Author: Peter Eadon-Clarke

Advisor, Conceptasia Inc.
Peter Eadon-Clarke is a specialist in J-Wellness, product and technique trends, wellness tourism and the Stress Check Program. Peter has extensive experience managing complex multicultural teams; roles held during 14 years at Macquarie Capital Securities (Japan) limited included branch manager, global head of economics and Tokyo head of research. Previously, positions included UBS Trust and Banking in Tokyo as chief investment officer, CIO at Sumitomo Life Investment and CIO for the Pacific Basin at GT (now Invesco).

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Wellness

Wellness Trends: from 2020 to 2021

Praying for a good year

It is time to bid farewell to the trends of 2020 and welcome the 2021 trends.

Introducing the Global Wellness Trends Report: The Future of Wellness 2021, Susie Ellis, Chair and CEO and Nancy Davis, Chief Creative Officer & Executive Director stated:

The 2021 GWS Trends Report captures the nature of the paradigm shift caused by COVID-19 and the myriad ways in which wellness has taken hold…. Wellness has gone from being a nice to have to a must-have for all.

Trend
1 Hollywood and the Entertainment Industries Jump into Wellness
Move over purists; big media means wellness for all
2 The Future of Immune Health: Stop Boosting, Start Balancing
Say goodbye to pop-it, guzzle-it supplements and hello to evidence-backed immune health
3 Spiritual and Numinous Moments in Architecture
The move from ostentatious fads to architecture that touches our souls
4 Just Breathe!
Breath goes from woo-woo wellness to a powerful health tool
5 The Self-Care Renaissance
Where wellness and healthcare converge
6 Adding Color to Wellness
Moving from optics to substance
7 Resetting Events with Wellness
You may never sit on a banquet chair again
8 Money Out Loud
Financial wellness is finding its voice
9 2021: The Year of the Travel Reset
From manic getaways to slower, more mindful travel
Source: 2021 Wellness Trends, from Global Wellness Summit, Conceptasia, January 2021

Beth McGroarty, VP Research & Forecasting notes:

Wellness today is at a watershed moment. The trends report reflects how wellness is poised to take a bigger seat at the health care table (see “The Self-Care Revolution” trend).

It predicts a future industry that will be more inclusive, accessible, and affordable (see the “Adding Color to Wellness,” “The Entertainment Industry Jumps into Wellness,” and “Just Breathe!” trends). How it will basically “get real” and more evidence-based (see “The Future of Immune Health: Stop Boosting, Start Balancing”)—and tackle tougher, more crucial human pain-points (see” “Money Out Loud: Financial Wellness Is Finding Its Voice”).

And the report also predicts how wellness will continue to rewrite vast industries, from travel, to architecture and design, to the meetings industry.

For those looking for a simple metric to monitor progress, this author would recommend the life expectancy for the country, society.

For more on this last point, please see our 8-page PDF article:

https://wellnessasianopportunities.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Wellness-Trends.pdf

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Wellness

Stress & Mental Wellness

The full 12-page PDF article is here:

https://wellnessasianopportunities.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Stress-and-Mental-Wellness-January-2021-PEC.pdf

The Covid-19 Pandemic has forced people to realize the importance of a strong immune system and mental resilience. This article looks at the latter and the role that mental wellness has in offsetting stress, and thus mitigating the problems associated with prolonged stress.

Prolonged stress is a trigger for persistent inflammation in the body, which can cause problems such as heart disease and diabetes. Under prolonged stress, these inflammatory proteins can seep into the brain, weakening the hippocampus. The latter is also weakened by hormones in the brain (e.g., cortisol and CRF) which evidence suggests also increase with stress. One consequence is that the amygdala can become dominant, “permanently switched on”, hyperactive. The result is impaired emotional and behavioural control (weak self-regulation skills), reduced attentiveness, all impacting learning, and memory capabilities.

Stress destabilizes the natural balance between rational thinking and emotions.

Battling prolonged stress

The following are probably the basics:

  1. Exercise has an anti-inflammatory benefit, helping to combat inflammation in the body. There is also evidence that exercise helps produce new brain cells, including in the hippocampus.
  2. Social interaction. Oxytocin, the “love hormone”, produced from trusting relationships can offset the effects of cortisol, the “stress hormone”.
  3. Ongoing learning appears to establish a cognitive reserve, which acts as a buffer to negative life events.
  4. Meditation: A 2014 study concluded that the evidence was moderately strong (on a scale of high, moderate, low, insufficient) that there is small but consistent benefit for mindfulness meditation programs to improve anxiety, depression, and pain.

A key question relates to the relative effectiveness of each of the above approaches. A recent study concluded with respect to reducing stress that: In these RCTs, mindfulness is neither better nor worse than other feel-good practices such as physical exercise. Meditation tends to be relatively simple to practise, cost effective to implement and low risk.

Given the variety of causes and signs of stress, and its subjective measurement, it is not surprising that a breadth of techniques and products have developed to aid mental resiliency. The Defining the Mental Wellness Economy report of November 2020 from the Global Wellness Institute was the first research to measure mental wellness as a global industry, estimated at US$121bn. Given the scale of the issues involved, it is surprising that the Mental Wellness Economy is currently estimated at just 3% of the Global Wellness Economy. This could be interpretated as a major market opportunity.

Here at Conceptasia, we have knowledge and networks in the developing meditation market.  

Categories
Wellness

J-Wellness 2020

Published August 2020; Available on Amazon

Wellness is about helping people to live well.

2020 was anticipated to be a joyous celebration of athletic prowess at the Tokyo Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games, and a discovery by the world of Japan’s Wellness-related activities (J-Wellness) that underpin the world’s longest national life expectancy.

Instead, in the face of the ongoing global pandemic and devastated economies, people are in survival mode, looking to Wellness to boost their immune systems as their first line of defence against the “Shingata Coronavirus”, the new-form coronavirus as the Japanese call it.

J-Wellness is both ancient traditions and pro-active modern practices. Zen meditation for Mental Wellness, the tea ceremony for the antioxidants-rich green tea (antioxidants protect the body against cellular damage and disease), and onsen (hot springs for quiet contemplation of nature with hydrotherapy benefits and seasonal, local cuisine fine dinners), are not part of the daily routine of the average Japanese. However, community awareness, drinking green tea and bathing are everyday practices. Traditional nutritionally balanced Japanese cuisine lives on in daily bento boxes for lunch eaten at schools and at office desks. The past intermingles with the present.

Government programs have been striving to reduce lifestyle diseases associated with sedentary and stressful living for decades. This has involved specific health and wellness targets. For example, to reduce obesity, the Metabo Law, 2008, set maximum waist measurements at 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women, with education support given to those who exceeded these levels. In addition, local governments and companies are potentially liable to fines. Currently, 26% of Japan’s population aged 15 or older are overweight, defined as having a BMI of 25 or more; it is 71% in the United States, 64% in the U.K.

Since we believe that Japan’s relatively low “Shingata Coronavirus” related death rate relative to other nations importantly reflects the good life-style behaviours of J-Wellness, our message has become more urgent. The global environment is now far grimmer, but the value of J-Wellness to the world has become even more important.

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Wellness

J-Wellness & Covid-19: Why Japan has had relatively low deaths

Covid-19 related deaths per 100,000 people: the data

There have been very marked differences between countries in Covid-19 related deaths (measured per 100,000 people to normalise for countries’ different population sizes). The Deaths per 100,000 people for the G20 countries (China is not included due to perceived data issues; Spain is a G20 permanent guest, not a member, but is included) is 24.0.

Japan’s Deaths per 100,000 people is 1.3. The Deaths per 100,000 people for the USA is 63.3, a rate 49 times higher than Japan’s.

We believe that Japan’s relatively low Covid-19 related death rate importantly reflects the good life-style behaviours of J-Wellness. To see if the data agrees, please read the full 11-page PDF article: https://wellnessasianopportunities.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/J-Wellness-Covid-19-Why-Japan-has-had-relatively-low-deaths-October-2020.pdf

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Wellness

J-Wellness & Workations

Imagine waking to the sounds of nature, opening the curtains to a view of trees, bathing in a hot spring bath, eating a nutritionally balanced prepared breakfast, and after a one hour walk through the woods, doing a few hours of work. Imagine the many wellness benefits.

What is a Workation? What are its benefits? Will Workations become popular in Japan?

The merging of work and vacation to form the Workation (sometimes spelt Workcation) concept, probably sounds very unattractive to people outside Japan. The image is probably of the further (beyond the rarely off smartphone) intrusion of work pressures into vacation time. Writing a project proposal, working on a research report, attending Zoom conferences, through high-speed data links does not sound like a relaxing, stimulating holiday experience.

The Japanese have a different perspective, that begins with their relative lack of vacation time taken. In terms of paid vacation days used, Japan is the lowest with the USA at 10 days, just one third Germany’s 30 days, less than half of the rest of Europe and substantially beneath the 14 paid vacation days used in Canada and the 15 days used in South Korea.

Government policy support for workations has broadened to cover the following:

  1. The promotion of the taking of more vacations, to improve people’s quality of life
  2. Fostering a more flexible work style, incorporating the office, home and hotel/resorts (via workations). The government has been promoting teleworking (remote working) for some years. Workations further supports the push for deregulation in standard workplace practices
  3. Promoting tourism: during a government tourism strategy meeting in July 2020 (then Chief Cabinet Secretary, now Prime Minister) Suga made headlines by mentioning workations as a policy that would support a revival of activity. The Ministry of the Environment, which has responsibility for the onsen industry, has begun to promote workations as we way to boost visitors to onsens. The government has announced financial support for hotels in onsen towns to install high-speed Wi-Fi connections. The idea is for companies to essentially adopt towns and to use them as satellite offices throughout the year. The hope is that regional areas outside Japan’s main urban areas will benefit particularly.

Deregulation drives innovative business models

Deregulation and the ensuing market opportunities leads us to expect “Workation” as a concept to evolve rapidly into an implemented reality. The private sector is responding rapidly to the policy support from the government. We at Conceptasia are advising hospitality industry clients on workation programs, to leverage their high-speed data capabilities and diverse facilities. Please contact Conceptasia for more.

For data and more details, please see the full 6-page article:

https://wellnessasianopportunities.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/J-Wellness-Workations-October-2020.pdf