It’s the United Nations World Happiness Day!
Here are five ways to celebrate –
1/ Enjoy the launch of the 10th World Happiness Report – WORLD HAPPINESS REPORT. The findings from last year make fascinating reading. GDP, social support, freedom to make life choices and healthy life expectancy are the top three. Generosity and perceived corruption make a significant difference, especially in lower-ranking countries (the UK is a dismal 17th out of 20!)
2/ Get outside – bright light can be as good as an antidepressant – and you might just find an opportunity to be generous to someone and help to lift their happiness score today.
3/ Read this uplifting article about how one teacher has used lighting to improve happiness in her classroom – How Changing My Classroom Lighting Made a Big Impact on Kids’ Learning
4/ Listen to this brief presentation by Jo Cheshire at WCS, one of our panel last week, talking about how lighting has improved the mood in her Residential Care Home – Innovators in Residential Healthcare: Circadian Lighting Principles & Practice | Jo Cheshire
5/ Invest in black- out blinds or curtains, switch off the lights and charge your phone in another room – sleeping with the equivalent of just 5 lux – less than a bedside lamp – can increase your risk of feeling glum tomorrow – Bedroom Light Exposure at Night and the Incidence of Depressive Symptoms: A Longitudinal Study of the HEIJO-KYO Cohort
Monday was also my birthday so I was busy celebrating World Happiness day eating Cake – outside of course!
And then getting a good nights’ sleep – possibly the most important thing you can do to stay healthy and happy into your later years.
Professor Russell Foster MBE, speaking at our recent panel debate, quoting from this paper – Association of sleep duration at age 50, 60, and 70 years with risk of multimorbidity in the UK: 25-year follow-up of the Whitehall II cohort study.
‘Data from almost 8,000 Britains followed for 25 years showing that people who had five hours or less of sleep from the age of 50 were 30% more likely to be diagnosed with numerous chronic diseases over the lifespan of 25 years than those who slept seven hours. That rises to a nightmare figure of 40% elevated risk when compared to those who had more sleep’. Russell draws a clear link between light and sleep.
Jo Cheshire of WCS Care shines a light on the immense commercial opportunity of better-quality lighting -and more importantly the benefits for older adults living in Residential Care. Listen to Jo speaking here
The full debate is here.
This Saturday is National Wine Day! But don’t be fooled by the colour 😉 this paper explains how even professional wine tasters altered their appreciation of a wine based on the perceived colour (when the wine looks like a rosé it gets a bad rap). But this piece focused on the quality of Beaujolais wines and found that there was indeed a link between pigmentation or colour and quality so there is something in the colour if yoy know what you’re looking for- Correlations between quality and pigment parameters in young Beaujolais red wines
If you really want to test your wine-buff credentials and find yourself in London, why not try the total darkness dining experience! DANS LE NOIR ?, RANKS AMONG THE 10 MOST ORIGINAL RESTAURANTS IN THE WORLD