Overworked, Overweight, Over-Caffeinated: Can Wellness Play a Healing Role?
On Sunday, I highlighted two studies, one showing a correlation between long working hours and weight gain; and another showing that caffeine, cough-medicine, and Xanax were in all to half (respectively) of blood samples collected.
There is a societal connection between the two here, as well as two other bits of news coming out of the wellness-space. The first being a study showing that sleep deprivation triples the number of lapses in attention and the second showing that social media is a black hole for reliable nutrition information.
How Do These Connect?
First, here’s what these might collectively say about today’s working environment.
Long working hours typically mean increased sedentariness. Long working hours typically mean less time for physical activity and exercise; less time to sleep; less time to practice mental health/stress management exercises; less time to plan, prep, and consume a nourishing diet.
All of this can lead to weight gain, and impair the immune system and one’s mental health.
Long working hours may also lead to increased caffeine consumption, which leads to impaired sleep. Sleep deprivation can lead to increased anxiety. Lack of sleep can also increases your risk of colds/flu. Further, it "doubles the odds of making placekeeping errors and triples the number of lapses in attention, which is startling," said Kimberly Fenn, co-author of the sleep and attention-lapse study.
We don’t know why the blood samples had the medications in them that they did, but we do know that rates of anxiety are high, and that too little sleep impairs the immune system and increases risks for anxiety.
We also know that when most people work long hours, they turn to caffeine to get them through the shift. Caffeine further delays sleep and can affect the quality of the sleep one does get.
This is me speculating and connecting dots, but it’s worth considering. Consistently long working hours can create a viscous cycle that I (and maybe you) have seen anecdotally.
Who Has Time to Vet?
What’s more, whatever little time an over-worked individual has to seek out health-supporting food and drinks, they likely struggle to find clear-cut, evidence-based guidance.
A study from the University of Glasgow found that out of the nine leading UK bloggers making weight-management claims, only one provided accurate and trustworthy information.
While the study, published in April, and highlighted in ACE’s Nov/Dec Magazine issue was looking at the UK, we know the same challenges exist anywhere the Internet does.
“We found that the majority of the blogs could not be considered credible sources of weight management information, as they often presented opinion as fact and failed to meet UK nutritional criteria. This is potentially harmful, as these blogs reach such a wide audience,” said lead author Christina Sabbagh.
This misinformation applies to other healthy lifestyle factors, including exercise advice.
Unfortunately, this means the over-worked individual may have wasted their time on inaccurate information, or at least information that is not relevant to their situation (e.g. factoring in their goals, background, skill set, preferences, pre-existing conditions, age, etc.).
There is a fight for increasing health literacy but it’s an uphill battle.
Who Turns the Tide?
So who’s battle is it to wage and what battle should we really be waging?
A LinkedIn connection recently posted a 2015 article*, which stated that wellness isn’t the fix for workplace overwork. I had to read the article a few times before I realized I didn’t fully disagree.
I believe what the author was saying, or at least hope was saying, is that wellness isn’t the FULL answer. (Also define wellness, please, because a lot of things are being thrown into that pot right now).
The author said that the solution to the problem was not wellness but was simply working less. The only solution to overwork is to work less.
To address the issues driving overwork, and the coping mechanisms people are turning to to get through the overwork (e.g. excess caffeine and sleep loss), we do need at the societal level to address the root of the problem: our society’s drive to engage in and praise overwork.
We do need to support working less, as a whole. However, in doing so, we must keep in mind that what counts as too much work is very subjective. Two people can work the same hours but one could be completely thriving and another could not.
Addressing the issues of unhealthy workplace cultures and our unhealthy responses to them needs to come at both the societal, organizational, and individual level.
The Multi-Level Approach
The wellness industry (e.g. nutritional interventions, exercise interventions, sleep hygiene counseling, stress management techniques, and mental health counseling) has a role to play.
It can increase an individual’s ability to withstand the effects of excess workloads until the work demands themselves can be lessened. It can increase an individual’s physical and mental resilience. It can inform an individual as to what they should be doing instead of working excess hours—that there are options beyond overwork. And it can help that individual work smarter (more efficiently) not harder (longer with less robust results).
This role the wellness industry plays should absolutely be alongside managerial policies that encourage a shift in workplace culture. A culture that prioritizes performance over face-time and honors the health of the employee not just the bottom-line.
Together, changes in workplace cultures and individual practices, will move the societal needle.
References
1. (2019, November). The ACE-IDEA Fitness Journal.
2. Effects of total sleep deprivation on procedural placekeeping: More than just lapses of attention. (2019, November 20). Retrieved from https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-70149-001?doi=1.
3. Luying Chen, Richard B. van Breemen. Validation of a sensitive UHPLC-MS/MS method for cytochrome P450 probe substrates caffeine, tolbutamide, dextromethorphan, and alprazolam in human serum reveals drug contamination of serum used for research. Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis, 2019; 112983 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpba.2019.112983
4.Virtanen, M., Jokela, M., Lallukka, T. et al. Long working hours and change in body weight: analysis of individual-participant data from 19 cohort studies. Int J Obes (2019) doi:10.1038/s41366-019-0480-3
*I chose not to link to or reference the 2015 article to avoid starting an online back-and-forth.