As the Christmas holidays come to an end how are you feeling?  Do you feel energised and rested or do you feel a bit jaded and worn out? 

If you are feeling a bit worn out then you are not alone. It is estimated that approximately 70% of adults feel ‘burnt out’ by the end of the festive holiday period. 

There is no doubt that the extra stress of shopping, cooking, cleaning, entertaining etc.  are part of the problem but what has also been identified as being stressful for your bodies is the change in our usual daily routines.

What scientists have discovered in the last few years is that we all have circadian rhythms and that every single cell in our body contains a biological clock which is programmed to turn on or off thousands of genes at different times of day or night. These genes influence every aspect of our health.

The daily routines that we have like going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time every day,  eating our meals at regular times etc. are what keep us healthy and in balance. We sleep well, our gut function is normal and we have plenty of energy to function well. 

During Christmas we go to bed later and sleep later in the morning. We eat at unusual times, often snacking on leftover food & chocolates. 

When our daily rhythms are disturbed in this way even for a couple of days our circadian clocks cannot function as well as we need and we start to feel the effects of this disturbance in a variety of ways:

We don’t sleep well,  get heartburn and constipation and put weight on to mention just a few.

Fortunately it’s easy to get back in sync again when we resume our normal daily habits and we can start to feel better again pretty quickly.

However is you want to avoid having ill effects, two of the most important habits to concentrate on are your morning waking time and your meal times.

Here are a couple of easy habits you can try to maintain during holiday periods.

Easy Action points:

During holidays

• Get up at the same time you normally would.  (it’s nice to have a lie in but your body actually doesn’t agree)
• Eat your meals at roughly the same time as you usually would
• Get some daily exercise ( a walk is great )

I promise you will feel better!