Chapter 7: Sound Effects
Many people will know what it’s like to have a favourite song boost their mood and put a spring in their step. This chapter explores the scientific basis for this phenomenon, as well as how something as simple and enjoyable as listening to music may improve our wellbeing and performance, both in and outside work.
This section also introduces a technology known as ‘binaural beats’ – the playing of specific frequencies of sound into the ears to induce desired states such as mental focus or relaxation.
Chapter 8: Breath of Life
Breathing is one of those bodily processes we tend to take for granted. This chapter reveals, though, that many of us can breathe quite inefficiently from time to time, and how this can impair our energy and mental functioning.
The chapter also provides practical guidance on breathing techniques that can calm the mind, optimize our physical and mental state, and promote general good health over time.
Chapter 9: Mind Control
Our success depends not just on balancing and optimizing our physiology, but also our psychology. Unfortunately, we can sometimes get caught in negative thought patterns that may block our mental processes, creativity and inspiration.
In this chapter, we explore some simple and effective tools for changing our thinking in ways that can very quickly boost our mood, brain functioning and productivity. Specifically, this chapter explores the research that shows that the key to mastering our mind can often be to focus on another organ entirely – the heart.
Chapter 10: Habit Forming
This book offers a range of highly effective strategies for boosting energy, productivity and sustainability. But many of us can sometimes resist things that we know are good for us, and may persist with things that we know are holding us back.
This final chapter show how motivation is the key to changing behaviour, and reveals a way of thinking that makes good habits stick (and bad habits easy to break) – for good.
The Appliance of Science
Throughout this book I refer to scientific research, and it makes sense to get clear on what we can (and can’t) learn from different types of evidence from the start. Research relevant to human health comes in two main forms: so-called ‘epidemiological’ research and ‘intervention’ studies:
Epidemiological Studies
Epidemiological studies look at relationships between things, such as the drinking of red wine and the risk of heart disease. Such studies can tell us that two things are associated with each other, but not that one is necessarily causing the other. So, those studies you’ve perhaps heard about linking red wine drinking with a reduced risk of heart disease cannot be used to conclude that red wine is good for the heart (sorry about that!). It might be, for instance, that red wine drinkers eat more healthily or smoke less than imbibers of other forms of alcohol. It could be these or other factors, not the red wine per se, that account for the apparently superior heart health of red wine drinkers.
Factors that may queer the pitch in this way are referred to as ‘confounding factors’ or simply ‘confounders’. In some studies, researchers attempt to take account of these factors when data is analysed. The problem is, though, this is a very inexact science, and in the end we still end up with results that cannot prove causality.
If epidemiological studies cannot be used to provide a definitive answer, why do them at all? Well, apart from keeping a lot of researchers in jobs, this sort of evidence is good for generating ideas (also known as ‘hypotheses’) that can be tested more definitively using what are termed ‘intervention studies’.
Intervention Studies
Intervention studies involve exposing individuals to a specific intervention and comparing their outcomes to a ‘control’ group not exposed to this intervention. Examples include the testing of the effects of low-fat diets on weight loss and the impact of exercise on fitness.
Intervention studies are far less plentiful than epidemiological studies, mainly because they are much more labour-intensive and costly. However, the fact remains that they are generally much more illuminating than any number of epidemiological studies, and this is why I focus on them quite a lot throughout the book.
Single intervention studies can be insightful, but sometimes it helps to take a wider view by grouping several similar studies together in the form of what are known as ‘meta-analyses’. For example, the results of studies that have tested the effects of exercise on weight loss can be pooled together to get a good overview of the effectiveness of this approach.
Meta-analyses are not perfect, but they are generally more useful than, say, selecting single studies in isolation, particularly if these are taken out of the context of wider evidence that is contradictory in nature.
Science: What is it Good For?
One thing I think science is undoubtedly good for is to discern whether a ‘fact’ is genuinely ‘evidence-based’ or not. Quite often, as you’ll discover as you read this book, many pieces of health advice we are given by doctors, dieticians, health bodies and government agencies (and we perhaps take for granted) simply do not stand up to scientific scrutiny. For example, you’ll see how research reveals low-fat diets are ineffective for both weight loss and for staving off heart disease.
A Great Day at the Office does not primarily exist to expose what does not work, but reveal what does. Published scientific evidence can inform us here too, of course, but sometimes we need to look beyond this. The reality is many potentially useful strategies have not been subjected to systematic study. I’ve seen countless people, for instance, benefit hugely from choosing something other than a sandwich at lunch, or from going to bed a bit earlier than they habitually do. These approaches have not been the focus of properly conducted trials, but they have been tried and tested with countless individuals and been found to produce consistent and reliable results.
So, the information and advice in this book is based on the available evidence, but it’s also informed by thousands of hours of consulting with real individuals in the real world. There is nothing quite like this wealth of experience, I think, for giving us perspective on what really works to help us be the best we can be, both in and out of the workplace.
Chapter 1
In the Introduction to this book, I briefly likened the body to a car. All cars require a few fundamentals to be taken care of to get us efficiently from A to B, one of which is to have fuel in the tank. But it has to be the right fuel: it’s no good filling up a petrol-driven car with diesel. Yet, my experience tells me that a surprising number of us are unwittingly doing something akin to this, and are getting spluttering performance as a result.
In the first part of this chapter, we’re going to explore the nutritional causes of symptoms such as fluctuating energy, the mid-afternoon slump and mental sluggishness, and how to correct these issues with ease. In the chapter’s second part we are going to take a longer view, and examine the sort of diet that will best support our personal sustainability and stave off chronic health issues such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes. The final part of the chapter then gives constructive advice on how to convert nutritional theory into practice in your everyday life.
Nutrition is a big subject, and one in which competing theories and misinformation abound. For these reasons we’re going to be referring to much scientific theory and literally dozens of research studies as the chapter unfolds. The size and complexity of this subject is reflected in