Stay Healthy - A Guide to Staying Healthy While Emerging from Lockdown

At Culligan ZeroWater, we want to inspire and encourage people to do all they can to stay happy and healthy, even as we emerge from lockdown and have the urge to splurge and let our health fall by the wayside. With pubs opening, social restrictions easing and more freedom ahead of us, it will be so easy to neglect our health and self-care needs. Yet it is still crucial to maintain your health and fitness to ensure you are your happiest and healthiest self with a strong immune system to protect you from the ongoing threat of Covid-19. Culligan ZeroWater is here to ensure that your family stay’s as healthy as possible while you enjoy your new found freedom and adventures. Follow our handy guide to staying healthy post lockdown to ensure you are the best you that you can be.

1. Eat as Well as You Possibly Can

With pubs and restaurants partially opening up for service outside many of us will be consuming more rich and unhealthy food than we have been used to during lockdown. However, it’s important to remember how crucial a balanced diet is to keep you fit and fighting.

Moreover, proper nutrition does not have to be boring – it can lead not only to increased health but to fun family bonding time. We suggest you look up fun recipes online and set aside time to cook and eat together as a family. In fact, we at Culligan ZeroWater have 2 articles listing some fun, healthy water based recipes that you and your family can try out at home! People who eat a well-balanced diet tend to be healthier with stronger immune systems and lower risk of chronic illnesses or infectious diseases! Here are some further nutritional tips to keep your family healthy post lockdown:

• You should eat a variety of fresh and unprocessed foods every day to get the vitamins, minerals, dietary fibres, protein and antioxidants your body needs.
• Therefore, you should be eating 2 cups of fruit (4 servings), 2.5 cups of vegetables (5 servings), 180 g of grains, and 160 g of meat and or beans daily!
• Avoid sugar, fat and salt to significantly lower your risk of overweight, obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and certain types of cancer.
• So for snacks, choose raw vegetables and fresh fruit rather than foods that are high in sugar, fat or salt.
• Limit your intake of soft drinks or sodas and other drinks that are high in sugar (e.g. fruit juices, fruit juice concentrates and syrups, flavoured milks and yogurt drinks). This is especially relevant as many of us have been meeting friends for picnics in the park full of sugary drinks and snacks so it may be time for you to consider a healthier alternative.

2. Stay Active

It’s crucial despite our instincts to throw caution to the wind during this exciting time of more freedom and socialising, we must remember that one of the best thing we can do for our bodies and immune system is to stay active! As many of us will be spending most of our spare time socialising at pubs or parks, catching up with old friends that we haven’t seen in a long while, exercise can easily be neglected. However, gyms are now open and are a great way to get your body moving to balance out the food and drink we are consuming with our friends and family this sunny season. Moreover, many of us have grown accustomed to homework outs during lockdown. Indeed they are a great and fun way keep you moving, and maintain your level of fitness. Therefore it’s a great habit to keep up even when lockdown is finished. You can even get the whole family involved by following along with enthusiastic, energetic work out videos on YouTube in your very own living room. This could be especially useful as you get more and more busy socialising to take some time to exercise and bond as a family at home. P.E. with Joe Wicks is an excellent example of a homework out that benefits both adults and children alike, as Wicks has since received an MBE for his amazing work keeping the British public and children active during lockdown – so you know he is the one to trust with your families fitness! Remember when working out that hydration essential in order to remain healthy and prevent dehydration!

3. Take Care of Your Mental Health as Well as Your Physical Health

Make sure that during period of change and increased social activity that you take some time for self-care. Don’t book up every second of your day with social plans as this can lead to burn out. Make sure you take time for yourself, have a bath, mediate, read, watch a film, take some time off of social media. Moreover, many people may find this transition from social isolation and distancing to increased interaction jarring and stressful. Therefore it’s important to listen to your mind and body, don’t push yourself if you feel anxious. Give yourself time and space to process and adjust to the social shift. For professional tips from top psychologists on how to manage anxiety as we come out of lockdown read this useful article.

4. Get a Good Amount of Sleep!

Though many of us are so excited to get back to an active social and night life, it is also crucial that you rest and get enough sleep each day. Good sleep is essential to our overall health! According to The National Institutes of Health (NIH): “Immune system activation alters sleep, and sleep in turn affects the innate and adaptive arm of our body's defense system.” The CDC recommends adults age 18-60 years get seven or more hours of sleep per night. So while it may be tempting to stay up late, to abandon your usual sleep schedule due to social plans this could seriously damage your immune system. We at Culligan ZeroWater want to keep you and your family as fighting fit as possible therefore we recommend you stay hydrated, as hydration can aid sleep quality.

5. Hydration is Key to Keeping Healthy as We Emerge from Lockdown

Water transports nutrients and compounds in blood, regulates your body temperature, gets rid of waste, and lubricates and cushions joints. However, we realise it isn’t easy to drink the 2 litres of water you need to consume a day to ensure your body has enough water to perform effectively both mentally and physically when you’re out and about having fun. Yet, if you follow our top tips on how to stay hydrated, you too can reap the manifold health benefits of hydration. This is especially crucial as many of us will be drinking alcohol at the recently reopened pubs and restaurants. Alcohol actively dehydrates you therefore you need to ensure you are drinking enough water alongside your alcoholic beverages in order to stay hydrated and healthy. To ensure your hydration and your families health post lockdown, we recommend you invest in a Culligan ZeroWater filter jug. You can choose your ideal jug from our wide variety of styles and sizes. From portable to large family sized table top jugs, we are sure you will find one for your typical usage scenario and life style. We are here to keep your family fighting fit and hydrated when emerging from lockdown!

Why Invest in a Culligan ZeroWater Filter Jug when Emerging from Lockdown?

At Culligan ZeroWater, we want to protect your families health as we start to emerge from lockdown by providing you with a Premium 5-Stage Ion Exchange Water Filtration System. Our systems successfully outperform all other 2-stage filters on the market such as Brita Filters. While simplistic 2-stage filters are only able to remove around half of all dissolved solids, our advanced filters guarantee to drastically reduce the amount of ‘Total Dissolved Solids’ and contaminants in your water! When tested in accordance with the NSF's protocol based on a 40 gallon filtration (double the rated usage), Culligan ZeroWater reduces 97% of Lead and 99.9% of Chromium from your tap water. They are also third party tested to reduce 96% of Mercury, 93% of Arsenic and 99% of Copper, among many other contaminants! When emerging from lockdown, avoid the urge to splurge! Maintain your health with a Culligan ZeroWater filter, providing healthy and pure tasting water.