Total Wellbeing Blog

The benefits of a great social network

There was an interesting article in the Daily Mail this week about how lonely people may suffer from lower immune systems, be sick more often and even die younger than people who have a good social network. Important as it is to have people around you, what is more important is the quality of people you have around you and the strength of your social network.

Having lots of aquaintances for instance isn't the same as having a few well trusted friends who support you wholeheartedly. Spending time with people being politely social where you don't feel comfortable being yourself is not a great network, nor is being around people who are negative and drain your energy. We all need people that we can be ourselves with 'warts an' all', who love us as we are and have our best interests at heart and visa versa. There is a theory that we become the people that we spend time with so it makes sense to choose people who support us and help reinforce our belief in ourselves.

Having a great network around you is important but so is spending time with yourself. Getting both areas right is important for your overall wellbeing. Without time for ourselves, we do not have the space to reflect, take stock of where we are going or be healthily selfish and put ourselves first. Spending time constantly with others can mean that we start to lose ourselves a little by getting so wrapped up in other peoples lives. What is important is to achieve the balance between the two and when we do spend time with people, it is because they have a positive impact.

The Harmful Food Additives Debate

There has been a lot in the news recently about the number of harmful additives in food - in particular, food aimed at children. Many of the debates have been aimed at parents and how they should be making better food choices for their children and it always amazed me how little attention was given to the companies who manufacture this food.

Recent news however is now concentrating on the fact that these harmful additives should not be in the food in the first place and it would be great for the authorities to start taking this situation far more seriously and ban these harmful additives from our foods and other products.

Children in general seem to suffer more with hyperactivity than ever before and some people still do not recognise the link between what we eat and our general health. It would be very interesting to see how much hyperactivity reduces in children if some of these additives were banned altogether.

As a society, we need to take some responsibility for this. We are more and more concerned with convenience over health and are spending less and less time cooking healthy meals for our families. The manufacturers want to make money and they do their best to meet these demands by giving us more attractive food products that have a longer shelf life and will use these additives to improve their profits all the while it is legal to do so!

Recently, fingers have been pointing at the parents to make more informed decisions for their children and yes, it would be great if everyone knew about good nutrition, what to look out for and what to avoid but at the same time, as a parent, it is also reasonable to expect to be able to buy products from the supermarket and trust that they are safe - especially if the marketing is aimed at children!

We are not stupid - we know for instance that if we buy something high in sugar that it is not good for our children and can make the decision for it to be an occasional treat, but when these additives are added to food that otherwise appears to be very healthy, many people will believe that it is without question - and why shouldn't we? The people supplying our food are supposed to be the experts after all!

More pressure should be put on these companies to ban these additives and there should be adequate warnings on remaining products that could have an adverse effect on health. Unless something is done, we may be setting our society up with more health problems than we bargained for.