Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. Today, I wanted to share some ideas with you on an article

that I've recently written about how the cost of living crisis is impacting our wellbeing

and what we can do about it. So here in the UK, I'm sure you are already aware that the cost of living has been increasing rapidly since the start of 2021.

Now, in August this year, the annual rate of inflation reached 9.9%, which is close to a 30-year high.

So as a result, we have seen increase in costs and everything from energy to food,

to housing. But there's also a secondary cost, which I think is sometimes overlooked when we talk

about financial crisis. And that is the inevitable impact that this crisis will have on our health

and our overall well-being. So aside from the

debilitating feelings of worry and stress that people will feel when they are just reading the daily

news headlines, there's a lot of doom and gloom at the moment, but also people's health will

actually suffer both physically and mentally if they have to make big changes to their lifestyle and if they cannot afford to pay their bills.

Many people are already making changes to their daily routine, to their spending habits in order to prioritise essentials.

And when we think about essentials, often things that impact our physical health, our mental

health are the first things to go. So whether that's paying for talking therapy, whether that's

paying for a gym membership, often people will start to make cuts to these areas in their life

if they consider them to be non-essential. Now, of course, when general costs go up, we're also

left with less disposable know, less disposable

income for social activities. So meeting friends, eating out, participating in sports, going to

events. You know, this might seem like, okay, it's not a huge hardship to not be able to

book a holiday or to meet friends on Sunday morning for brunch. But actually,

reality is it will have a big impact on us. And given that the last two years with the global

pandemic, with restrictions and lockdowns and with people having to change the way they live and work,

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