Your diet impacts energy levels, concentration, cognitive capacities, emotions, and productivity.
Your brain depends on your food, and your life depends on your brain. Your emotions, your capacity to cope with life, and your ability to concentrate and mentally thrive are often driven by your physical state, and especially by your brain and neurological system.
Your body and brain can be seen as machines, and food is like the fuel they need to run. The type, quantity, and quality of the fuel matters.
Your diet affects your moods, brain performance, cognitive capacities, creativity, and changes the chemistry inside you. The ability to solve problems, or to see the bigger picture, to rearrange concepts to create new ones, and even to feel inspired... could all be rooted in the brain and in what happens inside it. And this also depends on your daily choices.
Right, both what you eat and what you don’t eat may be causing lack of attention, stress, or low energy. They are not the only factors, but your ability to thrive in life is highly linked to the overall health of the body. Different levels of certain chemicals can trigger feelings of either stress or calm, give the brain more power, or put you in a state of confusion. This is the science of your feelings and brain, which says that to a certain extent, you are also a product of physical conditions, and they can change according to your lifestyle.
What happens inside the gut affects hormones, which in turn affect nerves, which affect moods, which affect happiness. Could an issue in the intestines be the reason for your low energy? Yes, it could be. But, it may also be something else—it is complicated to know the real reasons for each symptom of imbalance, and especially in matters of the brain, the most complex machine of the body.
For example, the platform called The Gut Microbiota For Health, created by the European Society for Neurogastroenterology & Motility (ESNM) [1], holds regular summits to discuss about the latest researches around the bacterias living in the gut (called the gut microbiota). One of the hottest topics is their relationship with the brain and cognitive capabilities, and some recent articles have presented the possible links between certain gut microbes and social stress [2], the brain development in children [3], and the brain in adults [4].
If there is a place where the lack of energy, motivation, or attention is felt, is at work, because productivity is not really measured by the amount of hours spent at a task, but the efficiency of how it is done. And this means the ability to understand and simplify the way to do the task, which requires critical thinking, creative thinking, and certain levels of concentration. And beyond all of this, if the point is also to become happier, those abilities would also help with that. They would enable managers and employees to realise new ways to cope with situations and find solutions, instead of being overwhelmed by problems, in and outside the workplace.
It seems that including nuts and kombucha on the corporate kitchens, and fruits instead of chips in the vending machines, can actually help everyone have a better quality of life. The promotion of health from the workplace is a long-term investment, and healthy habits can start from there, spreading education and new trends.
But how the message is delivered is important for its acceptance, because eventually the secret of creating new tendencies is to make people want to do things voluntarily and not to force them.
When people are aware of the impact of food on their mental abilities, intelligence, productivity, and happiness, they are also more receptive to adopt changes, and even the most reluctant ones can become convinced. Therefore, rising awareness about this topic can be an important part to get more engagement in new wellness initiatives and campaigns.
Citations:
[1] https://www.gutmicrobiotaforhealth.com
[2] Paul Enck, “Bifidobacterium longum 1714 may modulate brain function in response to social stress in healthy adults”, 2019 May, www.gutmicrobiotaforhealth.com
[3] GMFH Editing Team, “A new review analyzes gut microbiota’s influence on brain development and function in early life”, 2019 Jan, www.gutmicrobiotaforhealth.com
[4] GMFH Editing Team, “Can gut bacteria affect the human brain? This is what we know”, Sept 2018, www.gutmicrobiotaforhealth.com
