You’d probably agree that it’s not your entire environment that is the problem—it’s specific locations, what we call microenvironments.
For example, depending on your situation, your home might be a nutritional sanctuary, or it might be a temple for ultra-processed food.
Or maybe it isn’t about food, but your home is stressful and requires ongoing mental effort to cope. Exhausted new parents can relate.
Or it might be that your home environment exerts direct effects on your health. For example, getting restful sleep may be a challenge because of background noise.
Perhaps your home is a healthy microenvironment, but the problem is at work—stress, access to ultra-processed foods, inactivity, and so forth.
If you travel for a living, you’re no doubt aware of specific issues related to diet, activity, sleep, stress, and connections that can be extremely hard to manage.
Bottom line: an unhealthy microenvironment is mentally exhausting to manage and can have negative effects on all aspects of our health.
As a first step, we recommend that you survey each of your microenvironments and identify what should change, as well as what you can change.
Then it’s time to make a plan.
