Sometime earlier, my team and I were working towards successfully moving our workforce to a ‘work from home’ arrangement. I like the ‘work from home’ lifestyle as it allows me to have more time to work on my hobbies. However, one tends to overlook their health and immunity in such a setup.

As an IT professional, working from home one tends to forget the boundaries of work times and one gets habituated to be available 24/7. This can be because you have teams that are globally spread out. Or, simply because you do not know how to manage time and you end up staying logged in beyond your work hours. In my experience, it is usually the latter which is the problem area. It is necessary to follow the same timelines you would follow if you were working from the office. Sleep at the same time, have your meals at the same time. In fact, it is a good idea to keep a scheduler to remind you of your mealtimes. This ensures you do not overwork yourself and get the rest your body requires.

Working from home also means that you will not be moving around as much as you used to earlier. No walks around the office for a meeting or the pantry for a coffee break. Even the walk down to the nearby tea shop is no longer happening. Our daily routine before ‘Work from Home’ helped us burn calories without us realizing it. For example, without including exercises, my average step count went from 6000 steps to 1000 in the last one week. Hence, I have taken out time daily to do some basic exercises. Where do you get the time? One might ask. Well, I am utilizing the time I would otherwise spend commuting to work to do my exercise routine.

My food habits had to change too. One, because of the limited resources available. Two, because of the change in lifestyle I was going through. I reduced my red meat intake and increased vegetables & fruits. I consciously tried to increase my intake of proteins and vitamins. These help in improving your immunity and in turn increases your ability to fight infections. How does food habits improve immunity, you might ask?

Good nutrition is essential for supporting a strong immune system. The right kind and amount of nutrients in your daily diet helps protect yourself and support your immune health. Inadequate nutrition increases the vulnerability to infection through a weakened immune system, and infection aggravates the condition, further weakening the immune response. A well-functioning immune system is key to providing a good defense against infectious disease.

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Meals, particularly, can be tough, no matter what we cook with the limited resources available, we cannot ensure we get a balanced diet. A supplement like Ensure from Abbott with its 31 nutrients is helpful. Keeping this in mind I also take multivitamins and nutrition supplements. These, I take as an add on to my daily food intake. This way, if not all I will be closer to getting a decent dose of essential vitamins and minerals daily.

I encourage all of you to take your health seriously and work towards improving your immunity in the ‘Work from Home’ days ahead.