Infuse your life with play

“The opposite of play is not work, it’s depression,” says Dr Brown. “Think about life without play – no humour, no flirtation, no movies, no games, no fantasy. The thing that’s so unique about our species is that we’re really designed to play through our whole lifetime.”

At the end of his popular TED Talk, Dr Brown says, “So I would encourage you all to engage not in the work-play differential – where you set aside time to play – but where your life becomes infused minute by minute, hour by hour, with body, object, social, fantasy, transformational kinds of play. And I think you’ll have a better and more empowered life.”

How to play as an adult

As adults, we tend to avoid risk of failure. We don’t want to try something new in case we’re bad at it. Play removes that pressure. It doesn’t matter if you’re not “good at it” – it’s the doing of it that matters.

Here’s how to start”

1. Think back to the play you enjoyed most as a child, and then find similar activities. If you enjoyed climbing trees, you could try rock climbing. If you loved play dough, you could find a pottery class, or, as a cheaper option, start making bread at home.

2. Make time to be spontaneous. You might need to schedule blocks of time where you allow yourself to play. Make an appointment in your calendar to act as a reminder.

3. Don’t post about it. When you share your play on social media, you’re giving it a result. Try doing it just for you.

The link between muscles and fat

Resistance training increases the size and tone of your muscles. This doesn’t just look good, it also helps you control your weight in the long term. That’s because muscle size is important in determining your resting metabolic rate (RMR), which is how many calories your body needs to function at rest. Studies show that weight training is more effective than aerobic exercise at increasing RMR.

Other studies have found weight workouts increased energy expenditure and fat burning for at least 24 hours afterwards. Even people who occasionally lift weights are far less likely to become obese that those who don’t.

In a process called mechanical loading, muscles get stressed through lifting, pushing, or pulling. In response to this, cells in the muscles release a substance that sends instructions to fat cells, prompting them to start the fat-burning process, explained study co-author Dr John McCarthy, associate professor of physiology at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine.

“We think this adds a new dimension to the understanding of how skeletal muscle communicates with other tissues,” said Dr McCarthy. The results remind us, he said, that muscle mass is vitally important for metabolic health.

Resistance training for beginners

1. Warm up first. Do some light aerobic exercise such as walking, cycling or rowing for about five minutes.
2. Use proper technique to avoid injuries. You can learn this from a registered exercise professional. Many gyms offer experienced personal trainers, or your could see a physiotherapist or exercise physiologist.
3. Start slowly. New to weights? Then you may be able to lift only a few kilograms. As your body gets more used to the exercises you can start to progress. Once you can easily do 12 repetitions with a particular weight, gradually increase the weight.
4. Use your breath. Breathe out when you are lifting or pushing; breathe in as you slowly release the load or weight. Never hold your breath while straining.
5. Be sensible. Don’t be so eager to see results that you risk injury by exercising too long or choosing too heavy a weight.
6. Rest. Rest muscles for at least 48 hours between strength training sessions. If you have been sick, don’t return to training until one or two days after you have recovered.

But you are OK. You manage to stop your fall with the wall, and after catching your breath, you go on your merry way.

Should you report it? Nothing happened.

The clear answer is yes. A near miss is a reportable incident. Even if “nothing happened”.

By definition, a near miss is an occurrence that might have led to an injury or illness, danger to someone’s health, and/or damage to property or the environment.

A dangerous incident, according to the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, is “a workplace that exposes a worker or any other person to a serious risk to a person’s health or safety emanating from an immediate or imminent exposure”.

However, reporting near misses can be a bit… hit and miss.

Without appropriate training and encouragement, employees can sometimes be hesitant to report a near miss for fear of getting into trouble or “ruining the stats”.

In an organisation with a strong safety culture, employees report near misses in order to reduce actual injuries. It’s part of a continuous process to identify and rectify issues.

A near miss indicates there is a problem: a lapse or a hazard in the safety measures. If you ignore a near miss, the problem still exists. By encouraging near-miss reporting, you are encouraging a healthy, proactive safety culture that prioritises people over statistics.

What is not to love? It tastes good, smells good, and that creamy, melt-in-your-mouth consistency stimulates feelings of pleasure on the tongue. It is the most commonly craved food in the world, and science may be able to explain why.

The whole experience of eating chocolate results in feel-good neurotransmitters, mainly dopamine, being released in the brain, says Amy Jo Stavnezer, a professor of psychology and neuroscience.

Dopamine is released when you experience anything that you enjoy – sex, laughing, or watching your TV show. Dopamine helps you to remember positive experiences, explains professor Stavnezer, and will give you a little surge of anticipation when you see, smell, or even just imagine chocolate.

Scientists originally thought that the compounds chocolate contains, such as theobromine and caffeine, could activate the dopamine system directly, like cigarettes and cocaine do. But experiments have shown that it’s a combination of all the components of chocolate – the mouth-feel, the taste, the sugar and fat ratio, plus the effects of the many different chemicals – that drives the craving.

Now you know you are biologically driven to eat that chocolate, take your time with it. Choose quality chocolate, eat it slowly and do not feel guilty.

Bloating is that feeling of increased pressure in your intestines. Do you need to worry about it? Here we set you straight on three myths about bloating:

Myth 1. Bloating is not normal. “Occasional bloating is totally normal, especially after a big meal or extra fibre,” says Dr Megan Rossi, an Australian dietitian with a London-based practice specialising in gut health and author of Eat More, Live Well.

“In fact, a bit of bloating after a high-fibre meal is good – it’s a sign of well-fed gut microbes (including good bacteria) just doing their thing. Continuous bloating, which is when you’re always bloated with no fluctuations over the day, is less common and best reviewed by your doctor first.”

Canadian dietitian Abby Langer agrees.

“The wellness industry tries to make us believe that all bloating is a problem, but it’s unrealistic to believe that your stomach should be flat all the time,” she says. “Just eating a regular-sized meal can distend your stomach which may lead to complaints of bloating, when what you’re really experiencing is a stomach full of food.”

Myth 2. There’s a simple cause. There are many different triggers for bloating, says Rossi. These include the volume of food and fluid you’ve eaten, a backlog of poop in the case of constipation, or simply the gas produced by your own gut microbiota.

Eating foods containing sugar alcohols (sugar replacements like sorbitol and xylitol) such as chewing gum will also contribute to bloating, as can wearing tight clothes all day and lack of movement.

Stress can also have very real effects on our gut, says Langer, including the feeling of bloating. The gut and brain are connected via nerves in what’s called the gut-brain axis. When we are stressed the brain sends signals to the gut to slow down digestion in the ‘fight or flight’ response, which can trigger gut discomfort.

Rossi points out that whether you feel the bloating or not can be down to your intestine’s sensitivity and how efficient your body is at absorbing the gas produced by your unique gut microbiome.

Myth 3. You can fix bloating by cutting out unhealthy food. Don’t cut out foods that are perfectly good for you before getting advice from a nutrition professional such as an Accredited Practising Dietitian.

There are many diet and lifestyle strategies that can help bloating, including checking for common food intolerances, splitting your food intake into smaller meals, and chewing well.

Unnecessarily restricting your diet can make your gut more sensitive, warns Rossi. That’s because your gut bacteria adapt to the food that you eat, and when you feed it a diverse range of whole foods (including carbs) the gut microbiome can produce enzymes that break down all the fibres found in plants.

If you overly restrict your diet, you’ll have a less diverse gut microbes and lack many of the microbes needed to digest plant fibres efficiently. This can trigger gut symptoms such as bloating and excessive gas – the very things you want to avoid.

If your bloating is frequent and comes with pain and discomfort, speak to a dietitian or doctor for help.

Where to start

If you are new to indoor plants, search online for those that are hard to kill. And rather than sticking with just a potted plant or two, you will get the most benefits with a “more is more” approach, and hang plants, display them on tables, stack them on stands, or mount them on walls.

These words sound positive – at first. However, the word ‘but’ negates everything that came before it.

Our brains translate the word ‘but’ as ‘here’s the catch’. And when you hear there’s a catch, you go on the defensive. Not ideal when you’re negotiating at work or having an important discussion with someone.

The word ‘but’ acts like a mental eraser and often buries whatever you’ve said before it,” says communications consultant Dianna Booher, author of What More Can I Say: Why Communication Fails and What to Do About It. “It makes communication spiral down instead of spin up.”

What to say instead

Switch it around. There is nothing wrong with using ‘but’ as long as you are aware of how it might influence the other person’s thinking. You can use it in a sentence, but switch around the negative and positive statements, to emphasise the positive.

“That wasn’t your best result, but I know you will do better next time.”

“We didn’t do so well that time, but we can learn from our mistakes and move on.”

Swap it. During your next tough conversation, swap one three letter word for another: ‘and’.

“Yes, I agree with a lot of what you’re saying and I’d like to examine this particular point.”

Using ‘and’ or ‘yes, and’ adds to the conversation and invites further discussion without negating what anyone has said. Practise doing this for seven days and you will start to get out of the habit of using ‘but’ in the wrong place.

Words that make you sound less confident

While there is no such thing as right or wrong words, some common words can put us at a disadvantage.

1. “Um”, “Ah”, “Like” and “You Know”. When you are temporarily lost for words, it is easy to throw in a crutch word like one of these. But they can make you seem less confident. If you feel a crutch word on the tip of your tongue, take a brief pause instead.
2. “Just”. Phrases such as “Just wanted to ask a question”, or “Just checking in” weaken your statements, making you seem less sure of yourself. Drop the extra word and talk like you know what you want.
3. “Actually”. This has become the new “basically” or “literally”. It’s usually unnecessary. If you feel yourself about to use it, leave it out.

Who is at risk?

Workers in certain industries are known to be at risk for hearing loss, which is why there is legislation in place for industries such as manufacturing and construction. If you are in one of those industries, your employer would have control measures to reduce the risk, and you must always wear any PPE provided to protect your ears.

But it is not just workplaces that are potentially hazardous to your hearing.

A report by the World Health Organization estimates that nearly half of those aged between 12 and 35 – or 1.1 billion people – are at risk of hearing loss due to prolonged exposure to loud sounds, including music they listen to through personal audio devices.

We already live in a noisy world, but by listening to music or watching videos using headphones, you can be amplifying the noise and causing damage to your ears.

“People generally don’t know about safe listening levels, and in a culture where headphones are everywhere, that’s dangerous,” says UK audiology specialist Francesca Oliver. “If you have a particularly noisy commute and turn the music up to hear it, try listening to it at that volume in a quiet room. It’s painfully loud. So imagine what that’s doing to your ears.”

How loud is too loud?

Sound is measured in units called decibels (dB). Most audiologists agree that sounds at or below 70dB (a dishwasher or shower for example) are unlikely to cause hearing loss even after long exposure. The ‘safe sound threshold’ is 80 to 85dB (kitchen blender, vacuum cleaner, or alarm clock). After eight hours’ exposure to 85dB, your hearing can be damaged.

After that, each increment of 3dB doubles the pressure. A hairdryer is a surprising 90dB, a nightclub or MP3 player at full blast is around 100dB, while a rock concert is 110dB. The louder the sound, the shorter the amount of time it takes for hearing damage to occur. If you know you are heading to a loud environment, take some earplugs that filter loud sounds.

What triggers a panic attack?

A panic attack typically happens when you are under physical or emotional stress. The effects of stress can accumulate so slowly that you may be unaware of the extent of your stress until a panic attack happens.

A panic attack starts with the amygdala, the brain region involved in processing fear, explains Dr Aaronson. When the amygdala perceives danger, it stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, she says, which triggers the release of the hormone adrenaline.

Adrenaline prompts an increase in the heart and breathing rate to get blood and oxygen to the muscles of the arms and legs. But during a panic attack, this response is exaggerated beyond what would be useful in a dangerous situation.

The intense rush of fear or anxiety you feel during a panic attack is usually accompanied by at least four of the following symptoms, says reachout.com.

• racing heart or palpitations
• sweating
• shortness of breath or feelings of choking
• dizziness, trembling or shaking
• numbness or a tingling sensation
• hot and cold flashes
• fear of dying or of losing control
• queasy stomach or nausea
• feeling detached from yourself and your surroundings.

How to react to a panic attack

Panic attacks come on rapidly, but usually subside within 10 to 15 minutes. Dr Aaronson believes the most important technique to help you ride them out is recognising that you’re having a panic attack and not a more serious medical crisis.

“Just knowing what it is helps people,” she says. To be sure, double check that you’re not experiencing any heart-attack specific symptoms such as pressure in the chest or pain that builds or radiates into the arms or jaw.

If you see someone having a panic attack (or are experiencing one yourself), try not to ‘feed the fear’ by responding with anxiety or fear, advises Justin Kenardy, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Queensland. He suggests the following:

• Calmly remind the person that even though the experience is unpleasant, it’s not dangerous and will pass.
• Help to re-focus their mind away from the thoughts that are causing stress.
• Help them to slow and pace their breathing. For example, calmly ask them to breathe in for four seconds, hold their breath for two seconds, and then breathe out slowly over six seconds. Repeat for a minute or so, or as needed.