5 Physical Factors Impacting Your Mental Health

When we think about our mental health, many of us are quick to think about how we can better support our mood and emotions. Talk therapy, and various forms of psychotherapy, often come to mind as the only way to support conditions such as anxiety and depression.

What many of us fail to remember, is that there are many physical factors that can impact and even drive poor mental health forward. Our emotions and mental state are dependent, in part, on our physical health and well-being!

In this blog, we will be taking you through the 5 physical factors you need to consider when approaching your mental health, so you can get the most comprehensive mental health support possible!

Nutrition & Nutrient Status

Before jumping right in, it’s important to understand what neurotransmitters are and what they do. Neurotransmitters are your body’s chemical messengers and they help us regulate our mood and emotions.

Neurotransmitters are made using the resources that we get from our food. This includes things such as vitamins, minerals and amino acids (the building blocks of protein). When we do not have sufficient resources available to us, we are not able to synthesize these neurotransmitters in the appropriate amounts. This can lead to changes in mood and anxiety. Ensuring that we have optimal nutrition is one way to ensure that our mental health is supported physically. Here are some ways that food can impact our mental health.

protein

Protein is the backbone of our neurotransmitters and essential to neurotransmitter synthesis. When we don’t eat enough protein, our body will not be able to produce neurotransmitters in appropriate quantities, thereby impacting our mood and emotions.

fruits & veggies

Fruits and veggies are packed with essential vitamins and minerals that are needed to actually make neurotransmitters in the body. Several B vitamins including thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6, and folate are required for proper synthesis of neurotransmitters.

Cortisol, Stress Hormones & Oxidative Stress

Many of us know cortisol as the hormone that our body makes in response to stress. When our stress response is activated, and cortisol is released, cortisol helps us ‘survive’ our stressors by keeping us alert and mobilizing glucose into our bloodstream. Cortisol is extremely helpful in small doses, but when we have too much stress and too much cortisol, it can impact the optimal functioning of many of our other body systems, including our nervous system, and cause oxidative stress.

Prolonged exposure to oxidative stress can damage our cells, proteins, neurotransmitters, and even our DNA. We know from research that oxidative stress has been implicated in depression, anxiety disorders, and high anxiety levels. We also know that stressful life events, and chronic stress, have been highly associated with anxiety and depression as well.

Bottomline is that if we are not getting a handle on our stress response and our stress coping, our mental health will suffer.

Blood Sugar Balance

While many people don’t think of poor blood sugar balance as a component of mental health, this is one of the biggest physical factors driving poorer mental health that we see in our practice! Keeping our blood sugar levels balanced can actually help to support proper nervous system function and a much healthier mood.

Drops in blood sugar cause our body to go into a state of fight or flight causing our stress hormones to go up and our anxiety response to increase. Conversely, when our blood sugar spikes we are more prone to experience low mood, depression, and anger.

Keeping blood sugar levels balanced by eating regularly timed meals, and incorporating foods that help balance blood sugar (protein, goods fats, whole grains, and veggies) can actually help calm down our nervous system thereby minimizing mood changes, irritability, depression, and anxiety.

Inflammation

Similar to our stress hormone cortisol, inflammation is a normal and necessary reaction of the immune system to a threat in the body i.e. an infection. Inflammation actually ensures our survival. Unfortunately, inflammation becomes problematic when it is chronic. Thanks to our high stress society and standard North American diet, inflammation is now rampant. Chronic inflammation changes the way our body functions.

In regards to our mental health, chronic inflammation has been shown to change our brain function and disrupt normal HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) axis function. It has also been shown to be highly associated with mood disorders including anxiety, depression, and OCD.

Combatting inflammation and determining the source of inflammation is an essential component of mental health care that needs to be addressed!

Sleep

Last but not least, we need to discuss sleep. Sleep is extremely important for the optimal functioning of our entire body. Similar to plugging in your phone, sleep recharges and resets the brain so we can better regulate our emotions. While we don’t know all the amazing benefits of sleep just yet, we do know that there is a strong connection between sleep and mental health.

Research has found that poorer sleep leads to increased negative emotional responses to stressors and decreases positive emotions, even in the face of minor stressors! It’s also now been recognized that poor sleep can contribute to the onset of depression, anxiety, and even suicidal ideations.

So, if you’ve been struggling with your mental health, sleep is a physical factor you certainly don’t want to skip over.

How We Can Help

No matter how much we try to address the emotional components of our mental health, if these physical systems in our body are not functioning optimally, then our mental health will never be at its best.

At our clinic we take a mind-body approach to supporting mental health, offering Naturopathic Mental Health Support, Psychotherapy, and even IV Therapy to help support better mental and emotional well-being.

If you’d like to learn more about how we can support you, you can book in a complimentary consult with me here, or book in with one of our psychotherapists.