10 Tips for Staying Healthy in a Stressful, Chaotic Workplace

10 Tips for Staying Healthy in a Stressful, Chaotic Workplace Your job is hard. You do good work and probably put in more than your fair share of time to get everything done well. Sometimes theres a little bit of blood, sweat, and tears involved on top of that. So, theres nothing worse than having to produce the magic that is your daily work when you arent feeling 100 percent. Drowsiness, nauseousness, colds, flu, allergies, and stress are the work champions greatest foe. So how do you stem off the onslaught of influences looking to slow you down? Here are ten tips we recommend for staying healthy in a stressful, chaotic workplace. 1. Eating a breakfast: One of the first things busy workers skip out on is a great healthy breakfast. However, that breakfast youre skipping out on has tremendous benefits. If you feel that 3 oclock slump each day, its probably due to a lack of fiber and carbohydrates that are commonly found in a healthy breakfast. 2. Meditating: Its pretty rare not to feel a bit of stress at work from time to time. Some stress is good for you, but if its starting to affect your health, concentration, or ability to workthats a problem. One way to help fight the negative side effects of stress is to do some meditation. No, you dont have to sit cross legged in the middle of the office floor humming and chanting to yourselfjust to get a few minutes of meditation in. A simple form of meditation anyone can do is the 4-square breathing method. This technique can help you quickly feel calm and is a simple pattern of taking a deep breath through your nose for four seconds, holding it for four seconds, then exhaling through your mouth for four seconds, and repeat. 3. Taking a lunch walk: Besides giving you some health benefits from the exercise alone, a quick 20 minute walk at lunch could help increase your creativity. Compared to sitting, scientists say that any form of walking could increase creative thinking by about 60%. 4. Change your snacks: I admit, Im guilty of snacking on Doritos, Ding Dongs and Ho Hos at my desk from time to time. However Ive really enjoyed some of the more healthy snacks from places like NatureBox. Usually we eat unhealthy snacks because they are easier to acquire. Thats one nice thing about NatureBox, you start a subscription, pick the snacks you want, and they send you a box each month with your picks. 5. Drink lots of water: Yes you can get dehydrated at work and not even know it. Did you know we should be drinking three 16 oz bottles of water in a work day? I didnt. Drinking water will help you feel more energized and better overall. 6. Use glasses that reduce eyestrain: Face it, many of you probably sit in front of a computer screen most of the day to do your job. You then go home and pull out an ipad, or watch tv. Thats a lot of strain going into your eyeballs. Thankfully there are some helpful glasses you can purchase to help reduce eyestrain such as Gunnars Optics. 7. Save on your prescriptions: Heres a tip to help your wallets health. As stress and chaos at work increase so can the prescriptions. Some of those prescriptions can make a major dent on your wallet. So savvy shoppers have already started buying their meds from an online Canadian drugstore instead. According to the Congressional Budget Office, brand-name drugs on average cost from 35%- 55% less in other industrialized nations than they do in the U.S. 8: Eat a healthy lunch: The next time you go out for lunch find out how many calories are in that Big Mac combo, then compare it to a sandwich and fruit you could pack from home. Enough said. 9: Stand more: Sitting is killing us according to the New York Times. Sitting too much causes circulation issues, lowers glucose uptake, and increases chance of type 2 diabetes. Making sure you get up and walk around between projects is a simple tip you can do to improve your health. 10: Get 7-8 hours of sleep: The debate on how much sleep your body needs has been non-stop, but the SleepFoundation.org has come to a fairly accepted idea that adults should get 7-8 hours of sleep. A simple increase in the number of hours of sleep youre getting can improve everything from your energy to your mood. I hope you find these tips helpful and can start implementing them right away.