The pandemic brings many positive domino effects. Habit formation will become an important part of the economic story of COVID-19. Four to five months is long enough to get into a new routine, and it is likely that WFH (working from home), outdoor exercise, more home cooking, and many other COVID-related types of behavior will persist beyond the direct pandemic period: habits once adopted tend…
A large new observational study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that meditating was associated with a 35% lower risk of high cholesterol, a 14% lower risk of high blood pressure, a 30% lower risk of diabetes, a 24% lower risk of stroke, and a 49% lower risk of coronary artery disease. ACCESS STUDY
COVID-19 has inexorably changed the way we view density and urbanization. CatchOn, a Finn Partners company and a leading communications and market research practice, asked 20 architects, designers, urban planners and environmentalists what we now need to focus on if we want to build more viable and healthy cities, neighborhoods and communities in the future. Their 20 reflections present dozens of ideas on the post-pandemic…
The GWI’s latest “Wellness in the Age of COVID-19” Q&A is with death experts and “dying well” activists Dr. Candi Cann, associate professor of religion, Baylor University, and Liz Eddy, CEO of Lantern, a public benefit corporation that provides a single source of guidance for navigating a death. They discuss: How COVID-19 has exposed what is broken in our culture around grief and dying: from…
Employment is one of the most important determinants of wellbeing, and conversely, unemployment has a strong deleterious effect on our wellbeing (studies examining mental health during lockdown conclude that those forced to leave paid work suffered much more than those who remained fully or partially employed or were furloughed). The repercussions of unemployment go well beyond the loss of income. It affects not only the…
A major new study from the NIH (10,123 US teens) is the first to show that exposure to outdoor, artificial light at night negatively impacts teens’ mental health and sleep. Teens exposed to higher levels of nighttime light are more likely to have a mood disorder (including anxiety and bipolar disorder and phobias). This adds to the evidence that disruptions to circadian rhythms contribute to…
