Covid-19Mental HealthPhysiotherapy Can Support Good Mental Health During Lockdowns

If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it’s how much physical activity and overall health contribute to our mental well-being.  Our bodies were designed to hunt and gather, chase woolly mammoths, and run around.  The ever-growing impact of technology on our world coupled with numerous lockdowns and limited “outside time” has had a significant impact on the mental wellness of many Canadians.

So what can you do to help boost your mental health and well-being while abiding by COVID-19 best practices and staying safe?  A home-based exercise program and optimizing working from home are two ways you can significantly improve your quality of life right now.  Not sure how exercise, a comfortable work environment and happiness fit together?  Let us show you.

Exercise and Mental Health

A recent study comparing workers who took part in a “10,000 steps for 100 days” challenge reduced their stress levels by 8.9%, depression scores by 7.6% and anxiety measures by 5%.  Simply by increasing their physical activity level on a consistent basis!  Another study from Oxford and Yale analyzed data from 1,237,194 participants and found that individuals who exercised had over 43% fewer poor mental health days compared to those who were more sedentary.

So science agrees, exercise is great for our mental health, but many of us are unsure of how to get started.  Your gym may be closed, you don’t want to exercise outside and you may feel stiff from months of inactivity.  This is where virtual Physiotherapy services can come into play.  Physiotherapists are trained not only in rehabilitating injuries but also exercise physiology, prescription and “prehabilitation” – the prevention of injury through a detailed assessment and individualized exercise program.  Whether you have equipment at home or not, your Physiotherapist can design an exercise program with your goals and mental health in mind.

Chronic Pain and Mental Health

Home offices have become commonplace thanks to COVID-19.  We tend to be working in spaces that are not ergonomically friendly and for longer periods of time than we used to in the office.  Trips to your colleague’s desk a few offices down and the walk to the boardroom have been replaced with Slack messages and Zoom.  The short of it is, we’re sitting for longer periods of time in poor positions which are leading to a significant increase in postural chronic pain.

Research from the Mayo Clinic has shown that chronic pain sufferers are much more likely to have symptoms of anxiety and depression compared to their pain-free counterparts.  Setting up your at-home workspace properly and incorporating some “desk-ercise” can be very beneficial in reducing chronic pain and improving overall health.  Using secure video-conferencing software, a skilled Physiotherapist can provide you with simple (and usually cost-effective) solutions to significantly improve your working position.  You probably don’t need an expensive, modern, German office chair to help with your pain.  A few simple tweaks and a break routine can make a world of difference.

There are many things your Physiotherapist can help you with to improve your mental well being from the comfort of your home.  Follow this link if you’d like to learn more about virtual Physiotherapy, and feel free to contact us if you’d like to know if virtual physiotherapy is right for you!

References

• Chekroud, S. R., Gueorguieva, R., Zheutlin, A. B., Paulus, M., Krumholz, H. M., Krystal, J. H., & Chekroud, A. M. (2018). Association between physical exercise and mental health in 1·2 million individuals in the USA between 2011 and 2015: a cross-sectional study. The lancet. Psychiatry, 5(9), 739–746. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(18)30227-X
• Hallam, K.T., Bilsborough, S. & de Courten, M. “Happy feet”: evaluating the benefits of a 100-day 10,000 step challenge on mental health and wellbeing. BMC Psychiatry 18, 19 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-018-1609-y
• Hooten W. M. (2016). Chronic Pain and Mental Health Disorders: Shared Neural Mechanisms, Epidemiology, and Treatment. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 91(7), 955–970. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mayocp.2016.04.029

This post has been sponsored by Cornerstone Physiotherapy