Tag: mental wellness

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Wellness

Covid-19, Japan’s Elderly, Exercise, and Mental Health

A study (1) examined the prevalence of exercise as a coping strategy among Japanese community-dwelling older adults and its impact on their psychological well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. Spanning Japan’s first Covid-19 lockdown period, the study covered 618 community-dwelling older adults.

The study concluded: Older adults who walked to maintain their physical and mental health experienced better well-being than those who did not.

This is in line with established scientific research on the relationship between exercise and mental health.

A review (2) of over 1000 academic research studies over 1990-2020 looking at the relationship between exercise and mental health commented:

Physical health is clearly intertwined with mental health in a bidirectional fashion. Scientific evidence shows that changes in thinking patterns and behaviors affect neurological, endocrine, and immune systems. Conversely, disruption in these biological systems negatively impacts mental health.

As well as biological pathways – such as increasing brain neurotransmitters and improving hormone function involved in mental health, exercise appears to improve mental health through social and self-efficacy pathways,

Selected key conclusions are shown below.

Exercise and Mental Health: Move Your Mental Health study (2) selected conclusions
Does exercise and physical activity benefit mental health?
89% of all published peer-reviewed research between 1990 and 2020 found a positive, statistically significant relationship between exercise/physical activity and mental health.
How much exercise and how often?
Overall, three to five 30-45-minute moderate to vigorous exercise sessions per week appear to deliver optimal mental health benefits (3)
What type of exercise?
High-intensity exercise regimens are generally more effective than low-intensity regimens (4)
Mindfulness-based activities like yoga and tai chi, though they can be lower intensity forms of movement, deliver more mental health benefits than walking
What mental health outcomes are most impacted by exercise?
Exercise is strongly associated with general mental and emotional well-being including reduced stress, and improved mood and quality of life
Evidence strongly supports cardiovascular/aerobic exercise for reducing depression, showing medium to large effect sizes
Evidence shows moderate but reliable effect sizes for cardiovascular/aerobic exercise reducing symptoms in people with anxiety disorders
Yoga and other mindful exercises such as Tai Chi and Qigong show strong evidence for reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression
Source: Move Your Mental Health, (2) Conceptasia, January 2022

References:

  1. Exercise as a coping strategy and its impact on the psychological well-being of Japanese community-dwelling older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic: A longitudinal study, by Manami Ejiri, Hisashi Kawai, Takeshi Kera, Kazshige Ihara, Yoshinori Fujiwara, Yutaka Watanabe, Hirohiko Hirano, Hunkyung Kim, and Shuichi Obuchi, September 2021
  2. Move Your Mental Health, A review of the scientific evidence on the role of exercise and physical activity on mental health, by John W. Brick, mental foundation, May 2021
  3. Association between physical exercise and mental health in 1·2 million individuals in the USA between 2011 and 2015: a cross-sectional study, by Chekroud, S. R., Gueorguieva, R., Zheutlin, A. B., Paulus, M., Krumholz, H. M., Krystal, J. H., & Chekroud, A. M., 2018
  4. Exercise in the treatment of clinical anxiety in general practice – a systematic review and meta-analysis, by Aylett, E., Small, N. & Bower, P., 2018
Categories
Wellness

Kakeibo & Financial Wellness

Kakeibo, a household accounting book, and the practice of recording and monitoring income and expenditures in a physical notebook, traces its origins in Japan to 1904, and to Hani Motoko, its inventor. The kakeibo method forces one to think about one’s needs, spending and motivations, leading to an increased ability to save. (1, 2, 3)

Financial Wellness

The fundamental difference with existing personal financial planning is that “Financial Wellness” does not begin with money, but with an understanding of Wellness and the associated attainment of longevity and the 100-year life.

Without having wellness at one’s core, money worries can flood in. Surveys usually find money to be the number one cause of stress. With wellness the core focus, money becomes a facilitator, in fact just one of many facilitators. Fortunately, a wellness regime only requires a modest amount of money

Financial Wellness & Savings

In an environment of the 100-year life, we postulate that after education, people will be working from age 25 to 80 followed by 20 years of leisure.

Whilst working, we recommend saving 20% of one’s after-tax income.

In contrast to the conventional study-work-retire cycle, the new typical life will include one or two career reinventions involving changing industries (as well as working for multiple different companies during each career phase). Career reinventions will involve perhaps 1-3 years of retraining, repositioning.

To facilitate the above financial resources are needed not just for the 20 years after the age of 80, but also during the career reinvention periods.

For more, please see the 17-page Financial Wellness paper here.

References.

  1. CNBC: I tried ‘Kakeibo’: The Japanese art of saving money—and it completely changed how I spend my money, by Sarah Harvey, published January 2020
  2. Credit.com, Kakeibo: The Mindful Japanese Budgeting System, published August 2021
  3. Japan Times: Kakeibo: Turning a dull aspect of Japanese life into social media gold, published January 2020

Categories
Wellness

Sustained Meditation Reduces Cortisol (the stress hormone)

Investigating the effect of meditation on stress through both the measurement of hair-based glucocorticoid assays, and from questionnaire data, the October 2021 RCT study (1) concluded that:

Our results show that daily mental training for 3 to 6 months can buffer the long-term systemic stress load of healthy adults. This was reflected in a reduction of cortisol (HC) and cortisone (HE) accumulation in hair, while levels of self-reported chronic stress were less consistently decreased.

How scientists measure stress is discussed here.

The study also found that the reduction of cortisol (HC) and cortisone (HE) accumulation in hair were independent of specific training content, (table below), positively associated with practice frequency for HC, and reached a ceiling after 6 months of training.

Equally, it took 6 months until significant differences to the baseline were achieved in all training cohorts, suggesting that reliable long-term benefits emerge only after a relatively long period of intense training.

The study used a range of meditation techniques
1) Attention/Interoceptive Awareness
The Core Exercises:
Breathing Meditation
Body Scan
2) Care, Compassion, Gratitude/Prosocial Motivation/Dealing with Difficult emotions
The Core Exercises
Loving-kindness Meditation
Affect Dyad
3) Meta-cognition/Perspective-taking on Self/Perspective-taking on Others
The Core Exercises
Observing-thought Meditation
Perspective Dyad

For much more on meditation and wellness, please see our book, available on Amazon:

Wellness and Meditation, Perspectives from Japan. The scientific underpinnings and practical problems of building mental resiliency.

References:

  1. Contemplative Mental Training Reduces Hair Glucocorticoid Levels in a Randomized Clinical Trial, by Puhlmann, Lara M.C.; Vrticka, Pascal; Linz, Roman; Stalder, Tobias; Kirschbaum, Clemens; Engert, Veronika; Singer, Tania, in Psychosomatic Medicine, October 2021
Categories
Wellness

The 2020 Lockdown and the Missing Japanese Women Runners

The media reported a global running boom during the lockdowns of 2020. (1, 2, 3, 4)

However, recently released data for Japan show a decline in women’s participation 2020 versus 2018. (5) The survey has been conducted every two years since 1998.

On a variety of measures Japan’s running participation rate, 2020 versus 2018, has risen:

Participation rate (%), Running, Three frequency measures

 20182020
Once a week or more  
Overall5.35.6
Male7.88.7
Female2.82.6
Once a month or more  
Overall6.47.0
Once a year or more  
Overall9.310.2
Male12.914.9
Female5.85.6

Source: Sasakawa Sports Foundation, (5) Conceptasia, November 2021

However, the increasing participation rate, 2020 versus 2018, is entirely driven by men

Data by gender and age is available for the “Once a year or more” measure. The decline in participation of women in their thirties, 2020 versus 2018, is notably pronounced. The data is in the supporting paper, here.

An obvious observation is that with kindergartens and schools closed, those with young children would be forced to provide continuous care at home. This is likely to be most prevalent amongst parents in their thirties.

Time and more data will enable stronger conclusions.

Running is regarded as one of the best exercises for easing stress. (2) This reflects its rhythmic nature enabling experienced runners to get “into the zone.”

Unexpected childcare responsibilities and a loss of a stress-reduction technique could result in mental wellness issues for some Japanese women in their thirties.

References

  1. Asics: New study explores the world’s new-found love of running, June 2020. https://www.asics.com/za/en-za/blog/article/new-study-explores-the-world%27s-new-found-love-of-running
  2. Stylist: Running in lockdown: why have so many women turned to jogging for their mental health? https://www.stylist.co.uk/fitness-health/running-mental-health-lockdown/494980
  3. Runners World: 2020 Was a Crazy Running Year. Here’s the Data to Prove It, December 2020 https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a34949046/2020-year-in-running-data/
  4. Run Repeat: Exercise is Up 88% During COVID-19 [12,913 Person Study], August 2021. https://runrepeat.com/exercise-covid-19-study
  5. Sasakawa Sports Foundation, October 2021: Jogging / running estimated population, record high of 10.55 million https://re-how.net/all/1435656/
Categories
Wellness

Why meditation apps have struggled in Japan

The meditation app subsector has been growing rapidly globally, even before 2020 and the pandemic. The top ten meditation apps had revenues of US$195 million in 2019, up 52% from 2018’s US$128 million. (1) This was the fourth year of rapid growth. The revenues of the top ten meditation apps were estimated to be US$8 million in 2015, US$19 million in 2016 and US$55 million in 2017.

The dominant two apps with half the market are Calm and Headspace.

The former has been maintaining a market share around 33%, the latter around 16%. The third-place app has around a 6% market share followed by thousands of other apps. In 2019, Calm’s estimated revenues were US$92 million and Headspace’s US$56 million. In terms of paying subscribers, both Calm and Headspace claim to have over two million. This compares to many tens of millions of users who have downloaded the apps, but not become subscribers. In 2019, for example, Calm had 24 million first-time users, Headspace 13 million.

In Japan meditation apps are not yet popular

This could be because of the language barrier. Not just the navigation around the app needs to be in Japanese, but also the guided meditations. Guided meditation ranges from three minutes to thirty, and, in addition, live classes are being offered more frequently to help people feel connected.

Rather than a language barrier, a more likely explanation for the slow take-up rate in Japan is that meditation in the form of “focused attention” is already at the core of Japanese behavior.

Be it traditional customs such as flower arrangement (Ikebana), the tea ceremony (Sadou), calligraphy (Shodou) and cultivating miniature trees (Bonsai), or the Japanese martial arts (e.g., Aikido, Judo, Karate, Kendo, Jujutsu) or Shokunin (the continuously striving craftsman, e.g., Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2)) or the general attention to detail in all aspects of Japanese life, focused attention is practiced everywhere.

Traditional customs and martial arts remain on the curriculum of Japanese schools exposing all to the benefits of concentration and focus.

Unfortunately, Japanese schools have been impacted by the pandemic. Having closed during March-May 2020, restrictions on non-core activities have persisted after reopening. Club activities have been limited, events and trips cancelled, and talking during lunchtime forbidden. (3)

The latest online survey conducted by the National Center for Child Health and Development included questions on depressive symptoms, using international standards for measuring depression.

The results (4) indicate that in late 2020 a quarter of school children had moderate or higher symptoms of depression (table below).

As schools fail to deliver focused attention activities, perhaps meditation apps will become more popular in Japan.

Depressive symptoms (%) by age (years old) and severity

 10-1213-1516-18
Severe186
Somewhat severe749
Moderate81215
Sum of above162430
Mild232924
None624746

Notes: 10-12 years old (Shougakusei, 4-6 nen), 13-15 years old (Chuugakusei), 16-18 years old (kougakusei). Survey conducted online November/December 2020

Source: National Center for Child Health and Development, Conceptasia, March 2021

References:

  1. Top 10 meditation apps pulled in US$195 million in 2019, up 52% from 2018, by techcrunch.com, 31 January 2020. Underlying data from SensorTower.
  2. Jiro Dreams of Sushi, a 2011 Japanese-language American documentary film directed by David Gelb.
  3. Nippon.com: https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00943/?cx_recs_click=true
  4. National Center for Child Health and Development: http://www.ncchd.go.jp/center/activity/covid19_kodomo/report/CxC4_finalrepo_20210210.pdf
Categories
Wellness

Suicides and Covid-19

Japan’s National Police Agency releases monthly data on suicides on a timely basis. Other countries are more reticent. The latest US data, for example, is 2018. Japanese suicides rose 3.7% in 2020, up by 750 people to 20,919. This was the first increase in 11 years.

How to interpret the data?

The Covid-19 pandemic and the associated government policy responses are an easy explanation.

The pandemic/policy responses have caused:

  1. An increase in unemployment, financial insecurity
  2. A deterioration in mental wellness resiliency due to social isolation, fear of infection, potential stigma, and victimization
  3. Stay-at-home lockdowns, confinement, heightened risks of domestic violence, child neglect/abuse
  4. Mental health services’ access problems
  5. Increased bereavement, intensified by separation issues

The above is in addition to 6) the exacerbation of already present mental illness, such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, etc.

However, the above just changes the question to:

What is the relative importance of the factors?

Has the pick-up in suicides been more, or less, than experts in the field expected?

To address these questions a model is needed. This is discussed and presented in our 8-page PDF article, link at the end, below.

Conclusions

Reflecting how employment, one’s company, remains at the core of identity in Japan, suicides are relatively sensitive to economic factors (proxied by the unemployment rate) even when modified for additional material factors.

Based on this modified unemployment rate model, the increase in the number of suicides in 2020 could have been over 1,000, rather than the 750 recorded.

Japanese unemployment peaked at 3.1% in October 2020 and had fallen to 2.9% in December.

To expect suicides in Japan to fall year-overt-year in 2021, we must hope for the 2021 annual unemployment rate to be below the 2.8% rate of 2020.

The full 8-page PDF article is here:

https://wellnessasianopportunities.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Suicides-and-Covid-19-M.pdf