WELLNESS

For many, the summer holidays herald a period of beach visits, barbecues and layers of powerfully scented insect repellent. They also go hand-in-hand with Christmas parties, New Years Eve extravaganzas and a general disregard for any semblance of balance we’ve spent the past year painstakingly cultivating. Enter: Jessica Sepel.

The founder of JSHealth Vitamins, Sepel spends her days immersed in the world of health-driven supplements, mindful eating recipes and writing (she is the three-time best-selling health author of “The Healthy Life”, “Living the Healthy Life” and “The 12 Step Mind Body Food Reset”). As we countdown to Christmas, T Australia sat down with Sepel to talk about her personal journey to JSHealth Vitamins, the challenges the industry faces, the three supplements everyone should be taking and her top tips for looking after ourselves during the silly season.

Tell us about your journey to the wellness space and launching JSHealth.

I have always had a passion for vitamins and supplements and nutrition in general, so in some respects I guess the eventual launch of JSHealth Vitamins was somewhat written into my future before I realised. JSHealth launched as a private blog, part of my personal journey to finding a healthier relationship to food and wellness in general. What grew from there was the most incredible community, which remains the heart and soul of everything I do.

What is the founding philosophy behind JSHealth?

It’s a wellness movement so sustainable, enjoyable, accessible, personalised and results-driven that it will last a lifetime. No fad diets, no restriction! We hero body love, kindness, balance and flexibility. I’m also passionate about showing people that living The Healthy Life doesn’t need to be complicated – you can make simple, easy and delicious meals, and it’s the  small, consistent habits that are key.

Can you tell us about your own supplement regimen – what’s currently on your personal rotation?

Recognising and respecting your unique health needs and wellness goals is the cornerstone of creating a routine that works best for you – it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. However, there are three supplements that I recommend most people invest in as they simply feel better when ingesting them. These are a quality probiotic, magnesium and fish oil. Everyone seems to feel better when taking those three.

I also love recommending an inner beauty and vitality powder that contains ingredients such as marine collagen combined with potent antioxidants, nutrients and minerals to help you to feel amazing from the inside out. Our skin health, hair health and energy really does start from within.

Australians are heading into the festive season – a period of time that also collides with the start of summer. What are some ways we can look after ourselves better during the holiday period?

I recommend the following to help balance this very busy time of year:

No Guilt: Our philosophy is all about balance. It is so important to remove any restriction or deprivation, and allow yourself to enjoy all foods in moderation. Letting go of the guilt is a very important part of The Healthy Life. Be kind to yourself.

Greens Formula: A daily quality greens powder is a great “insurance policy” for your veggie intake! Our Greens + Collagen powder is a delicious blend of green superfoods plus hydrolysed marine collagen – simply combine with water or put it into your favourite smoothie.

Slow mornings: Allow yourself the luxury of slow, grounding mornings. Savour the taste of your coffee, meditate, journal or simply sit in silence. These quiet moments can set the tone for the rest of your day.

Saying no to plans: Remember, it’s okay to prioritise your needs. If you need rest, it’s perfectly fine to decline invitations. Your wellbeing always comes first.

Nature walks: There’s nothing quite like the healing power of nature. A gentle walk outside can do wonders for your mental and emotional health.

Liver love: After indulging in the season’s delights, our bodies may appreciate getting back into our usual routines. Embrace a gentle post-celebration reset with a detox and bloat support formula containing ingredients like fennel seed (to relieve abdominal bloating), plus milk thistle and turmeric (for liver support).

Savour the season: Enjoy your favourite indulgences, while continuing to make healthy choices. Make an effort to eat nutritious food, but also make an effort to indulge and enjoy – this is so important to strengthen your relationship with food and your body.

You’re a three-time best-selling author – what does the writing and publishing experience offer you in addition to your business and brand work?

My book deals truly gave me the belief in myself to keep going and the opportunity to put my writing and advice into “bricks and mortar”. There’s something so special about holding and reading a physical book. It also has been a powerful vessel for me to share my story. It really did elevate the JSHealth philosophy to reach a mass audience on a global scale.

Mindful eating is a core tenet of your approach – what food do you gravitate towards during the summer months?

Summer is such a wonderful time for delicious, balanced eating. So many of the fresh fruits and vegetables that are in season in the warmer months are bursting with nutrients, making it easier than ever to fill your diet with key vitamins and minerals. Australian summers with fresh produce and seafood, along with some enjoying of hot weather delights, like ice creams and glasses of cold rosé… my favourite.

More mouthwatering coverage from T Australia:

• A Sydney Institution Celebrates 30 Years of French Bistro Dining
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• Bar Lucia’s Recipe for Ceviche

My latest unhealthy obsession is browsing LinkedIn before bed. But for a platform that boasts functionality, I only use it for the one feature. Two little heads sit at the top of my screen, with the words ‘My Network’ written below. My fingers are drawn to the tab instinctively and before I know it, many circular headshots fill my screen. I click through the profiles, some shorter, some longer, pausing to scan where people are working, what date they graduated, how many years of experience they have. My night always ends the same way: I go to bed feeling inadequate in comparison.

Back in the ‘90s, Richard Easterlin, an economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania conducted analysis of almost 25 years’ worth of happiness data from the United States. He presumed that as there was a direct correlation between happiness and income, changes to income over time would lead to greater levels of wellbeing. Instead he discovered a paradox: despite a pattern of steadily increasing income wealth, the average happiness levels in the country had barely changed.

“It’s not to do with absolute wealth, it’s about relative wealth,” says Nichola Raihani, a social researcher and author of “The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World”. “Feeling that you’re doing a little bit better than your peers is associated with increased wellbeing, and conversely, feeling you’re doing worse than other people in society is associated with reduced wellbeing.” As Raihani explains, it’s all about comparative positioning. Easterlin’s Paradox shows us that we’re more concerned with whether we’re sitting in a better spot than someone else, than whether we have a seat in the first place.

Although Easterlin’s research focuses on income, our tendency to overlook our absolute position in favour of a relative one can be found everywhere. Late last year when reality TV star and beauty entrepreneur Kylie Jenner confirmed her second pregnancy, I spiralled. My thought process went along the lines of ‘she’s only three years older than me and she’s already having her second child, and she’s got two children and I have none’. For a brief moment, I had conveniently forgotten that I didn’t really even want children in the first place. When we’re confronted with surface level portrayals of people’s successes and achievements on social media, it’s easy to feel inadequate. But perhaps this comparison trap is no fault of my own.

Although conceptions of what is considered fair may be shaped by our cultural upbringing, the rejection of unequal outcomes appears to be universal. In a 2015 study, pairs of children from across Canada, India, Mexico, Peru, Senegal, Uganda, and the United States were given the same task: to sit across from each other while treats were placed before them in uneven portions. One of the children in the pair would be assigned the choice of either pulling a green handle to accept the allocated portions, or pulling a red handle to reject them, meaning neither child would get anything. In all seven countries, children would opt for the red.

The answer to why our comparative judgement transcends culture may lie in the way our species operates. According to Raihani, as we evolved collaboratively, social comparison was a means for us to monitor our status within society, and to preserve our place amongst potential competitors. She refers to the example of the Efe pygmies, a hunter-gatherer people living within the Ituri Rainforest of the Democratic Republic of Congo, who share meat in a meritocratic way — “the hunter who shoots the first arrow gets most of the meat, followed by the person whose dog chased the prey, and so on”. By being able to recognise and reject unfair outcomes humans were able to ensure better chances of survival for ourselves and our offspring, from greater allocations of food to lower birth mortality rates.

In footage from a TED Talk published in 2011, a scientist stands in front of a rectangular enclosure, separated into two sections by a wire panel, each housing small brown capuchin monkey. The monkeys have been trained to hand the scientist a rock through circular cut-outs in the clear plexiglass screen in exchange for a food item, either a piece of cucumber or a grape — they prefer the grape. The monkey on the left performs the exchange and is rewarded with a piece of cucumber. The one on the right follows, but it receives a grape instead. The monkey on the left repeats, and once again, is rewarded with a cucumber. He holds the cucumber to his mouth, looks to the other monkey, then tosses the cucumber back at the scientist before rattling the screen. This repeats itself.

This humorous short video is central to the debate of whether social comparison is limited to the remit of the human species. Although some researchers use this video as evidence of the behaviour across species, Raihani disagrees, noting that conclusions drawn from studies like this are flawed in one big way. “We often project our own human feelings and how we would feel in that situation onto those monkeys,” she says. “You can’t rule out that the monkey basically just sees a grape, and because it knows that a grape is available, it rejects the cucumber.” In other words, until monkeys can speak, it’s impossible to know whether the behaviour is motivated by relative wealth rather than absolute wealth.

For humans, even in today’s society, status remains an evolutionarily relevant currency. When we’re doom-scrolling through LinkedIn, Raihani explains we’re subconsciously creating a mental hierarchy, enabling us to monitor how we fit in relative to others within our social circles. Social comparison allows us to evaluate our social networks, and determine which relationships serve us and which don’t. “Keeping tabs of ‘do you always end with more than me’ in any interaction is a heuristic that people use to evaluate and to potentially choose interaction partners,” says Raihani. “Those concerns and needs haven’t disappeared just because many of us now live in industrialised societies; our success still massively depends on our ability to work together and working together in a fair way is often the key to having a productive social relationship.”

Being able to recognise the trap of relativity doesn’t protect us from it. Social comparison is ingrained in our human psyche making it as unavoidable as it is universal. But its pertinence in our consciousness serves as a constant reminder of the human condition — an evolutionary blast from the past. And in instances such as this, when my LinkedIn-motivated inadequacy drives me to write an article, I’d like to think social comparison has even greater use than that.

As we go forward into 2022, it’s easy to feel as if we have been cast in a movie for which there is no script. Our lives, disrupted by QR codes, travel restrictions, mandated vaccinations, self-isolation requirements and working from home, have still not returned to normal.

Some of us have clung onto the hope that science will save us, or that the economy will rebound. But many are struggling with depression and anxiety, which are epidemic right now: cases globally increased more than 25 per cent during the first year of the pandemic, according to a University of Queensland-led study.

As Omicron rages, an undercurrent of paranoia lingers in human relationships. When was the last time a stranger, or even a friend, gave you a hug? (Some 64 per cent of us miss hugging the most, according to research by Oracle Australia.)

“Everyone is still anxious, to varying degrees, and the question is, how are we going to come out of it?” says Professor Joy Damousi, a historian and director of the Australian Catholic University’s Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences.

“In other global crises, such as World War I and II and the Great Depression, we were also plagued by uncertainty and obsessed with what the future would look like.” She adds: “We all want to know what the answers are, but there are no answers yet. One thing the pandemic has taught us is that anything could be around the corner.”

NAVIGATING A PRECARIOUS WORLD

It was in late December 2019 that the first cases of Covid-19 were reported in Wuhan, China, and from that trickle of concern came the greatest shock to our health and psyche, and economies globally, in recent times.

What makes recovery particularly difficult is that most humans don’t handle uncertainty well, says Edwin Trevor-Roberts, a career-management consultant and the chair of the Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing advisory board at Griffith University. “We’re simply not wired for it,” he says. “Neuroscience has shown that we have a threat response in our brain when we experience uncertainty and do everything in our power to try and reduce it.”

Healing the collective mind may prove to be as challenging as rebooting global economies or shoring up the health of the most vulnerable in our community. A Google search yields a wealth of blogs not only about the virus and vaccines, but also on the theme of how to be happy post-pandemic. In the wake of the trauma we’ve experienced, and in the face of future threats — such as virus variants and ongoing government controls, coupled with significant climate change events — it would be trite to suggest that contentment can be achieved in a few simple steps.

Life can seem precarious when we consider that our wellbeing may be dependent on the development of additional vaccines or all countries signing a climate pledge, says Adam Piovarchy, a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Sydney and a research associate at the University of Notre Dame. “However, in general, despair is not the right approach,” he says. “We still have a lot of valuable things in our lives that we can nourish and attend to.”

While it’s unlikely to be all sunny days from here on, one question worth asking is what makes life good, suggests Piovarchy. “It may be pleasurable sensations or experiences, such as eating out at restaurants or seeing a concert, or having our desires satisfied by having good friends, a loving family or success in our career.”

He adds: “But it can also be our judgement about life as a whole. Regularly engaging with things that are positive is a skill that can be practised over time.” This, he says, helps us become better at dealing with challenges.

On another positive note, Professor Andrew Dawson, a social commentator and the chair of anthropology at the University of Melbourne, believes that, when harnessed correctly, crises and the uneasiness they create can be a force for change. “For example, the Spanish Flu pandemic led to the development of socialised medicine,” he says.

At the same time, Dawson acknowledges that there are erstwhile intimacies that may be forever transformed. “Will we ever shake hands again in a post-pandemic world, where the modern myth of the bounded body is likely to be replaced by a renewed awareness of its essential porousness?” he asks.

REBUILDING HUMAN CONNECTION

The landscape architect Sam Barber, who has long expressed his philosophies for wellbeing and restoration through his designs, has never been busier than he is right now. He says clients are recruiting him to reimagine spaces, both public and private, as they consider how they want to live post-pandemic.

Rather than create built environments where separation perpetuates isolation, Barber’s designs facilitate a connection with nature. In this way, they not only nurture people, they also prompt social interaction — something public health orders have discouraged over the past two years.

“Isolation equals chaos,” he says, “which has the propensity to fuel addictions and mental health issues; the opposite to that is connection — with family, friends, peers, colleagues and nature.”

He adds: “Contemporary life continues to evolve, and unforeseen challenges will continue to surface, but human-centred environments are integral to mental health and wellbeing.” As Trevor-Roberts sees it, those who thrive in the uncertain future that lays before us may actually be those who are the most connected, rather than the fittest.

Joseph Campbell’s 1949 book, “The Hero With a Thousand Faces”, analyses the archetypal hero’s journey, in which a character crosses into a challenging, unfamiliar world and receives the assistance of a mentor and allies in their quest to return home. This plotline is universal, occurring in every culture at every time, says the story analyst Christopher Vogler. It poses multiple questions, including: what will tomorrow be like?

Damousi, who describes herself as an optimistic person, believes that not only will the majority of us weather the changes brought about by the pandemic, some of us may even bounce back with renewed energy, determined to make the most of life because it is short. “That may mean leaving a job, especially if it involves a two-hour commute, reorganising relationships and looking at where we really want to put our time.”

Microsoft research shows that more than 40 per cent of the global workforce is considering leaving their employer — #TheGreatResignation — while anecdotal evidence points to thousands of people having already abandoned permanent homes (#VanLife).

Dawson suggests that rather than focus on individual healing, we should consider redirecting our anxieties and widening our lens. “We know now that Covid-19 affects disproportionately those groups which are ethnically, socioeconomically and geopolitically marginal,” he says. “Yet where in its wake is the serious debate about addressing these inequalities?”

In the mythological tradition, the hero who returns to the “ordinary world” and does not have something to share — an elixir, of sorts — is seen to be unenlightened. In fact, the journey is meaningless unless the hero comes back with love, freedom, wisdom or the knowledge that the uncertain world exists and can be survived — elixirs so powerful that the whole world is changed by their existence.

A version of this article appears in print in our fifth edition, Page 38 of T Australia with the headline:
“What We Take From The Virus”
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