Our guests choose to optimize their health for many reasons – to correct noticeable physical changes, for longevity, to heal; so that they can be actively present for their family. How our guests manage their health as family men and women, consciously or not, can inspire future generations to manage their own health in an optimal way.

When we ask our guests why they want a wellness butler often stress management is the most popular reasons given; yet when we look at how far reaching this phrase is it becomes the key driver to optimal health. In order to have a balanced lifestyle that involves leading and driving a business, functional fitness and clarity of mind is key. It takes an enormous amount of drive and energy to lead a large, growing enterprise and to live your life to it’s fullest.

High stress positions, be they board level, c-suite or frankly any level, require your body and mind to functional to their optimum. If it doesn’t, occasional changes in how your body functions can become a more permanent and serious problem requiring more drastic actions, often with longer recovery periods.

The negative impact of stress on how we perform in our work and everyday life is well documented. One factor that we feel is especially important is the affect on our mental clarity. Our thoughts and communication can quickly diminish as our memory becomes impaired by stress which stimulates high levels of cortisol. Our brain cells, like all cells in the body, go through various states of health – good, poor or illness which can lead to the cell dying. These states can be affected by how we manage stress. If we reduce the stimulus of the adrenal glad we reduce the production of cortisol. If we don’t have mental clarity how are we meant to function optimally?

Managing stress has so many positive affects on our personal and work life. Our body gives us so much doesn’t it deserve to live a hopefully long healthy life? In recent studies on identical twins, tests were used to determine the affect of stress on our biological age. The results were fascinating. Lifestyle factors gave significantly different results for the biological age of each twin. In one case the twin who was slimmer and exercised regularly, who was in theory healthier had a higher biological age than her (apparently less healthy) sister who had a low stress lifestyle. Interesting that physical exercise and diet were not sufficient to counter the negative effects of a high stress lifestyle.

It would appear that the key to living longer, with a healthy mind and body, is a three pronged approach, nutrition, exercise and mindfulness. Each one takes a conscious effort and they all have a powerful impact on how we approach stress and how our body responds. There are multiple markers in our life that are telling us where we are on a stress scale, however there are two factors that we often hear used as an excuse – time and importance. Let me clarify that last point. We often hear our guests say that they feel that giving time to their family and work are more important, yet as we’ve written about before a two legged stool will fall over. That third leg – yourself is vital to nurture in order to give everything you want to give to your family and work.

Recently Andrea, a fantastic wellness butler specialising in nutrition and raw cuisine worked with a guest who had noticed changes in his body that had become more extreme. The symptoms were getting out of hand and he wanted to get to the root cause. He had been trying conventional medicine but had been unsatisfied with the results. Andrea helped him to start to understand his body. Learning to appreciate how the body can self heal and how it communicates distress first of all in a subtle way, and then if we don’t listen, much more aggressively. Factors such as understanding the pH level of your body and how different foods affect these levels and how a cleansing raw diet can be tasty and nutritious.

Andrea says, “My guest is a food and wine lover and was sceptical about how good the recipes would taste. He loved that it could taste that good and be that healthy. In fact he brought along his doctor to some of the educational presentations and his son loved getting involved with the juicer. His son loved to experiment with different blends but also wanted to really understand what went well together and why, not just for taste but for health”.

What Andrea noticed was her guests desire to gather as much information as possible in the shortest time. However as Andrea has seen personally, success with lifestyle change is a journey. In addition, her guest shared that he feels to succeed in affecting this change he needed to be assisted in the process, ensuring that he is making the right decisions that give the optimum results in the quickest time.

Where has this article been leading? To an observation we don’t often think of when trying to motivate ourselves, and that is; how we manage stress and our lifestyle has a direct impact on ourselves and everyone around us, family, friends and, co-workers. This is a great thought to help keep you on track. The inspiration you give to others and future generations to lead optimally healthy lives, is profound.