On the final day of Goafest 2025, Luke Coutinho, holistic nutrition, integrative and lifestyle medicine expert, discussed the overload of information and burnout, how one's emotional wellness enhances creativity and more.

In a conversation with Babita Baruah, CEO, VML India, Coutinho stated how constantly trying to follow wellness trends from social media can lead to burnout.

He voiced, “All of us right now are trying to align to something that we saw on social media, probably from a Reel that’s about intermittent fasting to how all of us should sleep for eight hours, and get sunlight for 30 minutes in the morning. Seeing this burns us out more because we question how to fit this into our everyday lives. If we're constantly trying to align with what social media is telling us, we're already burning out. We are burning out with just information.”

Emphasising how one’s holistic health and wellness, Coutinho shared that creativity is influenced by four key factors: nutrition, sleep, emotional wellness, and movement.

He mentioned, “One is either feeding themselves the right food or the wrong food. We get the outcome based on what we feed ourselves. Junk and processed food will give instant gratification for 10 minutes maximum. After that, one has an energy slump. When one has an energy slump, the creativity goes down. That's why they reach out for the next cup of coffee or the next stimulant, and it becomes a vicious cycle. One’s food has an impact on their creativity.”

He added, “Sleep has an impact on creativity too. Some of us may get our ideas at two in the morning, while some might get them early in the morning. Is that a bad thing? No, as long as one is still getting the full amount of sleep that they require. The idea is not when one should sleep, but have they finished the quota of sleep that the body type requires?”

Coutinho also talked about how channelling negative emotions productively and staying physically active can enhance creative output by boosting mental clarity and brain function.

“Emotional wellness has an impact on one’s creativity. But, some of the most creative geniuses have taken negativity like hurt, betrayal, and anger, and they've created work. They channel that energy into creativity. If one takes negative emotions and constantly feeds them and thinks about them, drinking or smoking them away, they are not channelling that into creative energy. They are actually lowering their creative edge. The last one is your movement. When we're working out, we're producing endorphins. We have more blood flow to our brain and the prefrontal cortex, where most of the ideas come from,” he shared. 

On a concluding note, Coutinho underlined the downsides of the hustle culture that many tend to believe in today.

“Hustle culture is huge right now, but it fails eventually as it only glorifies exhaustion and being busy. It dims one’s inner spark, creates clouds in our judgment, and cuts away the creative edge. It adds to taking away the basic lifestyle fundamentals that can impact creativity. Hustling only gets you the likes and views, but it doesn't really get the work done. While we're constantly engaged in life, sometimes stepping back and doing those one or two things that we love before a massive creative project actually boosts our creativity way more than just jumping into it, trying to hustle our way through it and burning out more and more.”