lifestyle

Taking a virtual break

January 10, 2024

I have dedicated the back end of the week to getting out my head. My goal was achieved, but without alcohol, thanks to a first dip in virtual reality.

I have been lucky so far this pandemic, but like many I have found the pleasures of homelife have begun to wear thin. It is not bad, far from it. I quite like the routine.

The problem is that the routine has barely changed for almost a year. There is really not much to distinguish one day from the next.

This is not fertile ground for fresh thoughts. The very same thoughts, positive and negative, tend to come round in and endless unchanging carousell.

I don’t actually need to find new thoughts. As a journalist I can rely on other people having these, but some variety is welcome, like a fresh coat of paint.

This is where experiences normally come in. If social life was a goer it might be a big night out or weekend away. And, if travel were possible, I might go somewhere.

But the immersion of travel or, indeed, social events is missing. There is no way around it, or so I thought until I had a brainwave while taking in the majesty of a potato peeler.

I will take a trip into virtual reality instead. It combines adventure, an office upgrade, research and a holiday, exactly the unhealthy mix of work and play I thrive on.

The chosen headset—a refurbed Oculus Rift S—duly arrived. It was easy enough to set up, though with cold sweats as I checked if my machine is up to the job.

It is. And I have already been stunned by its fidelity and believability. I am as bewildered and awed as any of those Victorians who took fright at an early attempt at cinema. This alone is a good thing.

I have not ventured very far into it and, quite typically, my first instinct was to look into exciting things like virtual ways in which to access my work desktop and to access a word processor.

But I have flown over Manhattan on Google Earth and, due to a mistake, Sofia and had many more other-worldly experiences. It has opened a mental door even when a my real door has to remain closed. ■

A health conscious life can be more carefree

January 10, 2024

Being health conscious–by minimising alcohol, for instance–dramatically reduces our reasons for worry, but an unhelpful level of perfectionism can make us less carefree than health risk denier.

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Taking steps to reduce health risks does not mean we need to dedicate every second to being a super-chilled, rippling quasi-Olympian with a top notch social circle. The vast majority of the health benefits we can get from lifestyle come long before this.

Simply paying heed to a handful of achievable lifestyle guidelines has been shown to add a decade or two to our lives, cutting the chance we have health problems in the near future. It is a short list of achievable goals, not a relentless regime.

A typical to-do list might include seven factors: never smoking; drinking little or no alcohol; having a balanced, vegetable-biased diet; do regular moderate exercise; have regular social connection; get adequate sleep; and manage stress.

The trickier ones for many are likely to involve addictive drugs like tobacco and alcohol, which are often woven into our lives. We may need to compromise and acknowledge drinking no alcohol is more achievable than trying to drink just a little. Meanwhile we might struggle to say what is an adequate level of social connection, sleep or stress. But okay is enough, we do not need to look for perfection.

Routinely ticking off many or all of the items on the shortlist will significantly reduce our health risks. That is something to bank, not worry about. Slip-ups are not ideal, but not the end of the world either. Consistently achieving all the items on the list is doable one day.

No health recommendations can ever avert our deaths. But a significant delay is a reasonable expectation for following a few lifestyle recommendations. This is extra time to appreciate being alive which need not involve fine-tuning a health regime. ■

Alertness to commercial interests is an essential health defence

January 10, 2024

Acknowledging that the profit motive warps health information to generate sales can help us lead healthier, more rewarding lives, at lower risk and lower cost.

Businesses large and small routinely seek to emphasise potential health benefits of their products and services while minimising or denying downsides outright.

These one-sided stories are routinely retold uncritically in media coverage, ads, pharmacies, on labels and on the channels of online influencers.

Food, drink and supplement categories support rafts of flimsy studies to justify vague health claims. Alcohol’s was debunked for the umpteenth time this month.

To dismiss these claims is not to dismiss the products. They might bring us joy, relieve pain and make us feel better, just not a positive stepchange in our health or life expectancy.

The benefit of scepticism is it stops us overcommitting to a product based on unrealistic expectations, perhaps with downsides and side effects, not least disappointment.

Rather than becoming a super-consumer to serve a business interest we can consume in ways that make us feel better. Our time and money can be used for other things.

There are around seven things we can do to improve our long term health which a huge range of foods, drinks and activities can help us achieve in enjoyable ways.

Making choices to serve ourselves

Real medicines have third-party verification based on large scale medical trials, and even then some wrong-uns slip through the net.

Beyond this any implication of a product offering big health benefits should be a red flag to us, with any studies cited highly unlikely to withstand serious scrutiny.

Wellness influencers and media platforms are also iffy intermediaries, being largely funded by selling pricey supplements while promoting gurus with wares to sell.

This format is largely there to solve a revenue problem rather than address a health problem. We should not give uncredit to their most strikingly-positive health claims.

So too psychedelics and cannabis, which vested interest promote as health enhancing without robust health studies while, obviously, saying little about their risks.

Even austere practices like meditation have some rarely aired perils. The Dalai Lama himself was nonplussed to be told about them.

Yoga, massage, meditation or practices like cold exposure might help us feel good but will not “supercharge our immune system”, as some of their proponents say they will.

Being wary of the way commercial interests warp the truth is tiresome, but it is also a way to make choices which are less costly, less risky and more rewarding,

Industries’ main goal is revenue, whatever marketing category they might operate in, be it food, drink, health or wellness. Their health claims are not made to serve us.

The most reliable working assumption is to disbelieve health claims from non-medical businesses. ■