Evangeline E.

Today’s smartwatches and health trackers that measure steps, heartbeat, skin temperature and oxygen levels in the body are a USD 80 billion industry.

• These new technologies claim to help us monitor and improve our physical, mental and emotional health, making us aware of our sleep quality, physical activity and even stress.
• Digital logging of our body’s emotional health is similar to a mood journal, that helps us identify triggers and patterns.

We've heard this myth countless times from many different films or even in some of the fiction books we've read, but the reality is it continues to be a work of fiction. If this myth were true, we wouldn't be worried about brain damage that has profound consequences for our cognition and function.

The truth of the matter is that brain imaging techniques have demonstrated that the entire brain is being used even while we are asleep.

You may have heard that your passions lie deep in ancient parts of your brain that you apparently inherited from prehistoric reptiles. Or that your "rational brain" which sits on top of your "lizard brain" tries to moderate your desires.

The only animal with a lizard brain is a lizard. Neuroscience clearly shows that brains don't evolve in layers but follow a single manufacturing plan.

The worst-case scenario thinking is troublesome because it causes the very problem we're trying to prevent - an unpleasant or difficult situation.

How often does a negative thought turn into catastrophic thinking? A spot on your face becomes a cancerous tumour. Your child not attending a specific school spirals into him not getting a good job. From just entertaining an idea, it quickly turns into a worst-case scenario.

The system for counting calories comes from chemist Wilbur Atwater. To find out how much energy we get from eating, he measured the nutritional value in food and subtracted the amount of energy left in people's bodily excretion.

His research resulted in the 4-9-4 rule: Each gram of protein, fat, and carbohydrate provides 4, 9, 4 calories of energy, respectively.

Getting up every 10 minutes or so just to go to the bathroom or make yourself a cup of tea is turning on your muscles. It uses up fats and sugars in your bloodstream, and it produces molecules that turn down inflammation.

Interrupted sitting and not sitting in a chair that's nestling your body keeps your muscles going and is much healthier for you.

People with height phobias think something bad will happen when they are up high. But you are safer than you think and your feared outcome about heights won't really happen.
Ask yourself:

• What do you believe will happen when you expose yourself to your fear?
• How likely do you think it is that this would happen?
• What would be the outcome of it happening? (you might believe a tall building will collapse.)

Once you've answered the questions, start small with the thing you fear and see that the worst doesn't actually happen, or that it is not as bad as you feared.

The sudden 'beep beep' morning alarm can lead to grogginess and disorientation of the brain, which can impact our work. This impact can be quite serious for workers with jobs that require constant alertness.
Morning alarms which are melodic and gently gain the attention of the brain work best to wake us up softly, without any jarring effect on the brain.

Burnout is the end result of chronic stress, and is increasingly common in this fast-paced, chaotic and complex world. Political instability, relationship issues, family problems, and even social media are making things worse.

A job search portal reports 69 percent of employees are experiencing burnout while working from home.

Sleepwalking is known as somnambulism. It's classified as an abnormal behavior during sleep that's disruptive.

The handbook for mental health professionals, the DSM-IV, defines sleepwalking by the following criteria:

• You leave your bed while sleeping.
• Others find it difficult to wake you during an episode of sleepwalking.
• You can't remember what happened while you were sleepwalking.
• When you do wake up from an episode, you're confused.
• You don't suffer from dementia or another physical disorder.
• It impairs your work or social life.