Gut Health in Corporate Wellness
Gut health has everything to do with corporate wellness and it will take several blogs to be able to articulate all the details corporate people need to know on this topic. However, when you think of the purpose of a healthy gut, you will quickly realize that you can only be a sustainable high performer if you have a healthy gut. People ask…. why can I obtain my goals at certain times but then have difficulty sustaining the same performance for longer periods of time… people ask? The answer is because your body has to have the resilience and immunity to be able to sustain its performance.
Obtainability can happen with luck, but sustainability happens with skill. If your gut is healthy and skilled, your gut will never let you down. Your gut needs to be cared for and maintenance like you would do with your car. Because your body is like a machine as all of your organs work together like all of the mechanical functions of a car, you can’t neglect being responsible in supervising your gut health or you will fall short of meeting your potential. For example, people commonly experience stress and then say to themselves, “why am I so stressed all the time?” People will validate their own emotions and common sense by reminding themselves, “I work hard, I am successful, people love me….so why am I always stressed. Well, deep inside your body you have functions that most people are unaware of their importance. Functions like digestion, having a balanced gut microbiome, taking in proper nutrition every day, being hydrated, and etc.
When your gut is not able to have these experiences, stress will be expressed by your gut suffering decreased blood flow and oxygen as a result of the stress. Consequently, your microbiome can become altered causing the rest of your body suffering what is called oxidative stress. This is where your gut starts to gather higher levels of acid than what your gut is supposed to experience in its attempt to break food down as the digestive track is now disrupted and not able to successfully break food down. In addition, the oxidative stress causes the body to now fire off signals to the adrenal glands telling the hormonal system to push glucose to the blood stream in order to give the body strength to manage through these stressful times and functions.
Now people struggle to sleep on healthy schedule, their digestion continues to become more interrupted, they start to experience bloating and gas, and ultimately will over react to typical stress of deadlines, constructive criticism, and increased demands. Sadly, when all of these systems of health are becoming overwhelmed, people suffer foggy brain, tiredness, and a lack of concentration. All of these insults ultimately lead to reduced work production. On the other hand, when these functions are attended to, are healthy and properly maintenance, workers are able to exceed average work performance, sustain a higher performance for longer periods of time, and work more efficiency with greater accuracy for longer periods of time.
Download my FREE worksheet for Coping and Accountability for Individual and Team Management