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6 Evidence-Based Strategies For Optimising Your Sleep

Most researchers agree that adults need at least seven hours of sleep each night for proper cognitive and behavioural functions. Talk to people around you though and chances are many of them will identify sleep as something they struggle with. Like diet and exercise, sleep has a huge impact on our wellbeing. The good news is, we can actively work on our sleep habits and improve them. Sleep researcher, Dr Yu Sun Bin offers these 6 strategies for optimising your sleep.

#1 – Stick to a Sleep Schedule

Our circadian rhythm has a direct influence on when melatonin (the body’s sleep hormone) is released to help induce sleep. If your circadian rhythm is out of sync with the natural cycle of day and night, it can make it harder to fall asleep. 

The circadian rhythm is influenced mainly by light and dark, but also by your daily activities. Sticking to a consistent sleep cycle can help you avoid what is referred to as social jet lag. Social jet lag occurs when the time you want to go to sleep as dictated by your internal body clock doesn’t align with your actual sleep patterns due to work or social commitments.

To ensure your circadian rhythm stays in sync, try to stick to a reasonable and consistent time you go to bed and wake up every day, including weekends.

#2 – Take That Nap!

Life has its ups and downs and sometimes not being able to get enough sleep is out of our control. The good news is that naps are science-approved. It’s important to understand though what constitutes a good nap, when to nap, and how long we should be napping to avoid waking up feeling groggy or having sleep inertia. 

To increase alertness, the best time for most people to nap is between 2-4 pm, after your morning peak and as alertness is starting to decline. If you are sleep deprived, it’s generally good to get a nap earlier in the day. Science shows us that the ideal nap is generally short, between five to thirty minutes, with a ten-minute short nap having the best immediate benefit. 

The key to napping is keeping it light. You don’t want to allow your body to fall into a deep sleep, so set an alarm to wake up.

#3 – Avoid Caffeine in the Afternoon

Caffeine presents in the brain as a molecule similar in structure to adenosine, a chemical that builds up in the brain when we’re awake and affects how sleepy we feel. When we consume caffeine it blocks the receptors in the brain that normally receive the adenosine molecule, making us feel more alert. Once the caffeine wears off, the adenosine molecule re-attaches to the receptors, putting a sudden break to brain activity and making you feel tired or sluggish. 

Half the caffeine we consume is metabolised in about six hours. If you have a regular flat white at 2 pm, half of the caffeine will still be present in your system at 8 pm. This explains why drinking caffeine in the afternoon can disrupt your ability to fall asleep. 

To optimise your sleep, try to avoid caffeine after 2 pm, and if you would like to cut back on your caffeine intake, do it gradually to avoid withdrawal symptoms such as headaches.

#4 – Reduce Alcohol Intake

Many of us get caught in the alcohol sleep paradox and don’t even realise the effect it is having on our bodies. What is the alcohol sleep paradox you ask? Drinking alcohol is known to help us fall asleep, but what most people don’t realise is that it also contributes to disturbed sleep patterns as it increases our waking throughout the night. 

For the average adult who sleeps for eight hours a night, just four standard drinks can deprive you of ~50 minutes of quality sleep. 

#5 – Exercise Outdoors & Synchronize your Circadian Rhythm to Daylight

We all know that exercise has numerous health benefits. Yet not everyone is aware of the relationship between exercise and sleep. For instance, exercising at night can delay your bedtime as your body needs to lower its core temperature after exercise in order to induce sleep. 

Try fitting your higher intensity workouts in the morning when you first wake and stick to lower intensity workouts like light yoga in the evening to help you optimise your sleep.

#6 – Eat a Healthy Diet

Eating a healthy diet can help you optimise your sleep. Increase your intake of fish and whole foods that contain lots of protein and fibre. Protein and fibre contain an important amino acid called tryptophan which is used to produce melatonin, the human sleep hormone. 

Try to eat your dinner more than three hours before bedtime to give your body enough time to register that it’s full and allow you to metabolise your food properly.

 

Dr Sun Bin is an epidemiologist and public health researcher. Her particular research interests are on sleep and circadian rhythms and how these biological systems are reflected in behaviour, health, and disease.

Research Review: The Impact of Sleep on Self-Control

sleep and self-control

In this article, our expert Dr. Yu Sun Bin – reviews: Sleep and self-control: A systematic review and meta-analysis by Guarana et al 2021. 

 

1) What was the high-level summary of the research?

The quality and duration of our sleep affects our levels of self-control i.e., our ability to control our impulses and overcome temptations.

 

2) How was the study undertaken?

This study was a systematic review, which means that the researchers comprehensively searched the scientific literature for studies on sleep and self-control to try and synthesise (bring all of the evidence together to summarise) what we currently know and to identify where more research might be needed. 

The team of researchers then sorted through more than 1600 studies, focusing in on studies that tried to answer the question of whether sleep affects self-control. Specifically, the researchers used meta-analysis which means that they combined the numerical results from the studies to find an overall result. This overall result should be more reliable and more indicative of the true effect of sleep on self-control than the results of individual studies, which can be ‘noisy’ and throw up unusual findings by chance. 

 

3) What did the study find?

The researchers found 56 studies on sleep and self-control.

Researchers tend to think of self-control in two ways: first, as a somewhat stable trait of a person (akin to personality), and second, as something much more fluid, like a state-of-mind which can change from moment to moment (like mood). 

These two ways of thinking about self-control are important when it comes to understanding the results.

When the researchers examined the studies that considered sleep and self-control as stable traits, they found that people who get more sleep tend to have better self-control than people who get less sleep but that this was a weak relationship (correlation r=0.17*).

Similarly, people who have better quality sleep have better self-control than people with poorer quality sleep (r=0.26), this relationship is stronger than the one between sleep duration and self-control, but is still considered a weak to moderate strength relationship. This could be because there are other factors responsible for both better sleep and for self-control (e.g. shared genes); or could be due to reverse causality, that is because people with better self-control are also more organised and conscientious about their sleep habits, leading to better and more sleep on average. This result is less useful for us as individuals because we might not be able to change how much sleep we need personally or our personality.

When the researchers examined the studies that consider sleep and self-control as malleable states, both longer sleep duration and better sleep quality were again related to high levels of self-control (r=0.32, and r=0.35 respectively). This is the more important practical result, because it shows that when we have a good night’s sleep, we have a higher level of self-control the next day, compared to when we have a poor night’s sleep or not enough sleep.

Both of these relationships were stronger than the relationships we see for self-control as a trait, meaning that our self-control changes more in response to how our sleep changes from day-to-day, than differences in levels of self-control between people who naturally need different amounts of sleep. 

It is important to note that the majority of studies relied on research participants to self-report their sleep which might lead to biases in the results. However, the researchers also found that the relationship between sleep and self-control was stronger when sleep was measured objectively, indicating that the results are not due to the way that people report or perceive their own sleep. 

 

4) Is there any other research out there that supports these findings or contradicts it?

The broader scientific literature supports these findings. We know that when people are sleep-deprived, our ability to monitor our own thinking and behaviour is negatively affected. Lack of sleep particularly affects activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain responsible for our ability to be aware of our own thinking and to control conscious actions. Self-control involves being aware of our instincts (e.g. to have more cake) and to actively overcome those instincts (e.g. to tell ourselves we have had enough and to put away the cake for another day). 

The results of this study also show that sleep quality is more important than sleep duration when it comes to self-control. This is supported by research showing that quality of sleep is generally more important than amount of sleep for wellbeing; shorter sleep durations (e.g., 6 hours a night) may not be a bad thing if it is accompanied by good sleep quality. This is because people can have a range of different sleep needs, with 7-9 hours of sleep opportunity recommended for working-aged adults

 

5) How much weight should we give this research?

We should give the results of this study a lot of weight, because it systematically combines all the research that has been done so far on how sleep affects self-control. The main potential weakness of the study is that 32 of the 56 studies were correlational studies and these studies only show that sleep and self-control are correlated, not that sleep directly causes changes in self-control. With correlation studies, we cannot rule out the possibility of reverse causality i.e. that self-control causes better sleep. In the remaining 24 studies, researchers actively intervened to change the quality and duration of sleep in the research participants.

 

6) What does this mean for your work/research/industry?

This study opens up some interesting avenues for research. Having self-control is important for many aspects of life, including maintaining our health and for our success at work. It suggests that we should consider improving sleep as a way to improve people’s ability to self-regulate which in turn can enhance health and productivity. For health researchers, it suggests we should incorporate methods to improve sleep in programs that help people quit smoking or lose weight, as this could make them even more effective. 

 

7) What’s the key takeaway for us to take from this research?

The key takeaway is that having good quality sleep (of a sufficient duration) is important for enhancing self-control.

 

8) Will you be doing anything differently because of this research?

Personally, I think the study confirms what we all know from experience – and gives me an extra reason to make sure I get a good night’s sleep every night!

 

*Note: Correlations are used to estimate the strength of a relationship between two variables, specifically the degree to which one variable changes when another variable changes. If a correlation is zero, there is no relationship between two variables. The closer the correlation is to 1 or -1, the stronger the correlation between them. The correlation statistic used here is Pearson’s correlation. Correlations of 0.1 or 0.2 are considered weak, correlations of 0.3 to 0.6 are considered moderate, and correlations above 0.6 are considered strong.

 

Dr Yu Sun Bin is an epidemiologist and public health researcher. Her particular research interests are on sleep and circadian rhythms and how these biological systems are reflected in behaviour, health, and disease.

Research Review: The Effect Of Sleep On Diet

Keiron - Sleep and Diet

In this article, our expert Dr. Kieron Rooney – reviews: Effect of sleep duration on dietary intake, desire to eat, measures of food intake and metabolic hormones: A systematic review of clinical trials, led by  Samira Soltanieh From the Department of clinical nutrition and dietetics, Faculty of Nutrition and Food Technology, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.

 

1) What was the high-level summary of the research? 

Individuals that have their sleep disrupted or who report naturally shorter sleep duration are more likely to also eat more. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what they eat more of, but in general, adults seem to snack on foods with higher fat content and teenagers on higher glycemic index (GI) sweet foods.  

2) What did the study try to measure? 

This study sought out as many studies as possible in which a person’s sleep duration and dietary habits were investigated. They then explored if there was any association between what people ate with how long they slept. 

3) How was the study undertaken? 

This study is referred to as a systematic review. The authors themselves did not implement a study in which they collected data from individuals with disturbed sleep. Instead, they searched for, identified, and synthesised studies that met their inclusion criteria, which had already been conducted by other investigators. 

The authors found over 700 studies and ended up identifying 50 studies that reported both food intake and sleep duration; 43 of these studies were on adults. Once the review authors had found these studies, they looked at the dietary data to see what the individuals in those studies were eating, and, how long they slept for. They also looked for any studies that reported on hunger and/or appetite and any studies that may have measured hormones believed to influence what humans eat.

4) What did the study find? 

The main result the authors focused on here was total energy intake. This was reported in 30 of the 50 studies they found. Most studies – 19 of the 30 – associated short sleep duration with a tendency to overeat. While some studies showed this was a result of eating larger meals other studies reported that it was a result of more snacks being eaten throughout the day. There was no clear indicator of which – larger meals or more snacks – was likely to be common in specific people.

There was also no clear indication as to which macronutrients – fat, protein, or carbohydrate – may have been contributing to the excess energy being consumed. The authors summarised the studies and suggested the extra energy was coming from either fat or protein rather than carbohydrates, yet the results were very much 50/50 on this. A big reason for the lack of clarity here is that the review included studies that induced sleep deprivation from as short as 1 night by keeping people awake with entertainment and keeping lights on all night compared to other studies in which sleep was restricted for over a month to only 6 hours a night.

5) Is there any other research out there that supports these findings or contradicts it? 

Absolutely, a 2017 systematic review was published that looked only at studies in which sleep was partially disturbed with reduced hours in bed. That review contained only 17 studies but they were so similar in design that the authors performed a meta-analysis. This is where the individual study results from each study are mathematically combined for each intervention, rather than simply being summarised such as in the present study. The smaller but more mathematically robust systematic review reported that even just partial sleep reduction of a couple of hours a night resulted in much greater energy intake with no effect on energy expenditure which was then concluded to lead to weight gain.

6) How much weight should we give this research?

This study is interesting and contains nearly three times the number of studies as the 2017 paper. However, the results of these studies are summarised rather than analysed and as such are very much open to interpretation. Despite this, this study provides a great resource for the complete repository of studies investigating the association between our diets and our sleep duration.

7) What does this mean for your work/research/industry? 

For me, I think this is interesting in the context of understanding why some people may find themselves eating more processed snacks than others. The big question that still needs answering is whether or not it is the disrupted sleep that promotes individuals to snack and eat more, or it’s the eating more that then disrupts sleep.

8) What’s the key takeaway for us to take from this research?

If you are looking for simple ways to cut your intake of processed high-energy snacks – get more than 6 hours of sleep a night! 

9) Will you be doing anything differently because of this research? 

Not so much differently – but perhaps I will start taking more sleep history surveys in my diet intervention studies.

 

Dr. Kieron Rooney completed his PhD in the Department of Biochemistry, within the Faculty of Science at the University of Sydney. Kieron’s primary interest focuses on conducting research and using this research to educate others on how what we eat, influences our metabolism. 

Goal Setting for the New Year and Beyond

Goal Setting for 2022

As the year ends, many of us begin to think about our goals for the new year and beyond. Many of us will also fail to keep some of our resolutions and achieve our goals. 

Do not fear, this is perfectly normal. Psychologists use several approaches to help you in changing and sustaining a new behaviour. One such approach is the use of SMART goals. SMART goals are said to be achievable because they are 

  • S – Specific 
  • M – Measurable 
  • A – Achievable 
  • R – Relevant 
  • T – Time-bound (or Trackable).

For example, if you don’t get any exercise and would like to improve your fitness, instead of setting “become more fit” as a goal, try to use the SMART goal of “walk 7000 steps at least 3 times a week” as your initial aim – of course it needs to be achievable considering your current level of fitness, and you can adjust it as your fitness improves. 

However, no matter how SMART our goals are, some of us fail to achieve them. Part of the problem may be that we have too many different goals that end up overwhelming us, so we soon give up. Another, deeper problem may be that the goals we set do not align with our authentic values; we pursue them without questioning whether this is really what we want to do with our lives.

Indeed, one important (and sometimes ignored) aspect of SMART goal setting is “Relevance”. 

Is this goal relevant to how I want to live my life? Is it aligned with my authentic values?  Considering our values are also important when we have many different goals, and we need to prioritise and direct our attention to the most important ones. 

How do we know if our goals are aligned with our authentic values? 

Psychology Professor Steven Hayes, the creator of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) suggests that there is an important difference between goals and values. Goals are things we want to achieve. We may want to run a marathon, get married by a certain age, have 3 children, earn a certain amount of money, have a house in a certain suburb, etc. 

Goals can be seen as signposts on a certain path we travel in life. 

However, what is the direction of that path? The direction is given by our values. When we set goals that are consistent with our values, their purpose is meaningful to us. 

Keeping our values in mind helps even when, for whatever reason, we do not achieve our goals. For example, we might say that having loving, loyal, kind relationships is an important value to us. Our goals may never materialise: maybe we won’t get married, maybe we won’t have children, either by choice or because of reasons outside of our control. But we can still have loving relationships in our lives. We can choose to act in a loving way right now with our friends or with our family of origin. We can choose to be patient and kind to the stranger who slows us down in traffic. We can live consistent with our values, irrespective of whether we meet our set goals or not.  

Keeping our values in mind helps us travel the path we chose without the pressure and stress that sometimes can result from living our lives from one goal to another. It frees us from defining our lives in terms of a series of successes and failures and helps us keep the ‘big picture’ of who we want to be in mind. 

 

Dr Marianna Szabo is a Clinical Psychologist, a leading expert in Mindfulness and a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Sydney. 

End of Lockdown Anxiety

After the seemingly endless days spent on repeat at home, many people are enjoying the end of lockdowns and the beginning of our new ‘COVID-normal’ lives. A lot of us, however, experience a mixture of excitement and anxiety. We welcome the ability to see our friends and family and to go to a café or the movies, but we also worry about the possible consequences of opening up to the new normal.

Now that we are no longer able to stay at home and avoid contact with others, some of us worry about the possibility of getting infected with coronavirus (SARS-COV-2) and getting seriously ill from COVID-19. Psychology research has shown that in general, our level of anxiety is primarily determined by two subjective judgments: the perceived likelihood of something bad happening, and the perceived harmfulness of that outcome. People who are very anxious tend to overestimate either the likelihood or the harmfulness (or both) of what they fear. Therefore, these judgments need to be adjusted to reflect reality, rather than our own subjective (over)estimations. 

We have lived with daily reminders of the possibility of serious illness or death from COVID for nearly two years. Understandably, some of us may be reluctant to risk that possibility and do not welcome the idea of going back to the office or sending children back to school. However, it is now important to reset our mental image about COVID and to remind ourselves that vaccinations greatly reduce the possibility of becoming seriously ill, as well as the possibility of getting infected with the virus. In other words, both the likelihood of a bad outcome (getting infected) and its harmfulness (getting seriously ill as a result of an infection) is now greatly diminished. That reminder should allow the more nervous amongst us to slowly get used to the idea that we need to live with the virus circulating in the population, and that we can adjust to the new normal while taking reasonable precautions to avoid infection. 

Of course, we need to enter our new COVID-normal life at our own pace. While some are happy to jump into socialising again, others might be less keen. Indeed, for those of us on the introverted end of the introversion-extroversion spectrum, the lockdown may have provided a welcome reprieve from the pressures of a busy social life. Introverts may enjoy social functions, but they also need to spend time alone to recharge. Now, as we no longer have the lockdown as an excuse to prioritise our own time and say no to social invitations, we need to learn to set boundaries. It is indeed ok to have fewer social engagements and to enjoy the quieter periods that the lockdown allowed us to have. If you enjoyed your alone time during the lockdown, there is no reason why you should give in to the pressures of social expectations and say yes to all invitations. Take your time. 

Perhaps an important experience for many of us who were able to take time to reflect on our lives during the COVID years was a rethinking of our values and priorities.  You may have found that the time spent with family and children, or the attention given to your own health and well-being during the lockdown was a welcome change from your previous life. Trying to remember those priorities and resisting pressure to jump back into a more frantic, high-pressure life we lived previously may be an important challenge in the coming months.

Whatever the challenge you find yourself facing, it is important to take your time. We are in uncharted territory. Having compassion towards yourself and towards others who are struggling to navigate these unprecedented, uncertain times is the most important attitude we need to carry forward from our two years of living with COVID.

 

Dr Marianna Szabo is a Clinical Psychologist, a leading expert in Mindfulness and a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Sydney. 

What is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy?

Have you ever considered the idea that it is not your outside circumstances that determine how you feel? It’s not the traffic in the morning that makes you feel angry, or the person who stands you up on a date that makes you feel unlovable, or the presentation at work that makes you feel anxious.

There’s something else at play, and this is a good thing!

Once we stop focusing on the things that we can’t control, like the traffic or other people’s behaviour, we can begin to look inward at ourselves. This allows us to change what we can control – how we think, how we perceive things, our behaviour and how we respond to difficult situations. Ultimately, this can change how we feel.

So, where do we begin?!

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a well-known form of therapy that combines cognitive psychology and behavioural psychology. In other words, the science of our thinking and our actions. The best thing is that it’s evidence based, which means that it has been rigorously tested and proven to be effective through scientific evaluation.  CBT has proven to be effective in the treatment of depression, anxiety, relationship problems, sleep difficulties, chronic pain, work related stress and many more conditions. But Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is equally as helpful for alleviating day-to-day stress as it is for combatting enduring psychological distress.

Changing your thoughts can help lead to behavioural changes, and vice-a-versa.

To change your thoughts, you need to look at both the cognitive (how we think) and behavioural (how we react) components of our thoughts. Both components are important in order to effect meaningful, lasting change in a person and help them manage and maintain good mental health.

 

Cognitive component:

1.Be aware of your negative or unhelpful thinking

We have to be aware of our mind, as often our thoughts are automatic and we respond to them without challenging them. Did you know that the average person has between 12,000 and 70,000 thoughts per day? And of those thoughts, most of them are negative and repetitive? Keeping a thought diary is a useful way of becoming more self-aware of your thinking.

2. Examine your thoughts and ask yourself if you’re engaging in a thinking error. Examples of thinking errors include:

    • Black and white thinking: Categorising things into one of two extremes, such as seeing situations as good or bad.
    • Catastrophising: Blowing things out of proportion and thinking the worst-case scenario will occur.
    • Personalising: Attributing negative external events such as a rescheduled meeting or heavy traffic to something about you or something you’ve done, when there is actually no link.
    • Jumping to conclusions: Making a judgement with no supporting information.

3. Look for the evidence and deal with the facts

Once you have acknowledged that your belief is just a thought and not a fact, try and look for evidence of what is actually going on and deal with the facts.

4. Come up with a more rational or helpful thought about the situation 

Use the evidence to come up with a more helpful and less distressing way of perceiving the situation. e.g. If a meeting has been rescheduled it is much more likely to be because of an issue with an unrelated project than it is to be about you personally.

 

Behavioural component:

Now that we have examined the ‘C’ in CBT, let’s look at the ‘B’ or the behavioural component. After all, CBT is action-orientated so we must find ways to practice it effectively.

1.Graded exposure

Identify those behaviours or things that you are doing that are maintaining the problem. If a behaviour is maintaining a problem it means that it is keeping the problem alive, like kindling to a fire. Did you know that avoidance is the greatest maintaining factor for anxiety? For example, the more you avoid social situations because they make you feel uncomfortable, the greater your anxiety around social situations will be. Encourage yourself to slowly engage in situations that you find difficult and make sure you start with easier situations, and build up to the more difficult ones.

2. Behavioural experiments

Create behavioural experiments or exposure tasks to challenge your unhelpful thinking. For example, if you believe that the lift will break down and you’ll be stuck for hours and unable to breathe (so you always take the stairs at work)… take the lift with a colleague and see what actually happens!

3. Activity scheduling

Schedule positive activities to gain a sense of achievement and enjoyment in your week…. from tidying your linen cupboard to texting a friend, it doesn’t need to be complicated.

4. Physiological component

The fight/flight/freeze response is our body’s automatic survival response to a perceived threat. It can include a racing heart, sweating, shaking and dilated pupils. Learning techniques to get your body to relax when there is a perceived threat is important for being able to face difficult situations that you may be avoiding.

 

Related techniques:

In addition to shifting unhelpful thinking and undesirable behaviours, CBT also includes the acquisition of many other skills and techniques to improve how we feel.

  • Relaxation training
  • Mindfulness techniques
  • Goal setting
  • Problem-solving techniques
  • Communication training

Homework

CBT has homework! It’s like going to the gym; you have to learn to condition your mind in a different way. You also need to start behaving differently and setting yourself behavioural tasks each day or week for effectively changing how you feel.

In practice

The most effective way to benefit from CBT is to be guided by a qualified professional, such as a psychologist. There are also many APPs available that apply the techniques of CBT, which can help you with changing your thinking and behaviour. Either way, it is empowering to know that it’s up to you to change how you feel!

Expert Q&A: Introducing Dr Kate Edwards

1) Could you tell us a little about your career and areas of expertise/interest? 

My research career has been in looking at how exercise affects health through its actions on immune function. My PhD and early work focused on vaccinations and how exercise can boost your immune response and reduce the adverse effects you experience. In recent years I’ve also developed a line of work in oncology, using exercise to improve treatment outcomes during chemo and immunotherapy, and again, reducing the side effects of treatment (exercise really is a wonder drug!).

 

2) What drew you to this line of work/research in the first place? 

I studied Biochemistry at University but by the end of my degree wanted to get out of ‘the petri dish’. I found that I loved the study and life at uni but wanted to do things that everyone on every corner of the street could relate to. That’s how I found myself doing a PhD in a Sport Science department, they liked me as I brought lab skills to measurements from experiments, and I liked it as I got to work with real-life people. After PhD I had an opportunity to work in research in California for a few years, and about 10 years ago moved here to Sydney to teach and research in my current position. Some could say I’d followed the sun, but it’s not hard to find more than I used to see in England.

 

3) How do you look after your own physical and mental wellbeing?

A long time ago I played international-level sport, so exercise and sport have been part of my life forever. Sport looks after a lot of my wellbeing because of the social support and interaction that it provides as well as the running around. Whenever moving to a new place (and I’ve done that a lot) the way I made friends was to join a team. Exercise training for a long time was what I did to help me play sport, but now it’s a habit, I feel worse if I’m not moving, which motivates me to move!  

 

4) Do you have a favourite post-workout cafe?

No, I’m a universal coffee lover, I enjoy an instant coffee and a real one similarly!

 

5) What is one thing you wish people knew about wellbeing? 

Exercise does as much for mental health as it does for physical health.

 

6) What is one of the most ridiculous things you’ve read or seen about wellbeing that you know to be untrue?

Current discussions about vaccination safety is a hot-bed of miss-truths and misunderstanding.

 

7) Do you have any favourite books, podcasts or websites on health or wellbeing that you’d recommend?

Current hot topic is ‘The Long Shot’ discussing the development of the COVID vaccinations, and I often find gems of episodes among the RadioLab series.

 

8) What is your top tip for living a healthy and happy life? 

Most of the time Grandma was right – meals are best home-made, eat/drink everything in moderation, and walk everyday and you’ll do pretty well.

 

Research Review: Ultra-Processed Food and Mortality

In this article, our expert Dr Kieron Rooney – Associates Professor at The University of Sydney & nationally recognised expert in nutrition research – reviews Ultra-processed food intake and all-cause mortality: DRECE cohort study by Ferreiro et al. 2021, and breaks it down to give us the vital parts we need to know. 

 

1) What was the high-level summary of the research?

The risk of dying increases with the amount of ultra-processed food products in one’s diet.

 

2) What did the study try to measure?

This study monitored the risk of what is referred to as “all-cause mortality” (death from any cause) during the 26 years that spanned 1991 – 2017 in Spain. The authors wanted to see if this risk was influenced by what people ate.

 

3) How was the study undertaken?

The study design described in this paper is called a longitudinal cohort survey. This simply means following the same group of people over a long period of time. Practically speaking, the authors gained access to a diet survey that was completed by 4679 individuals living in Spain in 1991. The survey is what is called a food frequency questionnaire and asked individuals to estimate over the previous 12 months how often they may or may not have eaten over 100 different foods.

Once the authors had this survey data, they classified the food items according to degree of “processing” as described by the NOVA classification.

The NOVA classification allocates foods into 1 of 4 groups depending on the level of processing the food has undergone. Group 1 for example are fruits and vegetables; Group 2 are culinary ingredients such as salts and oils; Group 3 are processed products with 3-4 ingredients while Group 4 are ultra-processed foods with multiple, highly refined ingredients and additives.

The authors then reviewed the National Institute of Statistics in Spain to see how many, if any, of these 4679 participants had died during the 26 years between completing the survey in 1991 and December 31, 2017.

Once they had both the diet and the incidence of death data, they used statistics to see if there was any increased risk of likelihood of dying in the 26-year period with the foods reported being eaten in 1991.

 

4) What did the study find?

The average age of individuals in the study was 30 years, and on average, this group of participants were eating about a quarter of their total daily energy from Group 4 ultra-processed foods products such as sugar sweetened beverages, milkshakes, meat and meat products like sausages and deli meats, dairy products, cakes pastries, sweets and cookies.

Of the 4679 individuals that completed the food frequency questionnaire in 1991, 450 had died by December 31, 2017.

And…. the higher the amount of Group 4 ultra-processed food products in the diet, the higher the risk of being one of those 450 individuals.

The actual risk reported by the study was a 15% increased likelihood of all-cause mortality for every 10% increase in the proportion of energy in the diet from group 4 products.

The authors also made some changes to the diet survey responses to see if the risk of all-cause mortality could be reduced and found that replacing Group 4 ultra-processed foods with Group 1 foods (fruits and veges) resulted in a statistically significant improvement and a reduced risk of all-cause mortality.

 

5) Is there any other research out there that supports these findings or contradicts it?

Absolutely, very similar studies have been completed on population data in France, the USA and Italy. Some of these studies have been completed in larger cohorts with the French study completed in over 100 000 individuals looking at cancer incidence in the first 8 years following diet survey. Each of these cohort studies are singing the same song – the higher the proportion of energy in your diet that comes from Group 4 ultra-processed food products. The higher the risk of health problems and disease.

To date, there are no studies that contradict this outcome.

 

6) How much weight should we give this research?

This study is interesting, and the statistical analysis is strong. Importantly it confirms data coming out of Europe and America that are generally telling us the same thing – the rise of ultra-processed foods is dangerous for our health. However, the sample size is relatively small, and there was only 1 diet survey completed in 1991 and how representative that was of each participant’s diet for the next 26 years is obviously a stretch.

 

7) What does this mean for your work/research/industry?

What this does for me is add strength to the need to continue to unpack the role of ultra-processed foods in the development of disease and empower individuals to make changes towards reducing the consumption of these foods.

 

8) What’s the key takeaway for us to take from this research?

If you can find the motivation and capacity to switch out an ultra-processed food product for its minimally processed equivalent – do it!

 

9) Will you be doing anything differently because of this research?

Not so much differently, but perhaps with more vigour, as it confirms the need for more current prospective studies in which we actively remove these group 4 foods from people’s diets and see if it improves their health as predicted.

 

Dr Kieron Rooney is a biochemist, nutritionist and exercise physiologist from the University of Sydney whose research focuses on how what we eat, influences our metabolism. 

 

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness-based programs have become extremely popular in the past decade. They are offered as a solution to a wide range of problems in work and health settings, in schools, and even in prisons. Considering such a huge uptake, it is important to understand what mindfulness is and to appreciate the evidence behind the claims for its usefulness. 

Mindfulness was popularised in Western healthcare by Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn in the 1970s.  A long-time practitioner of yoga and Buddhist meditation, he aimed to create a structured, secular program that would enable his patients to improve their quality of life in spite of living with chronic illnesses and pain. This initiative became the now well-known Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. 

Another important program is Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), first offered at Oxford University by Professor Mark Williams and his colleagues in the 1980s to help people remain well after they had experienced a period of clinical depression. These two programs provided the basis for many other mindfulness-based interventions that were developed in the following decades. 

The first research study about mindfulness was published nearly 40 years ago, and a large amount of research has been conducted since then. In people without a diagnosed mental or physical health problem, mindfulness-based interventions have been found to reduce stress, anxiety, depression, distress, and burnout, and to improve quality of life in general.  As clinical treatments, these programs are effective for recurrent depression, some anxiety disorders, chronic pain, addictive behaviours, and child behaviour problems when mindfulness training is given to the parents. But what is mindfulness and how does it improve well-being in the face of life’s difficulties? 

To define what mindfulness is, the following sentence from Jon Kabat Zinn is often quoted: “Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally … “ 

In other words, mindfulness is defined as an ability to observe what is happening in each moment, with an attitude of acceptance, curiosity, and kindness. This detached awareness can include our thoughts, feelings, body sensations or behaviours, as well as the outside world.  When we engage in formal mindfulness practices, we aim to develop this ability. We choose a target for our focused awareness, (for example, the breath, the body, or a sound) and keep directing our attention to this target. At the same time, we notice that the mind wants to run off in all sorts of directions. When this happens, we notice the thought that the mind wants to engage with, then let it go and gently redirect our attention to the point of focus. Importantly, however, when quoting Kabat-Zinn’s definition of mindfulness, the second part of the sentence is sometimes ignored. The second part says,   

…  in the service of self-understanding and wisdom.” 

“Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally, in the service of self-understanding and wisdom.” (Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2017)

Professor Mark Williams also put this point succinctly: “Mindfulness is an ability to recognise and to let go of the things that stop us from living to our full potential” (Mark Williams, personal communication, International Conference on Mindfulness, Amsterdam, 2018). 

This means that our ability to pay attention whilst practicing mindfulness is not the point. It is only a means to an end. It is important to carry this ability on to everyday life: noticing when our minds are giving us potentially false projections for the future or dragging us down the path of impotent guilt or rage about the past. To be able to notice what the mind is doing and to be able to decide whether it is helpful to believe our thoughts and to act on our impulses is a central skill in mindfulness. 

To be mindful is to be able to observe our thoughts as just thoughts and our emotions as just sensations in the body. We can calmly observe our thoughts, emotions, body sensations and our urges to act, and then decide what to do. In this way, mindfulness allows us to develop a high level of emotion regulation and enables us to act in accordance with our authentic values: to respond with wisdom rather than to react too quickly to life’s vicissitudes.

 

Dr Marianna Szabo is a Clinical Psychologist, a leading expert in Mindfulness and a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Sydney.  

Staying Healthy at Home

Many Australians are presently working from home. Cutting the travel time to and from work provide opportunities to spend that time doing other things we wouldn’t ordinarily have time for. But working at home can be a disruption to normal routines that we all tend to thrive on. One of the most common sentiments I hear as extended holidays draw to a close is that many actually look forward to having the routine that the work life brings. Lack of regularity is just one of several challenges being house bound presents us. With that in mind, I offer six suggestions to stay healthy and sane whist working from home for this next, unspecified period of time.

 

  1. Keep a regular sleep/wake schedule: Not having to wake up at a specific time to catch the bus to work and merely having to open the computer to start our day can allure us into creating haphazard sleeping schedules. Humans have evolved to keep regular sleep/wake, light/dark rhythms that rewards us with vitality, productivity and energy when we observe these regular sleep-wake cycles. This period of physical isolation allows us to firmly entrench an 8-hour sleep opportunity and circadian rhythm that we might never have again, as going out to restaurants and other entertainment is off the cards for the foreseeable future. Decide what time you would like to wake each day, work back 8-hours, allowing an extra 30 or so minutes for wind down, shower, intimacy and so on. Remembering to use bright lights in the morning hours and dim light in the period before bed. Then stick to this schedule every day. 

 

  1. Respect work/life balance: in our parents and grandparent’s day, for the vast majority, there were no mobile phones, computers and internet. Once the work day was done, adults did not go home and keep working until all hours.  Now that we are house bound and have access to emails on our phones, there can be a strong temptation to essentially work 7 days a week, without truly respecting down time. It would be wise to maintain ‘office hours’ and ‘personal hours’, where, during the latter, the phone and computer are off to work and on to family, friends and entertainment. 

 

  1. Set an exercise schedule: just as we have group exercise classes, personal training and running clubs, keeping a scheduled daily exercise regime (especially in the morning before work hours) is critical to maintaining momentum and not falling off the bandwagon during this time we are at home. Here are several suggestions:
  • Talking a 5 to 10-minute walk after meals aids blood sugar control and the energy slump we often get mid-afternoon. This is a very little time investment but has a huge potentially to make us feel great and energised;
  • Aim to walk in nature several times a week, so we don’t develop cabin fever from doing everything indoors.
  • Exercise every day and alternate hard (see next point) with easy sessions, such as walking and jogging;
  • Use time efficient modes of interval training, such as stair or hill runs, as the ‘hard’ sessions. Aim to accumulate at least 10 minutes of high-intensity work in these sessions. After a 5-minute warm-up, finding a hill or stairs it takes about a minute to reach the top, tackle these 10 times with a slow walk back down. Skipping is another tremendous exercise mode, where you would aim to do a similar workout (10 x 60-seconds of skipping with, say, 30-seconds rest in between);
  • Set up a body weight circuit three times a week. An example of a circuit might be: squats, push-ups, lunges, abdominal planks and skipping. Do each exercise for 60-seconds, moving quickly on to the next exercise. Rest a minute at the end of the circuit, and perform five rounds of the circuit, 

 

  1. Use house bound time wisely: This unusual time provides us with the perfect opportunity to work on aspects of health and fitness that we do no ordinarily have time for, such as stretching, trigger point work or foam rolling, deep breathing and meditation. It can be as simple as a 5-minute stretch, foam roll or deep breathing while you make your morning coffee or tea. It’s another healthy habit that takes basically no extra time from your day but doing it regularly will make you feel great.

 

  1. Be mindful of eating ‘as something to do’: Most people working from home have already worked this out – we eat because we are bored, procrastinating or as something to do. So that we all don’t gain unwanted weight over this time, it would be helpful to set an eating schedule that we stick to every day and avoid mindless walks into the kitchen to snack.

 

  1. Stay connected: It has already been observed that the phase ‘social distancing’ is unhelpful and the term ‘physical distancing’ might be more appropriate. We are very used to seeing people at work, on the bus or after work. This, for the time being, has largely stopped. Rather than just texting people, make the time during ‘personal hours’ try to use FaceTime, Skype and Zoom as a way of connecting with others, especially those really affected by isolation, such as the elderly. Try to call people as well, rather than texting. In this way, those who are more affected by physical distancing will feel a much greater sense of connection, which is far better for everyone’s mental health.

 

Dr Tony Boutagy is an Exercise Physiologist with a PhD in exercise and sports science from Charles Darwin University. He’s conducted over 50,000 training sessions in his career that has spanned 25 years, and is regarded as one of the premier personal trainers in the country.