beef, lamb and coconut oil.
• Getting enough good quality, easily usable sugars for energy production and healthy hormone creation.
• Spending at least some time a week doing an exercise that creates energy rather than activity that expends energy.
• Getting enough sleep or sleeping after 11pm. Getting seven or eight hours of sleep a night isn’t the same as sleeping at a decent hour.

Knowing what not to do goes some way to helping you understand what you should be doing. Hopefully realising these mistakes will help you integrate healthy practices into  your daily life, improving your all-round wellbeing as well as your work performance.