Understanding You: The Importance Of Bio-individual Wellness
The uniqueness of each individual human being is an idea that is reiterated to us throughout our lives. Our uniqueness spans far beyond our personalities and perspectives, and influences our most basic biological human make up. Everyone’s body is unique, depending on age, gender, location, ancestry, genes, etc. Because of this, what we take into our body, what nourishes it and what depletes it, is highly dependent on the individual as well. You may have heard the saying, “One man’s food is another man’s poison.” Listen to your body. It knows what foods and activity you need. It knows what is best for YOU. Here are some ways your body is unique, and how to listen to, and provide for its needs.
How You Are Unique:
There are many factors (that we know of) that differentiate your biological ability to process food, including your blood type, gender, age, ancestry, habits, and gut microbes. According to The Guardian, Personalised Nutrition Project has recently conducted a study on how the different microbes in your intestine affect the way you are able to process food, and what food your body responds well or adversely, to. “We are all different,” Eran Segal, a computational biologist said. “We see tremendous variability in people’s responses to foods, so if you want to prescribe diets, they have to be personally tailored.”
What is “good” food for one person may have very negative effects on another, making it difficult to determine to place foods into the traditional categories that we determine: what is “healthy food” and what is “junk food.” While there are some foods that are universally bad for humans (such as anything that is packaged), the uniqueness of each person determines what is truly healthy for their body and what is not.
Tailoring Wellness:
Knowledge is power, and that’s no different when it comes to wellness. Understanding that each individual’s biological makeup is different and therefore needs different things, is important. Wellness and nutrition in the workplace is becoming an increasingly important employee benefit and needs to be approached on individual terms rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. There are many different ways to implement wellness and nutrition in your workplace that targets your employees as valuable individuals rather than a mass collective.
Offer Food Variety:
Providing snacks and/or meals to employees is becoming increasingly more popular, as “cool” and “modern” places are now listing drinks and snacks as part of their employee benefits package. Offering a variety of healthy snacks is a great place to start. Since everyone’s body functions differently in response to different foods, offering a variety of foods at the office allows employees to respond responsibly to their individual biological needs, providing snacks that are geared towards bio-individuality.
Providing nutritious food to your employees is one of the best ways to support their wellness at work. Providing variety allows them to tailor that nutritional intake to their individual biological need.
Offer Wellness Program Variety
Physical wellness is just as important as nutrition in a person’s overall physical, mental and emotional well-being. Since we are all different, there isn’t one wellness program that works for every individual. Be it their values, schedule, or physical make up, there are many different wellness programs and many ways to implement wellness into everyday life. At Beni.fit, we believe in simple, time-effective ways to educate employees on their health and allow them to implement wellness practices into their everyday life. Several wellness programs we offer include:
60 Seconds to Health
The 60 Seconds to Health series provides motivating tips to use and apply immediately. Tips focus on actionable ways to improve overall well-being and be a savvy healthcare consumer.
Rest, Fuel and Go
Our Rest, Fuel and Go program allows you to get back to basics. This program offers key facts and techniques to restart your sleep, nutrition and exercise and enable them to become a part of your day.
21 Days Of Meditation
Allowing employees to have quiet reflection time has massive positive impacts on someone’s being. Some ofthe benefits of meditation are:
- lowers stress
- promotes body and self awareness
- allows the mind to work through a backload of data, clearing space for new thoughts and problem solving.
Something as simple as a short, daily guided meditation allows employees to quiet and focus the mind. A great place to start is a 21 Days to Mediation plan. We make it easy to start and maintain a meditation practice with a short, daily guided meditation to relax and focus the mind.
No human can function without the fulfillment of biological needs of sleep, movement, and quiet reflection time. These exact needs look different for every individual as our bodies are completely unique to us. Provide an approach that is as unique as your employees’ needs. When humans thrive, companies prosper. Learn more at Beni.fit.