THE FIVE VITAL HEALTH CHECKS FOR REMOTE WORKERS

Working from home doesn’t mean your health should suffer – here are the tests you should do regularly to keep on top of your wellbeing.

Working from home has many benefits, but you do need to take more control of your health and wellbeing. The main reasons why: you aren’t interacting with colleagues or peers daily, so there’s less support. While you’re working from home, you’re solely responsible for your health. The good news? There are plenty of smart tests and digital resources to help keep your health in check or to help monitor the health of your teams and employees.

1. HEARTRATE (HR)

While most people see HR monitoring as part of fitness and training regimes, there is plenty of opportunity for a baseline health check too. You can either get a constant measure by using a health tracker like a watch that’s paired with a chest strap or has a built HR-reader, or you can simply count your heartrate manually every morning when you wake-up. The goal: to establish your average resting heart rate. You should use it as a baseline, and if your heart rate jumps to 10 or more beats above that, it’s a sign to take things easy. There could be several reasons, but most likely, you’re either getting sick or are overstressed. It can also provide an excellent way to spot health problems right at the start. Either way – it’s a good sign to put your health first, and slow down.

220 minus your age is the general formula for working out your maximum heart rate.
Source: The Conversation

2. MENTAL HEALTH

It’s one of the most crucial areas of your health to test, and unfortunately, it’s the one that’s most ignored and least understood. During Covid-19, this is also the area where most people have been affected negatively. There are different ways to create a regular mental health check. The most effective would be to find a therapist, psychologist or psychiatrist, and then to set up a monthly or bi-monthly check-in, and to ensure that your mental health is covered. This can also be done remotely, as there are videoconferencing and telemedicine While this can be costly, it is the best way to ensure you are handling all of life’s stresses, and aren’t starting a downward spiral or negative habits. There are also digital tests you can take to check, ones that use questionnaires and other tests to ensure that your mental health is sound. Lastly, there are unique apps and digital services that companies can use to cover and monitor the mental health of all their employees, ones such as Ilumen. This is one of the fastest-growing areas of concern, and it is for a good reason. The rise in remote working has meant more employees have faced mental health issues, and their separation from colleagues has made the conditions even harder to discover.

46% of people who experienced symptoms of depression during the Covid-19 pandemic according to a nationwide survey.
Source: South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG)

3. BLOOD PRESSURE

Your blood pressure can also tell you whether you are handling your workload and stress effectively, and as with HR monitoring, it can also be an early warning sign for more sinister cardiac health issues. In most cases, healthy people won’t have to do this regularly, however, if you do suffer from high or low blood pressure or have had hypertension or any related cardiac issues, this isn’t just a nice-to-have – it could be a lifesaver. You can either decide to have this taken monthly at a clinic or with your doctor, or you can choose to invest in a home system like the Beurer M55, which is an excellent investment in your health in the long-term. If you need deciphering your results, check out this handy guide.

180 over 120 is the ideal blood pressure. If your systolic blood pressure is 180mm Hg or higher, or if your diastolic blood pressure is 102mm Hg, you could be experiencing a hypertensive crisis. Phone your doctor or contact an ambulance.
Source: American Heart Association

4. STEP COUNTING

This may seem like a strange one to include here, but now that many of us are working from home and have faced quarantine status for a significant part of last year, our exercise levels have dropped, and we’ve become more sedentary. To get us up and off our home office chairs and couches, we need to give ourselves daily step goals. While many people aim for 10 000 and more steps a day, you don’t need to aim for that goal immediately: find a realistic goal that slowly increases over time. And while walking can’t replace a proper training routine, it can go a long way in improving your health and staving off weight gain. You don’t need a fancy fitness tracker for this – a simple pedometer or an app on your phone can do this counting for you.

4400 steps is the number of steps to be taken daily to reduce the risk of premature mortality by 41% according to a recent study by Harvard University.
Source: WebMD

5. BODY TEMPERATURE

This is another marker that doesn’t need to be taken every day or even every week, but it is a smart measure to take when you aren’t feeling your best. Your body works like a furnace, burning energy to make your metabolism work and to fuel all your activities. If it’s running much hotter or cooler than usual, then something is off in terms of your health. It’s the first thing a doctor will take in their rooms, but it is also something you can do at home. Keep in mind the following guidelines: body temp varies throughout the day and tends to be higher later. Women tend to have higher temps, and younger people tend to have higher temps compared to older people.

36.4 is the average body temperature in degrees (Celsius).
Source: Harvard Health

In conclusion, there’s plenty you can do to monitor your health from home or to keep closer tabs on your employees’ wellbeing. Here’s to spending less time in cars and commutes, and to keeping ourselves healthier at home.