Читать книгу A Great Day at the Office: 10 Simple Strategies for Maximizing Your Energy and Getting the Best Out of Yourself and Your Day - Dr. Briffa John - Страница 12

When I was a young hospital doctor, I had a pressing problem with fatigue. Some sleep deprivation no doubt contributed to this, but even when I snoozed my sleep debt away I felt I lacked the zip someone in his mid-twenties should have. In particular, I would find my energy levels were highly variable, and I was prone to catastrophic ‘energy crises’ at certain times. A major danger time for me was the mid to late afternoon: often at around 4 p.m., I would feel the life drain out of me. Sometimes, I would even struggle to stay awake.

It’s perhaps easy to imagine that these symptoms were the inevitable consequence of the often hectic schedule I worked back then. But, in truth, my unreliable energy and afternoon slumps started many years before I ever set foot on a hospital ward in a professional capacity. When I look back, I remember regularly ‘zoning out’ during lectures and tutorials while at medical school. However, it was when I started work as a doctor that my deflating energy became much more evident and inconvenient.

Seeing a long list of people in an outpatients’ clinic can be challenging at the best of times, but it was made infinitely harder when my overriding desire was to lie down on the examination couch in the corner of the room and go to sleep. Even in the operating theatre, I remember occasionally having to press hard with the heel of one foot on the toes of the other just to spark some life into my wilting body.

One morning, I was doing the necessary checks on an elderly man who was due to have a minor operation later that day. I was struck by the fact that he had an energy and vitality considerably greater than my own, despite being almost fifty years my senior. My curiosity was piqued enough for me to remark: ‘Whatever you’re on, I’d like some of it.’ He responded by telling me that he set great store by eating healthily, as well as regular cycling and keeping up his interests through reading and listening to the radio.

As a junior doctor, I did not feel in need of any more mental stimulation, and lack of activity was not my problem either (I was a keen runner back then), but it did occur to me that maybe my diet might be a bit of a blind spot. In my six years of study at medical school, I recalled not one single lecture on nutrition, and what I knew about this subject would have fitted comfortably on the back of a postage stamp.

Later that evening while out shopping, I found myself drawn to a carousel of books I had spied from outside a health food store. I bought a book on nutrition and read it over the next couple of days. Getting through the book quite quickly was a breeze because what I was reading appeared to make perfect sense to me. I became convinced that although I had previously thought my diet to be perfectly sound, conventional nutritional ‘wisdom’ had led me off in the wrong direction. I resolved to make some immediate changes to my diet.

And I was very glad I did, because the impact this had on me was profound. My sense of wellbeing improved quickly and steadily to the extent that, within two weeks, I felt I had more energy than ever before in my adult life. However, the benefits did not end there, because just a few days into adopting my new diet, the itchy, red rash under my arms and on my torso that had plagued me on and off for many years disappeared (never to return).

Another happy side effect of my new diet was that the additional weight I’d acquired through six years’ worth of a pretty rubbish diet (I was a typical student, and no stranger to fast food like KFC, kebabs and Kronenbourg 1664 in those days) was shed in about six weeks. This happened, by the way, without hunger or deprivation, nor any increase in my activity levels. If you’re wondering what sort of dietary changes could possibly have led to this transformation in my energy, wellbeing and weight, all is revealed in Chapter 1.

So changed was I by all this that I ended up leaving the traditional career path I was on to devote myself to helping people take their health into their own hands using natural self-applied means. In the beginning, I was principally interested in dietary approaches, but quickly my interest expanded into other areas too, including sleep, activity, light exposure and psychology. I witnessed countless individuals liberate themselves from long-term health issues such as fatigue, anxiety and depression, weight issues, joint and muscle pain, skin conditions, digestive discomfort and headaches – and all without recourse to medication or conventional means.

But I discovered something else too: when individuals took approaches that addressed the underlying nature of their health issues (rather than merely treat their symptoms), not only would these issues often resolve, but they would usually experience benefits in terms of their energy, general wellbeing and mental functioning too. Many would report that they felt more mentally and physically alive than they had in years (just as I had).

I began to wonder if there existed people who, although not sick enough to be called truly sick, were not well enough to be called truly well either. Might many people be wandering around in a sub-par state as a result of lifestyle factors that could be simply rectified?

My curiosity was satisfied when, in 1996, I was asked to facilitate on a wellness programme for a global professional services firm. The delegates were senior members of the organization, almost all of whom suffered from the sorts of wellbeing and performance issues that I now realize are endemic in the corporate arena. Some simple, sustainable changes in areas such as diet, activity, psychology and sleep reaped significant dividends for them in terms of enhanced vitality and performance. The results from the early programmes were so good that the initiative was rolled out nationally and, subsequently, internationally. The programme became part of the culture of the organization and continues to run to this day.

Since the mid-1990s, I’ve been privileged to work with many different organizations in the UK and abroad. While there are certainly things that set businesses apart from each other, I have found the issues that this book addresses are common the world over and in all settings in which I have worked.