The Benefits of Self-Management for Your Health and the NHS
By Charlie Boscoe (RD, MNutr), Dietitian at Sleep & Health Clinic Ltd.
Your Health, Your Hands
Now is the best time to remember that we have a powerful role in managing our own health.
As the team’s Dietitian here at Sleep & Health Clinic, I’d like to show you how you can use self-management tools to improve your health.
Prevention is better than a cure, and active self-management is crucial to maintaining good health and reducing risk of health complications. Supported self-management means increasing the confidence, knowledge and skills a person has in managing their own health.1
An independent study by Deeny et al. (2018) found that people who feel most confident and knowledgeable about managing their health make 19% fewer visits to their GP and 38% fewer trips to A&E compared to those who feel least capable.2 This shows that with the right skills and support, we can all make a big difference to our health and the pressure on the healthcare system.
Sleep and Food Choices
A large part of managing your health is getting good quality sleep. Poor sleep doesn’t just make us feel groggy; it can affect our stress hormones. Poor quality sleep can trigger the release of stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, increasing the risk of heart disease, belly fat and breakdown of muscle.3 Poor sleep can also affect our decision-making and daily choices, especially what we eat. Studies have shown that people with poor sleep, such as shift workers, often end up choosing meals that are higher in saturated fats, carbohydrates, and sugars the next day. A study highlighted in ‘Occupational Medicine’ found that shift workers with disrupted sleep patterns were more likely to opt for less healthy food options. 4 This is because lack of sleep affects the hormones that regulate hunger, leading to cravings for high-fat, high-sugar, and low protein foods.5
An unhealthy diet can also impact the quality of your sleep, creating a vicious cycle. According to St Onge et al. (2016), diets high in saturated fats and sugars can lead to shallower, less restorative deep sleep.6 This poor-quality sleep can then affect your food choices the next day, perpetuating a cycle of poor food choices and sleep.
To break this cycle, focus on improving both your sleep hygiene and your diet. Aim for a balanced diet rich in nutrients and practice good sleep habits, like maintaining a regular sleep schedule and creating a restful sleeping environment. By taking control of your sleep and dietary habits, you can enhance your overall health and well-being.
Setting Goals for Self-Management
In order to be effective self-managers we need motivation, goal-setting skills and support. It can be helpful to set small goals for yourself, focusing on which areas you would like to prioritise. Once you have decided on a goal, decide on a timeframe, how often you are going to aim to do that action and over how long, to ensure the goal is measurable and specific. This way you’ll know when you have achieved it.
Examples of time-specific, measurable goals:
- I will go on a 30min walk on 3x days of the week (Monday, Wednesday, Sunday).
- I will increase my water intake to 1.5L per day every day.
- I will swap the biscuits with my tea from shortbread (100kcal per biscuit) to Rich Tea (30kcal per biscuit) or Malted Milk (44kcal per biscuit), and limit to two biscuits with each up.
- I will take the stairs instead of the lifts at work.
- I will spend two evenings a week doing home exercises (e.g. online workout videos)
- I will do seated exercises at home to music for 15mins on 3x days per week, e.g. leg raises, bicep curls, seated jacks, elbow crunches, seated boxing.
- I will cut down my sugar in coffee from 3x tsp to 1x tsp daily.
- I will include vegetables at every main meal, aiming for ½ the plate.
- I will prepare my lunch at home on 4x days of the week instead of buying lunch at work.
- I will walk home instead of getting the bus on 2x days per week.
- I will spend 30mins on the treadmill/exercise bike every Wednesday.
- I will reduce my sitting time at work by standing up and walking around every 30mins.
- I will reduce my coffee intake to 1 cup per day, before midday.
- I will limit my alcohol intake to 14 units per week, spread across 3 days of the week (e.g. up to 6 pints of beer spread across 3 non-consecutive days).
- I will set a daily reminder on my phone to initiate my wind-down routine at night, including reading a book in bed for 30mins before sleep.
Consider using a habit tracker, either creating your own on paper, using an app, or marking on your calendar days that you have been successful in achieving your goal. It’s motivating to see a lasting streak. It can be helpful to share your goal with others, e.g. family, friends or your health professionals to help you stay accountable and motivated. You could write your goal on paper and stick it on the fridge as a reminder.
Planning for Setbacks
Progress isn’t always linear. Sometimes life gets in the way of us reaching our health goals. These can be positive contributing factors, such as social gatherings (birthdays, weddings) where you may have more to eat/drink than planned. Alternatively, sometimes we eat more when we are low in mood, lonely, stressed or anxious. It’s a good idea to prepare for challenging times in advance with a ‘Set-Back Plan’. For example, if you know you tend to have periods of fatigue and cooking at home feels overwhelming, it would be beneficial to optimise windows of alertness and use moments of higher energy to cook and prepare meals you can store in the freezer for future moments of need.
Support from the Sleep & Health Clinic
At Sleep & Health Clinic we’re here to help; do reach out to us for a consultation and we’ll be there to support you every step of the way. The team can support you to find solutions, make plans and break down your health and care goals into manageable steps.
Best of luck with your health goals!
Charlie, Dietitian at Sleep & Health Clinic
References
- NHS England, ‘Supported Self Management’. https://www.england.nhs.uk/personalisedcare/supported-self-management/
- Deeny, S., Thorlby, R., Steventon, A. (2018), Briefing: Reducing emergency admissions: unlocking the potential of people to better manage their long-term conditions. London: Health Foundation
- Stengel A1, Taché Y, (2012). Ghrelin–a pleiotropic hormone secreted from endocrine X/A-like cells of the stomach. Front Neurosci. 6:24. doi:10.3389/fnins.2012.00024.
- Rosa D, Terzoni S, Dellafiore F, Destrebecq A, (2019), Systematic review of shift work and nurses’ health, Occupational Medicine, Volume 69, Issue 4, Pages 237–243, https://doi.org/10.1093/occmed/kqz063
- Nedeltcheva AV, Kilkus JM, Imperial J, et al. (2010), Insufficient sleep undermines dietary efforts to reduce adiposity. Ann Intern Med.;153(7):435-41. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-153-7-201010050-00006.
- St-Onge MP, Roberts A, Shechter A, Choudhury AR (2016), Fiber and Saturated Fat Are Associated with Sleep Arousals and Slow Wave Sleep. J Clin Sleep Med. 2016 Jan;12(1):19-24. doi: 10.5664/jcsm.5384. PMID: 26156950; PMCID: PMC4702189.
