Today is my birthday (7^th April if anybody wants to put it in the calendar for next year) and I’m letting my hair down a little bit, shock horror! I spent my weekend playing football, going out with friends, getting a takeaway and generally relaxing. Even more shocking is that I’m not going to feel guilty about it, I’d even go as far as saying that it will benefit my health.

All too often an individual gets so wrapped up in their physical health that they completely forget the psychological aspect of well-being, which is just as important (many would argue even more so, but let’s not start a debate). Increased stress has been shown to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease (Steptoe & Kivimäki, 2012), loneliness is an indicator or overall mortality in elderly populations (Luo et al., 2012), I could go on.

The truth is, for most things, it’s what you do the 99% of the time that counts. Missing a takeaway as a family celebration just because it doesn’t fit perfectly into your nutritional program probably does more harm than good in terms of your psychological health and the likelihood of you completely ‘falling off the wagon’ becomes significantly higher after long term restriction.

Don’t get me wrong, this rule doesn’t apply to absolutely everything, your cat needs feeding every day, you should probably abstain from picking your nose in public all of the time (when your driving doesn’t count, pick away!) and you should always take your medication, but you get my drift.

It’s the old problem of population bias, more than likely if you’re reading this article you’re already engaged in your health (probable, not definite) therefore for many it would be wise to relax, take it easy and let your hair down. Be good most of the time, but everybody needs to embrace their other self every once in a while, it’s what keeps us sane.

P.S. The picture at the top isn’t as random as one may think, it’s the Rescon team’s presents for my birthday, aint they cute!

Jack Barton (Researcher, Rescon Ltd)

References

Steptoe, A., & Kivimäki, M. (2012). Stress and cardiovascular disease. Nature Reviews Cardiology, 9(6), 360-370.

Luo, Y., Hawkley, L. C., Waite, L. J., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2012). Loneliness, health, and mortality in old age: A national longitudinal study. Social Science & Medicine, 74(6), 907-914.