What is it about?
This article suggests that long-term health depends on how much our bodies are "revved up" each day. Too much activation from demanding activities—and too little time to recover—may gradually increase wear and tear on the body and affect future health. People can be "revved up" not only from stressful tasks but from demanding pleasurable tasks (e.g., video games).
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Why is it important?
This paper suggests that long-term health may depend not only on how stressed we feel, but also on how much our bodies are repeatedly activated throughout the day. It provides a new framework for designing lifestyles and interventions that help people balance demanding and restorative activities to reduce wear and tear on the body.
Perspectives
This was the first paper I ever published. It was a theoretical paper where I tried to use existing literature to make sense of my own experiences around restful and strenuous activities. Even years later, it still informs my personal efforts to maintain lifestyle balance and my research work on strain in workers. The best complement I've received about the paper was "it made me feel less guilty about slacking off."
Raymond Hernandez
University of Southern California
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Lifestyle balance, restful and strenuous occupations, and physiological activation, Journal of Occupational Science, March 2020, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/14427591.2020.1732229.
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