The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown everyone off the wagon of normality and made people adapt to new methods of continuing with life, like working and learning from home. However, this comes with its own struggle, and with the home environment supporting comfort, it is easy for people to lose track of healthy habits. How can you ensure you remain healthy even when your working station is the couch? Dr. Ryan Shelton of Zenith Labs offers a few insights.
Common Health Problems Associated with Working from Home and How to Solve Them
Working from home is a lot more different than being in a brick-and-mortar office. Many entrepreneurs don’t plan breaks or lunches and work right through the entire day. Here are some common health problems associated with working from home and how to solve them.
1. Eye Stress
Remote working requires working with either a computer or a laptop, and if you do not have eyewear that protects you from the computer light, your eyes could get damaged over time. The hours and hours of exposure to a screen can cause eye pain and ache above the eyelids. On the other hand, the blue light emitted by screens causes a lack of sleep. Many health experts have warned about staying away from the screens before bed to help get better sleep.
Solution: Invest in blue light lenses for your glasses. They are also sold without a prescription for people who work with computers. Try and get between seven and eight hours of sleep each night. Doing this will also lessen eye strain while working.
2. Overeating
If your desk looks like a scene from a movie with hackers thanks to the cans of soda and the takeout strewn all over it, then you might be one of the many people having a snacking problem. Snacking on processed foods like cheese sticks, chips, and those sugar-filled cookies will add weight faster than anything you’ve ever seen. Everyone understands it is difficult to stop snacking when you are in an environment that encourages it.
Solution: Dr. Ryan Shelton Zenith Labs encourages you to swap out the sugary and oily snacks with something else like kale chips, a vegetable and fruit smoothie, and most importantly, water. Many people have forgotten their hydration routine because they are eating too much junk food.
3. Muscle Strain
If you have been working from home, you know the struggle of sitting everywhere to find the proper position to reduce stress on your back and neck. This is probably due to many reasons like lack of money, the transition from the office to home, and lack of urgency to get a good working station. Having the wrong desk and chair and lacking enough working space can lead you to have some aches and strains in your neck, tiredness that makes your shoulders feel heavy, and even carpal tunnel if you work long hors. The couch, the bed, and even the dining seat do not offer much back support.
Solution: You might need to invest in a proper chair. While at it, you can do some exercises that can relieve the soreness and aches. Take a break often and get your body moving a little. After every hour you spend on the computer, take a walk, do some basic stretches or some frog jumps. Try to stay upright when working to reduce the slumpy shoulders.
4. Mental Health Strain
The mandatory isolation has gone either of two ways. Some have been alone since the beginning of the pandemic, while others have had to find a kind of harmony between them and their families. Being alone can elicit feelings of loneliness and can cause mental health issues like depression. On the other hand, those stuck with family soon got over the social phase and got on each other’s nerves very fast. With children yelling and playing around, the television always creates background noise, and a lot is happening in the same area. Your nerves can be on edge most of the time. This can create a feeling of being overwhelmed and anxious.
Solution: To help manage this, you need to have a schedule that you would usually have if you were going to the office. A schedule will give you a sense of order when working from home. It will also reduce the chances of having either a mental burnout, a physical burnout, or both because you will have managed to schedule work time and family time. If you live alone, spare some time to catch up with family and friends to keep your social life alive and maintain some sanity.
5. An Unhealthy Diet
You can quickly get tired of cooking every day and order in more and more. However, with many people facing financial constraints, fast food has become a cheap way to eat. That said, it can become easy to gain weight if you do not have a healthy diet to follow.
Solution: One easy way to manage this situation is to make use of meal prep techniques. You can spend one day just preparing your food, and you can then warm it up or lightly cook it if required. You can also use supplements to ensure your body gets all the nutrients and vitamins it requires.
Be Mindful of Your Health
At the end of the day, you need to remember that you are only a human being, and you can only work for as long as possible. Staying healthy means being mindful of what you consume. Take care of your mind, body, and soul. Ensure that what you eat and what you see and hear is for your general wellness.
Try not to overwork or overindulge because even though it starts as small bites, it is easy to fall onto a dangerous path. Taking care of yourself gives you the energy and mental space to be more productive. Working from home can be a different way to live, but if the pandemic has taught us anything, we are resilient, and we can make it through anything. Take the necessary precautions, wash your hands frequently, or sanitize when necessary.
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