Week 6: Detox

Week 6: Detoxification

A week until Christmas is not the time to go cold turkey…

With a week to go until the most indulgent time of the year, perhaps I should have rethought the position of this week’s detoxification Live Well strategy. Giving up a number of my treasured vices in a week full of Christmas goodies and alcohol-facilitated Zoom meetups was challenging, and if I’m being honest, not wholly successful.

Firstly, a bit of background information: I am a hedonistic beast by nature. Not one for delayed gratification, at least when it comes to food, something in me defaults to opportunistic consumption whenever possible. If there is an open box of chocolates (and at this time of the year, there always is), I will snaffle a few for now and later. Except there is no later; I eat the loot instantaneously. If I were in the Stanford Marshmallow experiment, I would grab the sweets before the psychologist took them out of the box.

For me, it takes immense determination to restrain these behaviours and I can usually only do this when there is a specific drive to do so. Motivating factors vary from incentives e.g. keeping up my end of a Lenten pledge or shock-driven e.g. an unflattering photograph prompting a hasty diet. Even then, if circumstances change, my resolve often does so too.

I am now well versed in the foibles of my own psyche and know when something is likely to work. In actual fact, I find giving up something much harder than adopting a new strategy, which could be why this week proved the most difficult in comparison to the last five of the Live Well plan. The key things I wanted to give up: caffeine, alcohol and sugar, are key constituents of Christmas pleasure for me, and giving them up in one fell swoop felt hazardous.

The circuitry of pleasure-seeking behaviour is being untangled in neuroscience, and certain brain pathways e.g. the mesolimbic system and chemicals e.g. dopamine have been identified as crucial (1). Whilst drug addiction is not wholly comparable to other pleasure seeking behaviour, some parallels have been drawn and with certain chemical stimuli, the body shows signs of dependence with persistent exposure. Without said chemical, the body reacts to its removal leading to a state of withdrawal. Caffeine is one of those chemicals and the key substance I tried to give up this week (2).

Tuesday was the worst of it. i had forgone my morning cup of black gold and by 11 o’ clock I was feeling terrible. I oozed through work, squinting past the all-pervading ache in my head. My thoughts were dull, stupid and slow. I began to realise that Scrooge may not have been grumpy, but rather going through active caffeine withdrawal. The only way to keep my resolve and not fill the cafetiere was by choosing unconsciousness. I went to bed like a sick child incredibly early on Tuesday night.

Wednesday was no better.

Faced with the struggle to function, giving up sugar at the same time seemed beyond me. With the world turning steadily more gloomy and a prospect of a cancelled Christmas, I knew that total detoxification could tip me over into a truly bleak midwinter, so I caved. I ate a mince pie. And like that, I was back in the throes of excess, doubly fuelled by a lack of coffee and an assumption that something sweet would make me feel better.

And it did. I sought solace in sugar, and fell off the wagon especially hard. The rest of the week saw me in a frenzy. No-holds were barred as I helped myself to the open biscuit tin at work. My lowest point came when I opened an extra day of my Advent Calendar and snuffled the tiny chocolate treat in shameful secret. This was the price I had to pay for detoxification.

Many of us attempt to give up things at New Year and many of us, unsuprisingly, fail at keeping these resolutions. By attempting to give up my indulgences a few weeks before the usual start date, I had a trial run of January Detoxification and now know the pitfalls I am likely to encounter. I have no doubt about the benefits of eating less sugar and drinking less alcohol and caffeine. Not only do I know the medical reasoning behind it, I have felt the advantages of adopting a healthier diet during times of better balance. There has to be a better way than relying on my puny self-determination but I am too overwhelmed at this point in time, to pursue such routes. But not to worry, I am not beating myself about my lack of success at the Live Well plan. Life is challenging enough at the moment, and I know to extend some compassion to myself when my efforts fail.

For many of us, our Christmas plans have changed, either with the latest Government announcement or as a result of the fallout from this year. I commend any one who wants to make a change for the better, be it through giving up a health-compromising vice or adopting a new feel-good strategy, but I know from these six weeks how difficult taking a positive step can be. Change always requires energy and at this time, the literal darkest day of the year, the effort can seem insurmountable. But just as the sunlight hours now get longer, time passes and things do get better. Perhaps trying a specific Live Well strategy might aid this process, but regardless, take care of yourselves, be kind to yourselves and hold hope for a better, brighter, healthier New Year.

References

1. Berridge KC, Kringelbach ML. Pleasure systems in the brain. Neuron. 2015; 86(3): 646–664.

2. Juliano LM, Griffiths RR. A critical review of caffeine withdrawal: empirical validation of symptoms and signs, incidence, severity and associated features. Psychopharmacol. 2004;176:1–29.

Week 5: Something New

Week 5: Something New

To forgive is divine…

In the aftermath of a family emergency, I have to confess my mind was not in the mood for well-being. Although it should have been my haven during the crisis, the Live Well plan got sidelined as I used any spare resources to function in everyday life. But such is the way in a calamity. Focus narrows to ensure the necessary gets done. Nurture takes a back seat to the more exigent need to survive.

And so I confess, I didn’t adopt a new activity this week. My bad. But in a way (and this is a fudge, I grant you) I did try something new this week in the sense I took some time off, away from obligations and self-imposed deadlines. And I didn’t beat myself up about not having a piece to offer you on a Sunday night.

Self-compassion is definitely something new for me and probably the very essence of living well.

But normal service will be resumed next week for the last week of the Live Well plan - I promise!

Week 4: Socialising

Life gets in the way, doesn’t it? The so-called “priorities” like work and admin climb to the top of the list, whereas other things that seem like indulgences are demoted. This is why overtime at work overrides the evening run or the phone call to loved ones. The self and the social get sacrificed in the name of the everyday, which takes a subtle but discernible toll.

And sometimes the effect of such choices becomes startlingly, irrevocably evident.

In the week I was trying to make more of an effort to be social, life showed me the cost of having neglected such relationships in the past. A loved one became very sick, and I realised I had no more opportunity to talk to them. How many times had I put off the phone call? The excuses now seemed paltry, indefensible in the midst of grievous illness. How could I have prioritised Netflix over staying in touch?

It is not just with frail relatives that the effect of such decisions bears review. In the time before the calamity, this week I had scheduled Zoom dinners with different sets of friends, much overdue despite the quietness of lockdown. What a joy it was to see familiar faces and marvel at just how much a baby can grow in the space of a month. Why had I let things slip for so long?

Too often the things that get relegated in our schedules are the activities, or worse the people who are the most reliable. We always assume that we can catch up on sleep at the weekend, or that our loved one will be able to take our call. But that is a fallacy. Reliable though they may be, life is anything but, and as this pandemic has shown, so much of what we consider stable is actually us taking things for granted.

I know not to beat myself up about the choices I have made. In the end all I (like so many of you) have been doing is trying to manage life as best I can. But my protest that there “is no time” can no longer stand. All I have is my time to allocate and thus, going forward I must make more considered choices. That means, prioritising what is truly important, which in the end is always, always the people I love.

I hope that you too prioritise the right things.

xxx

P.S: If you can, phone your grandmother.

Week 3: Sleep

Week 3: Sleep

Sometimes all it takes is a 6 week Live Well plan to make a person truly commit to something.

Sleeping early has long been an aspiration for me but until now, unfairly overlooked. On those occasions, when I have managed to sneak into bed at a reasonable time, I have profited from the benefits the following day, but somehow or other, sleep has always been the one activity sacrificed in the interests of other demands. By making it this week’s Live Well strategy, I had no other option but to priortize sleep and let it have its rightful spotlight.

Forget mindfulness, forget even the endorphin rush of exercise, sleep was immediately transformative in its feel good effect. I had my doubts when turning the light out at 10 p.m. last Sunday night but the effects were noticeable from the moment I opened my eyes the next morning. Like many disgruntled working adults, Mondays feel like a death knell for me. The prospect of returning to work after a carefree weekend usually fills me with an existential angst such that I look in the mirror in the mornings and find my reflection replaced by Munch’s Scream instead.

Last Monday, not so much.

The day hurt less. By that, I mean things that usually took their toll like the morning traffic or the full inbox, after a full night’s sleep felt less like personal assaults, but rather simple inconveniences. I had more capacity to deal with what was placed on me and felt brighter and more engaged. The day progressed in the same fashion and with the exception of a post-lunch dip in energy, the buoyancy lasted the whole day.

Uncertain whether this was a one-off I made sure to get into bed similarly early on Monday night. The effect the next day was compounded and I felt even more energised. Everything seemed better. I was alert, could concentrate more and could even jog faster. Was this the secret ingredient that had been missing up until now? I thought I had a mental health problem, but could it be I was simply sleep deprived?

That could well be the truth. Scientific evidence shows the ever stronger link between poor sleep and all sorts of medical problems including high blood pressure (1), diabetes (2), and yes, mental health (3). Regularly getting a full night’s healthy sleep (7-8 hours) can reduce the risk of many of these conditions and could well explain the internal pep squad effect I had for most of the week.

The sceptic in me wanted to see if my general joie d’vivre was in fact due to the new factor in my life, or just because I was finally becoming a better functioning human being. Thus, after a few days of consistently feeling well, I indulged in a touch of alcohol with my Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday night. According to the books (the pop-culture Bible of which is Matthew Walker’s “Why We Sleep”) alcohol is the ultimate false friend to a good night’s sleep. Whilst it seems to help by increasing initial drowsiness (4), alcohol is a sedative, which disturbs brain chemistry and subsequent sleep patterns, all leading to a poorer night’s sleep (5).

Low and behold the next day spelt trouble for me. A full day of lethargy reminded me that sleep is a vulnerable thing, prone to disturbance from things like alcohol, stress and an excess of yummy, salty food. I have for the large part been blessed by an ability to fall asleep easily, which is particularly useful when shift working at the hospital, however, that does not mean my sleep is immune to extraneous factors. Contrary to what normally happens at the weekend, I found myself hurrying to bed at the relatively early time of 9.30 p.m. on Friday night, eager to right the wrongs of the previous day.

The early-to-bed paradigm poses a problem with sleep and the live-well lifestyle as a whole. For a full-time working adult there is relatively little time after work despite the rule of thirds implying that a day should be divided into 8 hours each for work, sleep and other things. The reality is that one or two of these activities swells at the cost of the others, most likely at the expense of sleep. In my case, work with its overtime and commute takes up a disproportionate amount of my day and in an effort to decompress I give more weight to other activities, which chips away at my eight hours of sleep. With the added obligations of the Live Well program, I am now having to incorporate my usual exercise and occasional mindfulness before the hard deadline of bedtime. It makes for pressured scheduling of my non-work time and being good in order to feel good is making me feel a bit like a nun.

So whilst I’m a full convert to the idea of regular and healthy sleep, I admit it’s not the easiest thing to do with modern life the way it is. After a week of disciplined bedtimes though, I can see why I should give sleep a little more respect and make it a priority.

This week’s blog is dedicated to my sleep-deprived sister in Sydney, Australia.

References

1. Grandner M, Mullington JM, Hashmi SD, et al. Sleep duration and hypertension: Analysis of > 700,000 adults by age and sex. J Clin Sleep Med. 2018;14(6):1031–1039. doi: 10.5664/jcsm.7176.

2. Reutrakul S, Van Cauter E. Sleep influences on obesity, insulin resistance, and risk of type 2 diabetes [published online March 3, 2018] Metabolism. 2018;84:56–86. doi: 10.1016/j.metabol.2018.02.010.

3. Lyall LM, Wyse CA, Graham N, et al. Association of disrupted circadian rhythmicity with mood disorders, subjective wellbeing, and cognitive function: a cross-sectional study of 91 105 participants from the UK Biobank [published online May 15, 2018] Lancet Psychiatry. 2018;5(6):507–514. doi: 10.1016/S2215-0366(18)30139-1.

4. Colrain, I. M., Nicholas, C. L. & Baker, F. C. Alcohol and sleeping brain. Handb Clin Neurol. 125, 415–431 (2014).

5. Roehrs, T., Papineau, K., Rosenthal, L. & Roth, T. Ethanol as a hypnotic in insomniacs: Self administration and effects on sleep and mood. Neuropsychopharmacology 20, 279–286 (1999).

Highlights of Week 3:

Week 2: Mindfulness

Week 2: Mindfulness

And breathe…

Are you seated comfortably? Alright then, go ahead. Close your eyes and breathe in deeply.

And that’s when it starts to go wrong.

It’s 7.30 a.m. and I’ve decided to start Week 2 of my Live Well program with a mere 5 minutes of mindfulness before getting ready for work. The Monday morning commute always puts me on edge, and my hope that is mindfulness will offset the adrenaline, but it’s clear that this is going to be more of a challenge than I expected.

As soon as I close my eyes, my thoughts come into sharper focus. This is not necessarily a good thing. The soothing voice from YouTube fades and instead, my monkey mind starts to chatter, offering me a tour of the zoo. Over here, there’s anxiety, busting free from it's cage, and right next to it, stress is not so much behind bars but pushed back by the thousand other thoughts I continuously ponder. Time, space and most importantly, attention, has made me aware of just how poor my mental hygiene is.

My mind is a mess.

Which makes for an uncomfortable five minutes. Chores blossom as the guru in the background encourages me to do an Elsa and let it go. Let go?! But I have to remember to do these things today! I wonder if I can just pause the video and get my notebook to write it down, but if I do that, I know I’ll never get through the whole online exercise, too many other tasks will pop up that I’ll want to jot down. Somehow mindfulness seems to be the perfect opportunity for me to recall all the things I am meant to be doing in my day and with my life in general. This, as I gather, is not what is meant to happen.

As you can probably tell, I am not a natural meditator. I have had ample evidence of this throughout my life, starting from a relatively young age. My family are Buddhists, hence, I frequently attended temple when I was growing up. Towards the end of the devotional service known as the puja, there would be a dedicated period of meditation. I am uncertain of how long it actually lasted but to me, a child waiting for the post-puja feast, it seemed eternal. I couldn’t concentrate, was invariably hungry/greedy and thus, meditation seemed like a pointed form of punishment. Maybe that’s where my negative associations about mindfulness came from? It has become synonymous with “I could be doing/eating something else.”

Meditation was very much part of my culture growing up, however, as I found this week, I lack many of the crucial skills to practice it successfully.

Flash forward to Monday 16th November 2020 and the YouTube yogi is exhorting me to “come back to my breath.” I panic, realising I have spent the last five minutes stuck in a sort-out spiral, which completely obliterated the supposed five minutes of calm I was meant to be practising. I will have to do better.

As much as I am loathe to, I must keep at it. After all, I have to have a fair go at mindfulness to be able to accurately review it in this blog. The next day I settle down again, press play and close my eyes.

The teacher encourages me to breathe deeply. I do. Concentrate on your breath. I will.

The thoughts start to crowd back in but I try to shut them out, doing exactly what every instructor says I shouldn’t do. I can’t let thoughts come and go like buses, no, I have to make a definite, super-human effort to not think about all the tasks and worries that coming loping to the fore, when I give myself time to think. No calming analogy works. I begin to despise the image of a leaf floating down a river and I can tell that I am getting worked up again. Mindfulness does not bring out the best in me.

Breathe in and breathe out. I overcompensate and suck in giant volumes of air through my nose. The room is cold and the dry air stings my nostrils but it does the trick, I start to get a hyperventilation high and then my brain starts to calm down. This I can do. My breaths get deeper, more exaggerated, and soon my attention is focused on the draught circulating in my airways. Sooner than I expected the video finishes and I am called away from my breath, to the competing demands of the day.

I notice that something is different in the car. Usually, the heinous morning traffic has me seething but today the never-changing traffic lights hardly register. Suddenly I become aware that above the buzz of the radio, I can hear a rhythmic whooshing noise. I realise that I am breathing in a similar fashion to the meditation practice earlier, inspiring deeply and getting quietly euphoric from the change in blood chemistry. There may be a false association but the rest of the day seems to go better than it usually does.

Mindfulness is increasingly recognised in the medical community as a potential tool in the management of certain conditions. For instance, the all-seeing eye of NICE (the National Institute for Clinical Excellence) establishes enough evidence from trials to recommend mindfulness as a treatment in episodes of recurrent depression (1). Furthermore, fMRI studies have shown decreased activation of the emotional arousal centres of the brain in people, who practice mindfulness (2), which could explain why I found my morning commute less aggravating than usual.

However, like the scientific understanding behind it, my practice of mindfulness is in its infancy. Unlike exercise, I am a complete novice when it comes to being mindful and as such, the practice borders on painful. Throughout the week, as I tried to work in 5 - 10 minutes of self-awareness here and there, I felt like I did at the beginning of my “Couch to 5km” journey - like an incapable idiot. How could it be so hard to sit still and become aware?

I have no doubt of the beneficial effects of mindfulness in the longterm. I can see how if practised regularly, it can become an invaluable tool to improve mood and wellbeing, but it is suprisingly hard for the uninitiated. I confess, I am not quite a convert to mindfulness yet, but give it time, and I may find there is nothing else I would rather be doing/eating.

References

1. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg90/chapter/Recommendations

2. Mindfulness and emotion regulation—an fMRI study. Jacqueline Lutz, Uwe Herwig, Sarah Opialla, Anna Hittmeyer, Lutz Jäncke, Michael Rufer, Martin Grosse Holtforth, Annette B Brühl. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2014, 9 (6): 776-85

Highlights from Week 2

Week 1: Exercise

Week 1: Exercise

200m in and I think I’m dying.

The weather has turned, as it is prone to do in mid-November, and the fleecy clouds have been chased away by a thick sheet of grey that heralds rain. I am only 200m away from home, but to go back now would be to admit defeat and I cannot do that on the first day of my Live Well Program.

I look around me and see the familiar path with new, desperate eyes. I know this pavement so well; I walk it everyday to get to the shops or the bus that takes me to work. Only I am not walking the path now, I am running it.

This is how my week of exercise starts, with a wake-up jog to get me into the swing of things. Over the course of the week I have a schedule of activities lined up, some of them facilitated by professionals, who, long ago cottoned on to the benefits of exercise, but for me, this is the beginning.

And it feels brutal.

My legs are heavy, my breath is short and I count two and a half paces for every metre I pass. In an attempt to distract myself from the general discomfort, I try to calculate how may steps my 2.5km route will need. An indecent while later I come up with the answer of 6250 steps? I balk at the thought that that is still 4000 steps short of the artifical recommendation of 10 000 steps a day*. Exercise is hard. When it feels like this, how can it be helping me to live well?

I trot on, an unfit donkey squeezed into new spandex. A few drops of rain begin to splatter and I hear my mother’s voice warning me that I’ll catch my death by being out without a hat in the rain. I could go back? No one would know…

And then it happens. The endorphins, those elusive feel good chemicals, start to kick in and I feel the heat of pumping blood reach my cold extremities. With warmth starting to glow through my body, I feel that tiny bit more committed to going the distance. It’s always been like this. A period of inactivty (as has been the case with spiralling work commitments and poor weather) makes it that much harder to start again at the bottom of the fitness ladder but as has been the case in all my boom and bust exercise regimes before, the more I do, the better I feel.

Why is this? Why does exercise give us such a buzz? Why is it such a key factor in improving health such that it has been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease by up to half in certain populations (1)? Or even reverse diabetes (2)? The science is still being untangled but it makes sense that exercise is so good for us, when considering that this is what our bodies evolved to do (3). By making the heart pump faster, by prompting muscles to stretch and then grow, and by burning the fuel we intake exactly for these purposes, we strengthen the matter that makes the machine of the human body. It would make sense then, that things that are good for the body activate the reward system in the brain.

But it is not always like this. The next day’s bike ride feels gruelling as muscles already tested from the run, protest at being used again. In my case, there is no perfect positive correlation between exercise done and feel good factor, no, for me it is a constant battle against inertia.

As childhood photos would show, I was not a natural athlete and sport was the one subject I just couldn’t crack. Although I took pride in receiving top marks in all my academic and arts subjects, the perennial failing grade in PE was something I thought could never be rectified. Grizzly days in chafing gym shorts wrung out all possible enjoyment from sport classes and I was the literal last picked for teams (do they still do that mortifying practice?) As soon as I was able to I gave up PE and settled down at a desk, freed from compulsory torture at last.

Before and after… As you can see, I wasn’t the prototypical young runner, preferring dance instead. Although I kept up my love of dance, I’ve also branched out into sport, something I could not have imagined in the horrible days of PE at school.

But there could be no denying the endorphin allure of exercise, even for a pudgy British-born Southeast Asian like myself. I continued to take regular ballet throughout school, and despite a few fallow years at University, running became my go-to when I became a doctor. Running perhaps overstates what I do. By runnning I mean a gentle trot for 2 - 5 km a few times a week. The experience, as described above, does not feel intuitive to my body but it has become necessary. Those weeks when I feel more agitated, more anxious, generally correlate with less exercise rather than more.

And you can imagine how I have felt this week with scheduled exercise everyday. Most of the time, the cycles, runs and YouTube workouts felt middling to pleasant, but occasionally I glimpsed that elusive “exercise high.” The most striking example of this was during a Dancefit class run by WorkWell doctor, Dr Joshi (see more of her routines on Instagram @doctor_dancing). The day had been tense, filled with admin nightmares and writer’s block, but the sheer act of concentrating on a routine did exactly what Dr Joshi promised it would; my thoughts were elsewhere, focused on the body, instead of making anxious mischief in my brain. Soon I was in the zone, mastering a salsa two step with an oldschool Craig David backtrack to reinforce the endorphin rush.

So my assessment of exercise as a method of living well?

Well, you can see I was already pretty much a convert, but the dedicated week of exercise has reinforced my opinion of not just its health benefits (although I appreciate being able to conquer the stairs more easily on Sunday than I did on Monday), but its ability to make you feel better. I feel it, I truly do. After a week of forcing myself to sign up for online classes and to make sure there is some evidence to show all you faithful followers that I am actually doing what I said I would, I feel the benefits. I am more relaxed, more rested and invigorated.

The sustainability of daily exercise with a full time job and other commitments, may be called into question once lockdown eases but as a means of staying well and sane during November? I can’t recommend it enough.

* The ‘10 000 step a day’ target was an arbitrary figure cited in the run up to the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games by a Japanese pedometer manufacturer. It caught on.

References

1. Morris JN, Everitt MG, Pollard R, Chave SPW, Semmence AM. Vigorous exercise in leisure‐time: protection against coronary heart disease. Lancet 1980; 2:1207–10.

2. Church TS, Blair SN, Cocreham S, et al Effects of aerobic and resistance training on hemoglobin A1c levels in patients with type 2 diabetes: a randomized controlled trial. JAMA 2010;304:2253–2262

3. Mattson P. Evolutionary aspects of human exercise - born to run purposefully.Ageing Res Rev 2012 Jul;11(3):347-52.
   

Highlights of Week 1

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Himmi's Plan to Combat the Corona Blues

For many, the descent into English winter is not without its problems. With the cold setting in the mood plummets and aches return to long healed breaks in bones. This year, after eight extraordinary months of the worldwide COVID 19 pandemic, the gripes feel worse than ever, a phenomenon that has touched, if not wholly upended, the lives of most people on the planet. After a time of heightened vigilance over coughs and fevers, it is little wonder that the usual “back to school” cold takes on more disastrous proportions. Is this corona? It could well be.

Having endured months of lifestyle restrictions many of us feel desolate at the prospect of another period in lockdown, and this time without the benefit of warm weather to at least look out on. Reserves are low but as the news daily warns us, the country is being tested again, potentially more severely than before given the confluence of other nasty viruses that circulate in winter. With so much doom and gloom, how on earth do we carry on?

Solutions appear to be manifold. Forced to spend more time indoors and thus, online, software tries to if not help, at least harness our attention. How many of us have had our habits analysed by computer algorithms, such that we now have tailored pop up ads telling us how we can improve in our isolation? A global crisis is not necessarily the time when one should expect revolutionary measures of self-improvement but with the pandemic showing no signs of fading away there is no longer an excuse to keep putting things off. Social restrictions and a prolonged preoccupation with coronavirus may be the new normal, hence the more pressing need to get accustomed to it.

Which is why I, scientifically trained as I am, shall be implementing a new, more experiential approach to try to “thrive and not just survive’ lockdown. In partnership with the wonderful team at the WorkWell Doctors, for the next six weeks I shall be working through their tips, as well as those listed on the NHS Live Well website, adopting a new weekly “feel good” measure to see whether my life truly improves as a result. At the end of each week you can read my review of each mood boosting strategy in this blog as well as keep abreast of my developments on social media.

The timetable is as follows:

1. Exercise

2. Mindfulness/meditation

3. Sleep

4. Socialising

5. Learning something new

6. Detox/healthy eating

So join me in my attempt to combat the winter blues. The days may be getting shorter, but together let’s try to make something of the bleak winter and rage against the dying of the light.

Resources:

• The WorkWell Doctors are a team of GPs that concentrate on health and wellbeing, particularly for health professionals. For more information find them at https://theworkwelldoctors.wixsite.com or follow them on social media @theworkwelldoctors.

• The NHS website offers lots of advice on coronavirus, illnesses and health strategies. I shall be working through ideas and tips from their '“Live Well” section found at https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/. Have a look and feel free to join me in adopting a weekly strategy. Do tweet/message/instagram me @himmikari of your attempts!