While many French people have had a hard time letting go during the holidays, Why Doctor offers here five detox tips with scientifically proven effectiveness.
As the summer holidays arrive, many French people dread leaving. Because according to a poll conducted by Qapa this month, 67% of people fail to drop out of their job during holidays. Women are the most stressed since 73% of them continue to be obsessed with their professional worries against 61% of men. In order to overcome these anxieties, Why Doctor offers you five methods to let go and recharge your batteries this summer.
1 / Adopt a good diet
Has the year been tough and are you feeling depressed? An easy solution exists to play on your mood: change your diet. A healthy diet will allow you to feel good about your body and by extension good about yourself.
To restore morale by providing the brain with the nutrients it needs to function optimally, stock up on Omega-3 (found in fish and olive oil) and group B vitamins (found mainly in green vegetables or whole grain products). Adopt a diet rich in tryptophan (whole grain rice, legumes, crucifers, eggs, dairy products, meats, fatty fish, dark chocolate, bananas, nuts and seeds) and avoid refined products (many salts, sugars, cereals and oils) where valuable minerals and fibers from food have been removed. The latter therefore only provide empty calories, useless to the body, even harmful.
Finally, banish ultra-processed products from your diet, such as chips, cookies, industrial cakes, ice cream, soft drinks, chicken nuggets, breaded fish and other frozen ready-to-eat meals. In addition to weight gain and their negative impacts on the brain, these foods would increase the risk of death from cardiovascular disease.
2/ Practice regular physical activity
Exercising regularly and fighting a sedentary lifestyle helps you feel good about yourself. Many studies show the benefits of sport on morale and well-being. According to work published in January in the review JAMA Psychiatry“rough calculations suggest that the replacement of the sitting position per 15 minutes of cardiac activity such as running, or per hour of moderate activity such as walking, is sufficient to decrease the risk of depression”.
During a detox program, the ideal is to mix relaxing practices such as yoga, or promoting muscle building such as Pilates with activities such as cardio training through an exercise bike, a run on treadmills or a fitness walk. If you prefer to exercise on a bicycle, you can alternate periods of low resistance (one minute) and higher resistance (2 minutes) exercise during the same session. If you choose to train on a treadmill, choose a reasonable pace: 6 to 7 km/h. During the same session, you can alternate active walking on a flat surface then on a slope or running (1 minute) and walking (2 minutes) and extend the running time over the training sessions.
3/ Try meditation
When you are stressed, irritable, or angry, your lymphatic nervous system is activated in preparation for fight or flight. At the hormonal level, the release of noradrenaline and adrenaline leads to an acceleration of cardiac and respiratory activity, a decrease in digestive activity, dilation of the bronchi and an increase in blood pressure. A brake pedal does exist, however: the parasympathetic system. To activate it, many specialists suggest mediation (with the Petit Bambou application for example) or even practices such as sophrology or Tai-chi-chuan.
A few months ago, an international study published in the journal Psychological Reports had also highlighted the virtues of transcendental meditation for mental health. By working with 34 students who have all received a post-traumatic stress diagnosis and depression, the researchers were able to observe that this practice, which consists of chanting and concentrating on mantras to achieve serenity, improved their condition, in particular reducing depressive symptoms and therefore the taking of medication.
4/ Start writing or reading personal development books
It’s well known that writing allows you to sort out your thoughts and to exteriorize fears or negative emotions that have been buried in you for too long. Several studies have already shown that daily writing, if only twenty minutes, reduced the depression index of patients. Putting down on paper a memory that haunts you or expressing yourself about the apprehension of an upcoming event allows you to take a step back from the stress of everyday life. In particular, expansive writing has been proven to improve self-awareness and combat ruminations, redundant negative thoughts, anxiety and avoidance strategies, which are always very harmful in the long term. This summer, take the time to write down your thoughts, your anxieties or even your daily life, in a daily diary or a travel diary if you’re out and about.
But if writing puts you off, reading personal development books can also be a good way to use the holidays to take stock of your life and what you want to change (or not). The editorial staff of Why Doctor recommends you in particular You can change your life by Louise L. Hay, Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, The art of inner calm and The power of now by Eckhart Tolle.
5/ Reconnect with nature
Currently, 95% of the French population lives in an area under urban influence and for many people, contact with nature has disappeared. Our ancestors having evolved over three million years in a dense biodiversity populated by trees, plants and animals, this rupture disturbs our emotional brain, often causing in us particularly unpleasant feelings of oppression and suffocation.
In 2016, a study published in the journal Health & Place had shown that living by the sea improved people’s well-being, reducing their anxiety and depressive symptoms. In Japan, doctors even recommend to their patients with hypertension or with too high levels of cortisol (stress hormone) forest baths.
But there is no need to go to the Land of the Rising Sun to reconnect with nature. According to a study published in June in Scientific Reports, two hours of walking a week in nature would have a long-term impact on mental and physical health. This short period of time would make it possible to spend quality moments in the company of loved ones, to take a step back and reduce stress. That seems doable.
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