Unhealthy Lifestyle and Gut Dysbiosis: A Better Understanding of the Effects of Poor Diet and Nicotine on the Intestinal Microbiome

The study of the intestinal or gut microbiome is a newer field that is rapidly gaining attention. Bidirectional communication between gut microbes and the host can impact numerous biological systems regulating immunity and metabolism to either promote or negatively impact the host’s health. Habitual routines, dietary choices, socioeconomic status, education, host genetics, medical care and environmental factors can all contribute to the composition of an individual’s microbiome. A key environmental factor that may cause negative outcomes is the consumption of nicotine products. The effects of nicotine on the host can be exacerbated by poor dietary choices and together can impact the composition of the gut microbiota to promote the development of metabolic disease including non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. This review explores the contribution of nicotine, poor dietary choices and other unhealthy lifestyle factors to gut dysbiosis.

The COVID-19 Lockdown and Changes in Routine-Oriented Lifestyle Behaviors and Symptoms of Depression, Anxiety, and Insomnia in South Africa

Background: The authors assessed the impact of lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic on routine-oriented lifestyle behaviors and symptoms of depression, anxiety, and insomnia in South Africans. Methods: In this observational study, 1048 adults (median age = 27 y; n = 767 females; n = 473 students) responded to an online survey on work, exercise, screen, alcohol, caffeine and sleep behaviors, depression, anxiety, and insomnia before and during lockdown. Comparisons were made between males and females, and students and nonstudents. Results: During lockdown, males reported larger reductions in higher intensity exercise and alcohol use than females, while depressive symptoms increased more among females, more of whom also reported poorer sleep quality. Students demonstrated larger delays in work and sleep timing, greater increases in sitting, screen, sleep duration, napping, depression and insomnia and larger decreases in work hours, exercise time, and sleep regularity compared with nonstudents. Conclusions: Students experienced more changes in their routine-oriented behaviors than nonstudents, coupled with larger increases in depression and insomnia. The dramatic change in their work and sleep timing suggests habitual routines that are at odds with their chronotype, with their sleep changes during lockdown likely reflecting “catch-up” sleep in response to accumulated sleep debt under usual routines.

Habitual Routines and Automatic Tendencies Differential Roles in Alcohol Misuse Among Undergraduates

There is a debate over whether actions that resist devaluation (i.e., compulsive alcohol consumption) are primarily habit- or goal-directed. The incentive habit account of compulsive actions has received support from behavioral paradigms and brain imaging. In addition, the self-reported Creature of Habit Scale (COHS) has been proposed to capture inter-individual differences in habitual tendencies. It is subdivided into two dimensions: routine and automaticity. We first considered a French version of this questionnaire for validation, based on a sample of 386 undergraduates. The relationship between two dimensions of habit and the risk of substance use disorder and impulsive personality traits was also investigated. COHS has good psychometric properties with both features of habits positively associated with an Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory score. Besides, the propensity to rely more on routines was associated with lower levels of alcohol abuse and nicotine use, suggesting that some degree of routine might act as a protective factor against substance use. In contrast, a high automaticity score was associated with an increased risk of harmful alcohol use. These results demonstrate that the COHS is a valid measure of habitual tendencies and represents a useful tool for capturing inter-individual variations in drug use problems in undergraduates.

‘Everything I enjoy doing I just couldn’t do’: Biographical disruption for sport-related injury

This article draws on interview data with a population of non-elite sport/exercise participants (n = 20) to illustrate the interrelationship between biographical disruption and sport-related injury. It argues that contrary to the significance implied by their lack of prominence on current public health agendas, sport-related injuries can have a devastating personal impact, comparable to the more extreme variants of biographical disruption depicted in the literature on chronic illness. It seeks to explain the apparent incongruence between biophysical severity and subjective assessment of impact, by invoking notions of community normalisation and imagined futures, and identifying the unavailability of what subjects evaluate as effective medical support. These factors combine to problematise the attainment of biographical repair. It further highlights how biographical contingencies such as youthfulness, distinction through exhibiting responsible citizenship and the sense of failure to exert bodily self-management through exercise, perpetuate and escalate both biographical disruption and chronic illness. The paper thus illustrates the aetiological interdependence of biographical disruption and chronic illness as exercisers exacerbate relatively minor ailments due to their reluctance to modify habitual routines.

The curvilinear relationship between team familiarity and team innovation: A secondary data analysis

Paradoxical arguments and mixed empirical evidence coexist in the current literature concerning the relationship between team familiarity and team innovation. To resolve this contradiction, we apply habitual routines theory to propose that team familiarity and team innovation have an inverted U-shaped relationship. Using a data set of 68,933 R&D teams in the electrical engineering industry, our results support a nonlinear relationship between team familiarity and team innovation, and suggest that the best innovative performance is produced by moderately familiar teams. Furthermore, we find that external learning can moderate this curvilinear relationship. Theoretical contributions and future implications are discussed.

How does accreditation influence the dynamics of organizational identity for business schools?

Accreditation has become more prominent for business schools since two decades. In this paper, we explore how accreditation influences the internal and external processes of identity dynamics. First, we argue that Hatch & Schultz (2002) framework, social identity theory and the habitual routines approach offer a comprehensive theoretical framework. Second, we illustrate it with a European Management School’s accreditation failure and its management of change related to the accreditation goal. We elaborate and discuss a model titled “Identity Change through Accreditation” (ICA). Finally, we suggest some implications for managing change during accreditation as well as avenues for research.

Collaborative dynamics in street level work: Working in and with communities to improve relationships and reduce deprivation

Joint service delivery is a well-established aspect of urban governance but does not necessarily improve interagency collaboration or reduce socio-spatial deprivation. What happens in interactions between street level workers has a large influence on collaborative processes and outcomes but is remarkably underexplored. This article develops an understanding of the nature and impact of the relational practices enacted in street level collaboration. I argue that community-centred working can foster effective and authentic collaborative processes and, as a result, generate better societal outcomes. Based on a participatory evaluation conducted in Amsterdam, I critically appraise how working in and with communities moved collaborative dynamics in street level work away from habitual routines and power relations that sustained exclusion and inequality of local disadvantaged youngsters towards better internal relationships and less socio-spatial deprivation.

Daily Practice and Material Culture in Pluralistic Social Settings: An Archaeological Study of Culture Change and Persistence from Fort Ross, California

This paper presents an archaeological approach to the study of culture change and persistence in multi-ethnic communities through the study of daily practices and based on a crucial tenet of practice theory-that individuals will enact and construct their underlying organizational principles, worldviews, and social identities in the ordering of daily life. The study of habitual routines is undertaken in a broadly diachronic and comparative framework by examining daily practices from a multiscalar perspective. The approach is employed in a case study on the organization of daily life of interethnic households composed of Native Californian women and Native Alaskan men at the Russian colony of Fort Ross in northern California. Recognizing that different opportunities and choices existed for household members in this colonial setting, we explore how they constructed their own unique identities by examining the spatial layout of residential space, the ordering of domestic tasks, and the structure of trash disposal. We argue that trash deposits and middens in built environments, which often accumulate through routinized tasks, present great promise for examining the processes of culture change and persistence in archaeology.