Self-Care for Allied Health Professionals

From Surviving to Thriving

Alison Battye

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000450149
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Self-Care for Allied Health Professionals brings together a collection of self-care strategies into one easy-to-read volume, supporting Allied Health Professionals to do the best for their patients by caring for themselves.

The book offers information and practical strategies to look after your physical and emotional wellbeing at home and in the workplace, exploring topics such as sleep and food, resilience and meditation, stress, conflict and adversity. Written to be a flexible tool that can be read cover to cover or dipped in and out of as needed, it offers rapid response self-care strategies alongside more lasting changes, supporting practitioners to make small steps to build healthy habits for the future.

Key features of this book include:

–– A combination of quick response strategies, like a five-minute breathing exercise you can use before a difficult meeting, and opportunities for deeper work, examining your purpose and aligning your role with your values.

–– Combines ancient practices of meditation and mindfulness with the latest research on nutrition, exercise, sleep and wellbeing.

–– Consideration of the challenges professionals face in the context of pandemics and a changing health and social care landscape, helping you to thrive in a challenging world.

Self-care has never been more important. This is a book that every Allied Health Professional and trainee should have on their desk, to improve productivity, enhance job satisfaction and build resilience for whatever the future brings.

1 The science and the art of self-care

DOI: 10.4324/9781003165125-1

This chapter will provide a revision of the key physiological processes that are involved in health and wellbeing practices. This will include relatively recent scientific findings.

We will first look at the role of DNA and the role of lifestyle in our gene expression.

We will then explore the gut microbiome and its links with every aspect of our health and wellbeing.

We will revise the autonomic nervous system and the stress response.

We will approach the concept of the mind–body connection. We will consider how we can become more aware of what is going on in our bodies and minds in response to self-care practices.

You can become a scientist of your own mind and body, and start to see patterns in how you are responding to self-care practices. The art of self-care is then to tweak the practices so that they work for you and your lifestyle.

If you enjoy reading scientific papers, I have referenced relevant research. Most of these papers are available to read and download for free on PubMed. Type in the name of the first author and the title of the paper. Related articles will also be available. Research into the gut microbiome is a particularly ‘live’ topic, with new discoveries being made all of the time.

Many of the practices in this book can be related back to ancient practices, particularly those associated with Eastern medicine and philosophy.

These practices tend to work on a broad level, across bodily systems. We might be changing our diet to address a pre-diabetic state, but we notice that our blood pressure goes down. We note that we are sleeping better, and we feel like moving more. Our hormonal and skin health improves too.

Scientific research is now able to look at how and why these practices work. We can measure blood pressure or blood sugar changes in response to exercise, diet, breathing or sleep. We can measure the levels of stress hormones before and after meditation.¹ We can measure the length of telomeres at the end of our chromosomes² and see that physical activity results in younger telomeres. We can measure the modulation of brainwaves in response to yoga practices.³ Science is supporting the wisdom of ages.

Adopting self-care strategies will not mean that we are guaranteed perfect health. We reduce our risk of developing health conditions, but we do not eliminate the risk. If we do become ill, self-care practices will support our recovery. If we have to manage a long-term health condition, self-care can ease pain and discomfort and emotional distress. We have a range of options available to us to help us feel better. Most importantly, we have agency in our health and wellbeing.

If you would rather skip to the self-care practices, then go ahead. You can always come back to this chapter later.

DNA and gene expression

There is a common misconception that our health is determined by our DNA, and that we can’t do much to alter our long-term health outcomes.

When DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) was discovered in 1962 by Rosalind Franklin, James Watson and Francis Crick, it was believed that DNA sequencing would unlock the secrets to health and disease. In the decades which have followed, it has become clear that you cannot match disease with one, or even a few genes.

There is very little correlation between our DNA and our risk for cardiovascular disease⁴ and diabetes.⁵ Our genes are thought to account for only three to ten percent of cancers.⁶ Our genes account for less than one percent of our risk of Alzheimer’s.⁷ Environment plays a much larger part than DNA in the development of autoimmune diseases such as arthritis, asthma and eczema.⁸

There is an interplay between our DNA and the environment. Factors in our environment and in our lifestyle influence whether particular sequences of DNA, or genes, are switched on or off. This is a whole new field of medical research called epigenetics.

If you like a metaphor, then DNA is the available lights in the light show. Our environment, including our lifestyle choices, determines which lights are switched on, and when.

DNA contains the instructions to our cells about which proteins to make. Specific proteins have specific functions in the cell, and in our bodies. All our cells contain the same DNA (this is our genetic code) but only some parts of the DNA are read. This is gene expression. The ways in which gene expression can change include:

1. A chemical group may be added to or removed from a specific section of the DNA strand. The chemical group blocks that part of the DNA from the proteins which would otherwise ‘read’ the gene. The gene can be methylated (turned off), or demethylated (turned on).
2. DNA is coiled very tightly around proteins called histones. If the DNA is wound very tightly around the histone, the gene cannot be read, and the gene cannot be expressed. If the DNA is not wrapped tightly, the histone can be read, and the gene is expressed.
3. RNA (ribonucleic acid) acts as a messenger molecule which takes instructions from the DNA into the cell and instructs the cell to make particular proteins. RNA may recruit proteins to modify histones so that genes are switched on or off.

Changes to gene expression can arise because of environmental and lifestyle factors.⁹ Examples of these include:

• – Exposure to environmental toxins, such as air pollution.
• – Exposure to tobacco smoke, alcohol or drugs.
• – Exposure to viruses and bacteria.
• – What we eat, how much we eat and when we eat.
• – How much and what sort of physical activity we get.
• – Exposure to stress and our response to stress.
• – The amount and quality of our sleep.

Genes are being switched on or off every day, every hour, every minute. Gene expression dictates what sorts of cells are made, and which chemicals are being produced in the cells. This includes digestive enzymes, hormones and neurotransmitters. Our genetic expression determines our body composition, the health of our cardiovascular system, our digestive system, our bone density, our hormone balance, our hair and skin health, our immune response, the levels of inflammation in our body, even our cognition and our mood.

We might have a poor night’s sleep one night which results in certain genes being switched on, but then we get a good night’s sleep the next night, which results in those genes being switched off again.

If we are only exposed to a toxin, drug or stress for a small amount of time, we are at less risk than if we are exposed continuously over many years. Similarly, there will be a cumulative effect of positive lifestyle choices over time: more beneficial genes will be switched on more often. This reduces our risk of developing health problems and diseases, and enhances our general health and wellbeing. We are likely to live well for longer.

Gene expression is influenced by all the behaviours we will consider in this book. To summarise, this encompasses:

• – The way we breathe, sleep, move and eat in order to look after our physical wellbeing (Section 1).
• – The balance between being alert and active and being relaxed and rested in order to look after our emotional wellbeing (Section 2).
• – How we balance our personal needs with the relentless demands of work (Section 3).
• – How we find purpose and meaning in life, and how we connect with our community (Section 4).

This is an empowering message. We have much more control over our health than we previously thought. Our bodies have an amazing capacity to repair themselves. We can help this process along by the choices we make every day. The more positive choices we make, the more we improve our body’s ability to bounce back.

The gut microbiome

We are not alone. It turns out that we have a lot of genetic material in our bodies which is not human.

Our gut microbiome, housed in our large intestine, is a diverse ecosystem of 39 trillion microorganisms. They include friendly bacteria, yeasts, parasites, viruses and archaea. We also have a microbiome on our lungs, skin, mouth, nose, ears, between our toes, inside our tummy button …

These microbes evolved with us, in a mutually beneficial relationship. We couldn’t survive without them. We wouldn’t have a functioning immune system without them. Their gene expression contributes to our overall health and wellbeing, because they synthesise and metabolise a vast array of chemicals in our body, including hormones and neurotransmitters.

The gut microbiome is crucial to our health because friendly bacteria are able to digest the food that we cannot, and to metabolise micronutrients so that they are bioavailable to us.

We used to think that dietary fibre just helped with moving food along the gut. Now we know that our gut bacteria are able to metabolise the fibre to make short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). There are many different types of plant fibres, in all parts of the plant: the leaves, stems, roots and seeds. Different populations of friendly bacteria are able to make use of different types of fibre to produce SCFAs.

SCFAs are crucial to our health. They play an important role in:

• – Protecting the lining of our gut so that it does not become damaged and leak harmful substances into our bloodstream.¹⁰
• – Regulating our immune response...