Health
Contents of this page:
- Yoga
- Muscle Cramps
- Mental Health
- Eating disorders
- COVID-19 / coronavirus / Sars-CoV-2
- Vaccination
- Staying sane during the COVID-19 crisis
- Nice things to do during lockdown
- Positive stuff
- Meg John and Justin: Podcast and Resources on Stress and Coronavirus
- Resilience
- Countering burnout
- Unfuck your brain
- Control what you can, accept what you can’t
- Don’t put pressure on yourself to become super-productive
- APPLE technique to deal with anxiety
- ODAAT - One Day at a Time
- Don’t Worry
- Some info and links
- Older covid stuff you probably already know
- Running and knees
- Sleep
Yoga
Hip Openers
I’ve had problems with my hips for a while, almost certainly because I spend so much time sitting at a desk. But lockdown is worse, because I’m moving around even less than normal.
- Yoga video of suggested hip openers, for people who spend all day sitting down.
- Here’s my attempt to describe them in words I’ll understand (so I don’t have to watch a video every time):
- Wide-legged child, same as child but with knees apart, hips sitting on heels
- or lie on back, holding knees apart and pulling up to chest
- Low lunge, knee over ankle, back knee on ground
- or half happy baby lying on back
- Lizard, like low lunge but with foot on outer edge of hand
- you can roll the front leg outwards if you like - make sure to flex at ankle and rotate hip, knee and ankle all in same direction
- Pigeon lunge on the ground
- or the gentler alternative, lying on your back and doing eye of the needle
- Warrior 2 pose (front foot facing forward, back foot parallel to back of mat, head facing over front foot, arms out, gaze wide, front hip knee and ankle aligned, squeeze into the mid line)
- Wide-legged child, same as child but with knees apart, hips sitting on heels
Muscle Cramps
- Things to try
- Eat more salt!
- Eat more potassium
Mental Health
See also Staying sane during the COVID-19 crisis below.
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Great article by Olvier Burkeman, “Eight secrets to a fairly fulfilled life”
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The ugh field - how to get better at doing those tasks you keep putting off (not the ugh response as I previously thought).
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Random bits of pop-psychology advice that may or may not be useful:
- “Beth” from GCHQ (via Anne-Marie Imafidon’s podcast) suggests that if you can, try to replace anger and anxiety with curiosity. What’s happening here? Why?
- Quote from Hank Green’s novel An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: “When we care for each other, we are always in a place that matters.”
Eating disorders
Apparently a great book for parents of people with eating disorders is the book Anorexia and other eating disorders, by Eva Musby. It contains scripts of what parents should say (because it’s very hard to get that right, and horribly easy to get it wrong. Simply commanding or begging or wheedling for your child to change their eating habits is unlikely to have the desired effect).
Also apparently the organisation Beat are extremely useful.
I heard about both of these because they were recommended by Caitlin Moran on the “The Making Of” podcast.
COVID-19 / coronavirus / Sars-CoV-2
Vaccination
- Covid vaccination queue calculator
- Link to book your own vaccination (once they reach your group)
Staying sane during the COVID-19 crisis
Nice things to do during lockdown
- Virtual live tours
- Virtual cheese tasting
- Virtual live comedy
- Make your own burgers from Burger & Beyond
- Three online immersive escape rooms from Swamp Motel:
- Generic nice stuff
Positive stuff
- @andrewdotdobson and his colleagues at Publicis Poke have made a webapp with a button you can press for good positive stuff to cheer you up and distract you. Announced here on Twitter.
- Some more nice stuff here
Meg John and Justin: Podcast and Resources on Stress and Coronavirus
Resilience
Countering burnout
- This is a really interesting podcast about burnout, talking about how when you are in a position of stress you need to “complete the stress cycle” to allow your body to process the after-effects. If you don’t then you get stuck in a neverending stress tunnel and that’s when burnout happens. It’s Brene Brown interviewing Emily and Amelia Nagoski about their book Burnout.
- Here is an article describing the things you can do to complete the stress cycle.
- Here’s the list of things you can do to help your body recover from stress (more detail here):
- Physical activity (anything at all, just get moving)
- Slow deep breathing
- Positive social interaction - can be as simple as complimenting somebody on their hair
- Laughter - proper belly laughs with someone else, or even just reminiscing about times you laughed together
- Affection - they recommend a daily 20-second hug or a 6-second kiss! It has to last long enough to dissipate your stress.
- Crying - where you focus on the sensation of crying and try not to perpetuate it by dwelling on the thing you’re crying about
- Creative expression - which can be as simple as imagining a little story where you fly over the top of a stressful thing - but doesn’t have to be directly related to the source of stress.
Unfuck your brain
- Coping with pandemic panic - free session from Kara Loewentheil (“Harvard law school grad, feminist rockstar, and master coach”).
I found this really helpful, but it’s worth saying that Kara Loewentheil’s style doesn’t work for everyone. In a nutshell, she’s saying that you can’t control what’s happening in the world, but you can control how you react to it. Death and sickness have always been present and have always been things that could affect both ourselves and our loved ones. It’s never been helpful to worry and obsess over those things, but because right now everybody IS worrying and obsessing over it, there is an unstated pressure to join in. Resist that pressure. Do everything you need to do to keep yourself and your loved ones safe, but take those actions out of love instead of out of anxiety.
If you don’t find that Kara’s style works for you, don’t feel bad! Turn it off and try one of the things below instead.
Control what you can, accept what you can’t
Don’t put pressure on yourself to become super-productive
- Some good points are made about this in this article here
APPLE technique to deal with anxiety
AnxietyUK suggests practising the “Apple” technique to deal with anxiety and worries.
- Acknowledge: Notice and acknowledge the anxious thoughts as they comes to mind.
- Pause: Don’t react as you normally do. Don’t react at all. Pause and breathe.
- Pull back: Tell yourself this is just the worry talking, and any apparent need to know exactly what will happen next is not helpful and not necessary. It is only a thought or feeling. Don’t believe everything you think. Thoughts are not statements or facts.
- Let go: Let go of the thought or feeling. It will pass. You don’t have to respond to it. You might imagine it floating away in a bubble or cloud.
- Explore: Explore the present moment, because right now, in this moment, all is well. Notice your breathing and the sensations of your breathing. Notice the ground beneath you. Look around and notice what you see, what you hear, what you can touch, what you can smell. Right now. Then shift your focus of attention to something else - on what you need to do, on what you were doing before you noticed the worry, or do something else - mindfully with your full attention.
ODAAT - One Day at a Time
This is an edited version of a description of this technique from my friend Lou:
“In order to stay calm, you have to be calm one day at a time. I find it a great way to ground myself if I’m starting to live in the future (futile, not happened yet) or past (not helpful as can’t change etc) That’s not to say that you shouldn’t plan for the future or neglect the lessons of the past but by staying in our head there, we’re not present in the place where we actually have some control.
Here’s an example. Say you plan to have a re-decorated sitting room by the end of this period of social distancing / wfh / isolating.
Your locus of control is now - that’s where you order the paint / brushes and other things you need. It’s also where you do the painting. Reminiscing about how you didn’t order enough paint last time, or daydreaming about how it will look when finished are exercises of the mind - they don’t help you achieve the actual task. Likewise beating yourself up about how you fuck ed it up last time or telling yourself that you are shit at DIY and therefore being scared to start is another future dwelling pointless exercise. Things that would be of use like “ I did Y last time and it resulted in unwelcome X - perhaps if I try A it will be better” is a more helpful way of framing / planning, and is useful.”
Try to pay attention to the positive things you have achieved each day, and give yourself some acknowledgement for those things. And be kind to yourself when circumstances make it hard to follow any kind of plan.
Don’t Worry
One of my favourite poems, by Julia Darling, one of my favourite poets:
Don’t Worry
about the food you haven’t bought,
if your daughter caught that train,
the bill that came, the twinge
in your right leg. Don’t fuss.
The washing on the line
will dry again. It’s not your fault
So what if you lied?
Don’t be ashamed.
And don’t worry that you promised.
It doesn’t matter about those promises. Let them go.
Just tell her you don’t like her if you don’t.
You needn’t see the doctor with bad breath.
Behave badly. Lie on the floor.
Throw a tantrum if you’re bored.
Be late. Be sordid. Eat six pies.
Or trick them by being euphoric.
Above your head a flock of geese
are flying South. Beneath your feet
worms aren’t worrying.
Some info and links
NB: This collection is months old now. Do you really need to follow these links? Maybe you’d be better off finding something more calming to look at.
- Zoom fatigue:
- Remote working at scale:
- Useful links / articles:
- (I make no claims for the accuracy about anything presented in any of these links)
- animated video of what happens inside your body
- Explanation of why dividing by population size is not a simple exercise
- Interesting article here about what impact warmer weather might have, about immunity, and about what might happen if the virus becomes endemic (hangs around everywhere indefinitely) and seasonal
- Running remote workshops due to COVID-19
- Longform article about why coronavirus is so confusing
- Really useful article about how the virus spreads. Aimed at Americans, but once you get past the intro there’s tons of detailed info about what you should be worried about.
- Global COVID-19 data
- Symptoms
- A WHO app with regularly updated information:
- Type in ‘hi’ to begin the menu.
- Has updates on every aspect of the virus - numbers if you want them, how to protect yourself and others, symptoms etc etc etc
Older covid stuff you probably already know
- It is a coronavirus, not the coronavirus. There are versions of the common cold that are also coronaviruses.
- This strain is called COVID-19
- It’s different to ordinary ‘flu in many ways, and will have a more significant impact (see articles / links below).
- Useful links / articles:
- (I make no claims for the accuracy about anything presented in any of these links)
- An early article about some of the science
- Virus expert interviewed by C4 news
- US article on why the virus is genuinely worrying and why you should stay at home
- Twitter thread about long term immunity and the UK government’s strategy. Warning! It’s Twitter so take it with a pinch of salt, but there’s some interesting food for thought.
- Remote working tools are struggling with outages due to the surge in usage
Running and knees
- Advice on protecting your knees while running
- NB: Cadence is the number of times your foot hits the ground per minute. According to the above article, you should aim for the same cadence (around 180) whether you are running fast or slow - so you just increase your stride length to get a higher speed.
- If you have a slow cadence it’s easy to overstride and heel-strike (land on the heel of your foot instead of in the middle of your foot), which is bad for your knees.
- Exercises to strengthen the knees
- More advice on knees and running
- couch to 5k
Sleep
I highly recommend Why we Sleep by Matthew Walker. Full of very useful science and facts about how sleep works, how important it is and how to get more of it.
The book contains this handy list of things you can do to improve your sleep - reprinted in the book and originally published here - follow the link then scroll down to page 20.