Hi, I am Deborah.
I am a naturopathic nutritionist and I am passionate about health and wellbeing. I write about my observations in our world today.
Thank you in advance for reading my first post to Steemit!
I see a lot of lethargy and unexplained fatigue where the get up and go has got up and gone as we say. I wonder why when people pretty much are typically sitting looking at a variety of screens most of their day, so it's not as if they have excessive amounts of energy expenditure happening.
As a society collectively we are moving our bodies less and less due to how we use our technology but also we rarely in many cases are getting out and about and away from that technology that we've now surrounded ourselves with. Well, unless you are now playing Pokemon Go, where for the first time in years I've seen more kids and young adults on the estate that I live walking around than I actually ever knew existed. In fact, I've noticed more kids walking dogs whilst holding out a mobile phone in front of them, so if Pokemon Go has given us nothing else but a walked dog I'm happy about that. But despite the fact they are just staring at a screen the whole time rather than engaging with their environment, I'm actually pleased they are walking because a game has got them up and about. In fact that game has got many of us up and about, especially since our home seems to be a place for them to gather for some reason, so we are spending some of our time asking them to get out of our front garden.
But seriously I see that being permanently connected to our devices is leading us to have a reduced sense of what is good quality living, vitality, and wellbeing, does anyone truly know what that feels like anymore? I'm not sure most people do when we are surrounded now by a level of health standard that in many cases is lower than we should have. With the steady and slow rise of TV watching from my era, the amount of time people and children spend in front of electronic devices has just grown with it, so they've grown up with this type of lifestyle into adulthood.
Continually encouraged to stay seated at school, the reduction of Physical Exercise classes, with these devices then thrown into the mix has taken away the need to get outdoors to see your friends. Social media, and other apps now allow us to stay connected in ways that in my day just didn't exist. Instead, I would have had to organise to go and meet my friends after school, and actually gone out and met them, and then physically played with them. We mostly played chasing and running games, tag, British Bulldog, skipping or just messing playing hide and seek. Except now rather than creating our own fitness levels by running around a lot and playing on bikes with your mates, we are now told what fitness and health should look like, so we stay stuck to our screens watching fitness and health carried out by someone else.
It's become about watching, and staying connected to these people but is that really what good health is about, staying connected to these online people, just watching what others are doing? They can't do it for you, and our experiences are now coming in 2D form rather than actually having them ourselves, so whilst we may think we are living life with our device, are we really if we are permanently attached to a screen. Such a lot of advice is confusing what are really simple rules that you can live easily by which my mother knew made good health, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work it out.
She just had us eat 3 good quality balanced meals a day, we sat down to eat them, we didn't give her any cheek, we chewed our food, we had loads of veggies, and we ate our greens. We only got sweet money once a week. She made her own cakes once a week, and we didn't get a lot of sweet drinks. We were in bed to sleep early and rarely allowed up late. We didn't have TV's, record players, or cassette players, remember them, as distractions to sleeping in our room. We just had to go to sleep, and it was a reasonable time to bed, no shenanigans. She wasn't one to mess around! We were left to play outside for most of the day when we weren't at school, TV was for short periods of time and rainy days, and we walked to school, so we were active, in fact only if it was raining were we left to stay in.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-technology, I'm also surrounded by it, who isn't nowadays, but I've been made more aware of its effects due to the health issues I'm seeing on a weekly basis with those who I work with on their health. More than ever people are seated for long periods of time, sitting at computers for high proportions of their days, in cars, in buildings surrounded often by electronic equipment, sitting at devices all evening.
The more they are seated and using these devices, the more their lethargy seems to increase. With this decrease in energy levels comes lethargy around making good quality food for yourself, and then faster food options become the norm. Yet how can doing so little lead to such a loss of energy and drive that then drives this to become a vicious cycle?
I believe for some, and I'm only saying some, that it's not just about how things have changed since we've grown up, or staying seated all day, or the stress of their work or poorer food choices, but instead a part of their issue of lethargy could be linked with the higher concentration of positive ionisation in the air directly around the electronic and electrical devices.
Men, in particular, are now wearing some of these devices in their pockets for high proportions of their day when they are not directly using them. It's not that these electronic devices only produce these type of ions - that's not the case -it's just that it tends to be more concentrated in positive ions around these items and in these working environments where there are higher levels of electrical equipment and machinery and directly around the screens of computers.
Why is this important? Because changes in the concentration of negative and positive ions have an impact on how our body functions, it can change our moods. Research has shown it affects serotonin levels, which will affect behaviour and our energy levels. Ions surround us in the air and can be positively or negatively charged and that charge can be at different concentration levels. When the concentration of negative or positive ions changes it can, for some, have dramatic effects on health and wellbeing.
My mother would often say that to go to the seaside was to 'have the cobwebs blown away'
In nature, we tend to be surrounded by higher levels of negative ions. The research that has been carried out on the subject of being out in nature is emphatic about it's benefits to our health. The stress reduction benfits are well known for walking in nature but also walking in general.
My mother would often say that to go to the seaside was to 'have the cobwebs blown away' and she was guaranteed that we would sleep that night as kids. And she was right! It generally works. When we went on holiday to Wales to a cottage near the sea, we always were asleep by 9pm, out for the count as we would say. Whether that was because we had all day to play or that we were out in nature and on a beach who knows. But before you laugh and poo poo this idea that higher concentrations of positive ions around our devices could be a factor in energy levels, just consider that we recognise the changes in our atmosphere and rarely think further about them and what it's doing. Some of us know when a storm is coming. They can just tell by the change of the air, they know when something's brewing with the weather, but they just can't put our finger on what it is.
Things like our joints tell us weather change is happening, some people get headaches, others get increased arthritic symptoms. We have experienced the change in the concentration of ions but are not realising that is what is happening. We are changing the ionisation concentration around us in our homes and working environments with the electronic devices we are using and sitting in front of daily for long stretches of time, whilst not realising that it could be a factor in reducing the level of health we are experiencing.
It's all about balance essentially and in many ways these devices and the technology in general and how we are now using it, and I suggest over using it in some cases, is not supporting this balance happening.
We are becoming more distanced from nature and its benefits without realising
Balance is being lost when I hear that more people than ever sleep with their phones in their bedrooms some barely able now to disconnect themselves even to sleep, even those who would never have had a TV in their bedrooms have their phones with them all the time or iPads by their beds.
Even at night, the body is being affected by notification distractions, backlights that keep us awake, and it's never getting a rest from this unseen higher concentration of positive ions that we are now surrounding ourselves with. We can't see it so we don't realise it's there until you are looking for answers in regards to why you feel ill, fatigued, tired, and just plain exhausted with no real energy to do anything and there seems to be no real reason why this should be happening.
More people do realise that they have to take time out, from not only what they are doing but also from their computers and work, and this is probably why the likes of yoga and meditation are increasing. But a good long walk in nature could be all some of us really need to rebalance ourselves.
We are becoming more distanced from nature and its benefits without realising that we could be using it to aid our long-term health and wellbeing in simple and cost effective ways.
Often people say to me that having good health is expensive because of all the supplements they are taking when getting outside for a walk and getting away from their device or screen for a small period of time each day are probably some of the least expensive ways of having good health and increasing energy levels naturally.