FELL OFFICE ANXIETY
Find out why some eco-friendly hardware can axe workplace anxiety. Chop chop
Touch wood: a superstition that evolved from ancient pagan cultures. The Celts believed spirits resided in trees and that knocking on their trunks would rouse them and call on their protection. Though today’s stressors are more likely due to a fraught relationship with your bank manager than invading Romans, a study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health suggests Merlin et al may have been on to something.
Anxiety strikes when stress hormones such as cortisol trigger your sympathetic nervous system. This flicks on the fight-or-flight reflex, spiking heart rate and blood pressure and causing the sense of imminent doom that presages a panic attack. But scientists have discovered that touching wood is an immediate antidote. It causes the release of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system and shunts you into the antithesis of fight or flight – rest and digest. Your heart rate slows and stress hormones dissipate. This link with nature is why an escape to the countryside can be so calming.
The problem arises when your need for a mental salve is more immediate – an impending office presentation, say. But there is an organic solution. Brands such as Orèe are now tapping into the environmental trend to provide wooden computer keyboards and phone cases that can be delivered to you in days. A stressfree office is a matter of clicks away.