Balancing work and life, limiting the use of electronic equipment, avoiding negative relationships can help live healthy, prolong life, according to Dr. Judith Joseph.
Dr. Joseph, a psychiatrist who graduated from Columbia University, USA, is seeking to help many people improve their knowledge about mental health. Instead of just focusing on treatment when the problem becomes serious, she emphasizes the importance of early identification of warning signs – things that seem small but can affect life expectancy.
Her advice is to perform “10 -second health checks” to identify factors that affect life expectancy, far exceeding basic indicators such as heart rate or breathing.
One of the factors that Dr. Joseph emphasized is Quality of relationships. She thinks that the personal relationship and the working environment have a deep influence on the mental health of each person, no less important compared to the diet and sleep.
“We often do not realize how negative people can exhaust their life energy. A factor predicting life expectancy is the quality of relationships. No matter how healthy you eat, if you live in a toxic environment or with negative people, it will cause tension for your body and really reduce your life expectancy,” Dr. Joseph said.
In addition, she also noted Balance between work and life Very important for mental health. “Doctors often do not ask if you like your job, but just ask if you do your job well,” she shared. In a society that focuses on achievements and efficiency of work, the feeling of satisfaction at work is often overlooked, even though it has a significant impact on mental health.
Finding joy in life is one of the factors that make many young people long. Image: Pexel
Dr. Joseph also mentioned the essential of Joy in lifewhat many people often ignore. She advised everyone to ask themselves: “What do you do to entertain, to enjoy life?” Joy is not only a reward, but also an essential factor to maintain mental health, help us maintain the balance between stress and pressure in life.
Finally, Dr. Joseph warned about The negative impact of the use of electronic equipment is too much. Spending too much time before the screen can adversely affect mental health, increase anxiety, depression, and loneliness, especially in young people. Although doctors do not often ask about the time of using the screen, the study has shown that the long time on electronic devices can make us feel separate and less satisfied with life.
In particular, after the pandemic, Dr. Joseph also mentioned the phenomenon of “Zoom fatigue syndrome”, which she thought could lead to mental exhaustion. “There is a lot of data from Stanford that shows that seeing herself constantly in video calls that cause stress and anxiety,” she said.
Research from Stanford shows that communication through the screen, especially when we have to maintain eye communication for a long time and see a close -up face, can create a sense of tension, making us feel the lack of intimacy and cohesion in relationships.
Jeremy N. Bailenson, a researcher from Stanford, pointed out that this phenomenon, which he called the “mirror all day”, could lead to inferiority and mental fatigue. The limit in a fixed position in the frame also makes the body stress, and the decoding of non -language signals in video calls requires greater mental efforts, thereby causing fatigue for participants.