Professor Paul Lee is the founder of RegenPHD, the movement tool, MAI-Motion and the author of Regeneration by Design.
He has redefined the boundaries of regenerative medicine by blending over two decades of elite sports and orthopaedic expertise with ground-breaking engineering insights. Paul’s unique science-fuelled approach and mantra of “Stay Young, Be Strong, Live Forever” empowers individuals to design a path to superhuman health, transcending the traditional boundaries of ageing. A best-selling author of Regeneration by Design, Paul offers a fresh perspective on making 2025 the year of achievable transformation.
The role of a leader comes with great responsibilities; high-pressure decision-making, leading by example, sustaining peak performance, and long hours that can affect your physical and mental well-being.
Not addressing your physical and mental well-being can ultimately lead to personal burnout, poor decision-making, inefficiency, and an inability to sustain long-term success. With time being a limited factor in a leader’s demanding schedule, health can become a thing of unimportance.
Setting clear, achievable goals for physical activity, nutrition and well-being can help make health a priority. By applying regenerative principles and systematic strategies, you can optimise your health without compromising your professional success. Here are three strategies for how women in tech can prioritise their health and well-being.
Feeding Both Your Body and Brain
As a leader, making decisions hinges on how well you fuel your body and brain. Chronic stress, poor nutrition, and dehydration don’t just disrupt your health, they accelerate your biological ageing too. Your body is a biochemical system, and neglecting this accelerates fatigue, weakness immunity and disrupts cognitive function.
Actionable steps leaders can take to avoid this include:
- Hydrate strategically: Even a small drop in hydration impairs cognitive function. Drinking at least 6–8 cups of water daily helps maintain musculoskeletal and brain function, allowing you to make decisions during high-pressure situations.
- Manage stress chemistry: Cortisol, the stress hormone, wreaks havoc on your body over time. Activities such as mindfulness, deep breathing, and regular outdoor exposure help regulate your nervous system and maintain composure under pressure.
- Balance macronutrients: Leadership demands sustained energy, not sugar crashes. Therefore, avoid excessive caffeine and sugar spikes, opt for protein-rich meals, omega-3 fats, and slow-digesting carbs for sustained energy, and avoid mid-day slumps.
Leaders who prioritise their biochemical balance enhance cognitive sharpness, sustain peak performance, and set a powerful example of resilience and longevity for their tech teams.
Remove Disturbances to Optimise Wellbeing
One of the biggest obstacles to good health is the accumulation of small but persistent disturbances—poor sleep, prolonged sitting, and stress overload. These micro-stressors build up over time and break down your vitality. To remove these barriers, leaders should:
- Optimise your workspace: Your workspace is where you spend a significant portion of the day. Its setup directly affects your posture, energy levels and long-term musculoskeletal health. Therefore, ensuring the desk, chair, and screen are efficiently designed to reduce strain and improve comfort, efficiency and physical longevity in leadership roles.
- Schedule movement breaks: Working in tech often means sitting for long hours staring at a computer. In turn, this increases musculoskeletal degeneration, weakening muscles, stiffening joints and reducing circulation. To avoid this from happening, leaders can walk during calls, stretch between meetings, or adopt a standing desk. Small actions such as these can help to sustain better energy levels, and mental clarity, ensuring they remain sharp and engaged throughout the day.
- Improve sleep hygiene: Many leaders often sacrifice sleep, but cognitive function declines rapidly without adequate rest. Quality sleep is essential for physical recovery, hormone balance and mental clarity. To improve sleep, create a dark, cool, and tech-free sleeping environment, helping to increase focus and resilience to sustain high performance without burnout.
By eliminating unnecessary physical and mental disturbances, you set the foundation for regeneration and optimal performance.
Aligning One’s Movement with Longevity
Leadership is about longevity – both in career and health. Newtonian physics teaches us that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Your body is no different—your posture, gait, and movement patterns dictate long-term musculoskeletal health. Poor posture, repetitive stress and misaligned movement patterns can create long-term damage, impacting not only personal well-being but also energy levels, focus and presence
Physical-based actionable steps tech leaders can implement include:
- Use technology wisely: AI-based motion tracking tools, such as MAI-Motion can provide real-time feedback on your movement patterns, helping to correct misalignments before they cause long-term damage.
- Fix postural imbalances: Slouching or improper desk alignment causes long-term joint stress. Set reminders to adjust your posture throughout the day and incorporate core-strengthening exercises to support alignment.
- Adopt low-impact movements: Sustainable energy is key to leadership endurance. Activities like swimming and cycling build strength while minimising joint stress, allowing you to perform at your best without injury setbacks.
By prioritising physics-based alignment strategies, leaders working in tech can maintain mobility and strength well into their later years, reinforcing their ability to inspire and sustain high performance.
By removing barriers to well-being, fuelling your body and brain, aligning movement with longevity and future-proofing your health data; it doesn’t just extend your lifespan, it enhances the quality of every moment you live.
