How To Manage Mental Health Problems?
World Mental Health Day, October 10th
Mental Health Awareness
Over the past couple of years, the topic of mental health and awareness about it in public has grown a ton! There’s mental health awareness in work spaces, amongst athletes, and entrepreneurs, in schools, online, and on social media.
But still it’s a bit of a taboo topic and we prefer to avoid talking about it because we feel uncomfortable - especially concerning mental health problems, such as anxiety, depression, panic attacks, fear, PTSD, etc.
But if we reject stereotypes related to mental health problems and look at them holistically — as one of the pillars of health — new opportunities open up for us to think about.
Finding Causes, Patterns, and Implementation
If we leave aside clinically diagnosed mental and psychiatric illnesses and try to look at mental health problems from another angle — trying to look and find some causes and patterns behind these problems — new insights open up for us.
These mental health problems can then be seen and understood as symptoms that something is not right and as an invitation to change and correct something - rather than a “problem” or “condition” itself.
We must first realize that mental health problems are very “common” in our modern Western society: millions of people face anxiety every day. In the US alone about 17 million adults (7% of the population) have had at least one major depressive episode in their lifetime (source).
It is good to accept and come to terms with the fact that even if we struggle with mental health from time to time, there is nothing wrong with us: if we reinforce wrong beliefs about ourselves, we will only make things worse and more difficult.
Over the years, from my own experience and by studying nutrition, lifestyle, and psychology, I have identified some causes and patterns that were associated with mental health problems in myself and others. Sometimes these problems are a symptom of just one thing, other times they are a combination of several factors.
So what things can negatively affect our mental health and what can we do to fix these problems?
1. Body Causes and Patterns
Our body is our “avatar” — a game character or a protagonist — with whom we move through this world and along our life path. The body is the base and if it does not function optimally, many problems can occur — even problems with mental health.
Let’s explore what are the things that can negatively affect our mental health.
Stress
In the medical realm, stress is considered the culprit no. 1 for modern chronic diseases. The evolutionary mechanism of stress has served us for survival throughout human history, as it has allowed us to fight or flee from danger and thus enabled us to survive. In the modern world, however, this mechanism is constantly — chronically — activated and leaves negative health consequences - this is known as “chronic stress”.
If we are constantly under physical and or mental stress, at first symptoms of anxiety may appear, but if the stress continues to tax our body, eventually our adrenal glands will become so exhausted from pumping out stress hormones that we burn out and even get depressed.
“We get depressed because we’re tired, not the other way around.”~ Ben Angel
Inflammation in the body
Inflammation in the body is a major problem in today’s modern world: many new studies link too much inflammation in the body to both modern chronic diseases as well as mental health problems (source).
Inflammation in our body can be seen as fire which requires a lot of effort and resources to put out. The problem is not in the acute inflammation caused by e.g. physical activity: such inflammation acts on our body hermetically and makes it stronger. The problems arise from chronic inflammation that is caused by chronic stress, smoking, environmental toxins, chemicals, and most commonly modern foods and diets that involve too much fast food, processed carbohydrates, vegetable oils, and simple sugars.
Modern diet
One of the main sources that contribute to chronic inflammation in the body is the modern diet.
Today we are eating more and more industrially processed food and less and less natural whole food. The most common inflammatory foods in our modern diet are vegetable oils, industrial products, processed carbohydrates, and excess sugar. Vegetable oils (soybean oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, cotton oil, canola oil, peanut oil, etc.) are a big problem, as they contain huge amounts of unsaturated omega-6 fatty acids.
Evolutionarily humans have never consumed these oils in such vast quantities as we do today in our modern society. Vegetable oils began to replace animal fats in the 1960s with the hope of reducing mortality from heart disease, but the exact opposite has happened: since then, modern chronic diseases (heart disease, cancer, diabetes, mental illness) diseases…) are on the rise.
Many experts believe that the main reason behind these diseases is the inflammation in the body caused by these oils and other highly inflammatory foods.
Dietary intolerances
A big problem and stressor for our body are food intolerances. Intolerances in the body are caused by a lack of enzymes to digest a certain group of foods or as an autoimmune reaction to certain foods — both are major stressors for the body. In case of intolerance, the body cannot digest certain food which travels undigested through the body and causes problems. In the case of autoimmune problems, eating a certain food triggers a stress response and the immune reaction in the body: if the immune system is activated for too long or chronically, it begins to attack its own organs causing damage.
The most common food intolerances are intolerance to gluten, dairy products, eggs, nuts, plant toxins, and anti-nutrients.
Nutrient deficiency
Sometimes mental health problems might be related to a certain nutrient deficiency that occurs because of not enough varied diets, and extreme restrictive diets.
There are many anecdotes among vegans who have solved their problems with anxiety and depression after they had reintroduced animal products into their diet. This is mainly the case due to the lack of certain vitamins and nutrients that are found primarily or only in animal foods.
There are also studies that show that supplementation of amino acids carnitine and carnosine ease the intensity of depressive episodes (source 1, source 2). Carnitine and carnosine are only found in animal foods, which could explain mental health problems in some vegetarians and vegans.
Even with low-carb diets episodes of depression can occur if individuals are restricting carbs intake for too long and symptoms likely improve when carbs are re-included into the diet. This is probably due to tryptophan and serotonin: some individuals need carbohydrates in their diet to transport tryptophan through the blood-brain barrier: if our brains don’t get enough tryptophan, they will not get enough serotonin, the neurotransmitter “of happiness” which can result in depression.
Digestion and gut health
Our gut and brain are connected to each other via the vagus nerve, which is a kind of “two-way street”. Our brain can affect gut function and our gut can affect the brain. Have you ever had digestive problems after a stressful event or during a stressful period? That’s the simplest example of the connection between the two.
However, we are not aware that our gut can also have an important role in our well-being: if something in our digestive tract doesn’t function properly, we can experience with vast range of symptoms: fatigue, lack of energy, poor concentration and brain fog, even mental health problems.
More and more studies show that gut problems, indigestion, or a poor microbiome can cause anxiety and depression, and by curing these problems, mental health problems also improve or even disappear.
What can we do to improve our mental health?
“Awareness creates choice.”~ Ryan Munsey
Physical activity
A lot of studies demonstrate the positive effect of moderate daily physical activity on both our general well-being and mental health. Furthermore, moderate physical activity also lowers stress levels and contributes to better well-being. Playing sports and working out is often also very cheap. That’s why physical activity should be one of the first items on your to-do list to be checked off.
Rest and anti-stress activities
Although society dictates that we should always be in the “on mode”, always grinding and hustling, rest is crucial to our optimal functioning. If you suffer from high stress, start using relaxation techniques — meditation, breathing exercises, and visualization — which will help you in the short term to manage stress and anxiety, and make you mentally stronger and more resistant to stress and life challenges in the long run.
Extinguish the inflammation
Some studies have shown that people can improve or even cure their depressive symptoms just by switching from a standard American diet (SAD) to a healthier and wholesome diet (study). Even just the elimination of processed foods, vegetable oils, and processed sugar, can drastically help reduce inflammation and therefore improve mental health.
Some lifestyle choices also have a beneficial effect on inflammation. The use of saunas, cold showers, ice baths, and breathing techniques (e.g. the Wim Hof breathing technique, linked below) can drastically improve our general well-being.
Discover unknown food intolerances and remove them from the diet
Food intolerances are most easily detected with a good test for food intolerances and allergies, but they can also be discovered through a food diary and experimentation. For a few days remove a certain group of foods that you think are causing you problems and then re-include those foods and pay attention to how you feel. If you feel unwell after re-incorporation, it might be a sign that these foods don’t agree with you and it is better to avoid them.
Fasting
Both intermittent fasting and prolonged fasting can be very beneficial in reducing inflammation, and digestive problems and improving general well-being. Since during the fast body doesn’t have to digest new food, it can focus on recovery, renewal, and restoring the balance in the body. As a result, fasting can have a positive effect on mental health problems.
Supplements
Dietary supplements are a very useful tool for a wide variety of purposes and goals. Due to modern agriculture, which has robbed our soil of nutrients, modern food which is depleted of nutrients, and increased life stress, which consumes a huge amount of micronutrients, choosing the right supplements is essential for optimal functioning and dealing with various health problems.
Different supplements help with different problems:
For managing stress, choose a magnesium supplement since it has a calming effect on the body and adaptogens (e.g. ashwagandha) which help the body to adapt to stress.
To deal with fatigue and exhaustion, choose B vitamins, which are the main vitamins that contribute to the release of energy in the body.
To reduce the inflammation in the body, omega-3 fatty acids, curcumin, and CBD oil might help. Studies show that EPA, a fatty acid found in omega 3, in doses ranging from 200 to 2200 mg/day has been shown to be effective in the treatment of primary depression (source).
If you’re having gut problems, probiotics might be of great help since they help colonize the beneficial bacteria in the gut. Taking the Betaine HCl supplement and digestive enzyme supplement will help your body digest the food you consume more easily and better.
2. Seasonal causes
Late autumn and early winter are marked by seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which is a widespread problem worldwide. Experts estimate that the problem affects as many as 15% of the general population each year.
The disorder affects individuals differently and can manifest through a variety of symptoms — some can also experience symptoms of anxiety and depression.
What can we do to improve our mental health?
The symptoms of the changing seasons can be alleviated by a balanced diet, dietary supplements, and lifestyle: enough exposure to sunlight, vitamin D, vitamin C, tyrosine, and adaptogenic herbs are just a few of the ways to alleviate the unpleasant symptoms.
If you want to read more how to beat Seasonal Affective Disorder, check the article below.
3. Psychological causes and patterns
Since the field of psychology is huge and I don’t have enough competencies to talk a lot about it, I will highlight a few things that I find important and that I have noticed in myself.
We feel we don’t belong
Often, symptoms of anxiety and depression can occur if we feel like we don’t belong somewhere and/or feel like no one understands us.
False beliefs
The false beliefs we have about ourselves also worsen our mental health problems.
We need to realize that we are not our emotions and that the emotions we feel at a given moment do not define us. We have to be aware that there’s nothing wrong with us if we have problems with mental health from time to time.
On the other hand, if we believe that there is something wrong with us, we continue to strengthen this belief in ourselves which will only make things worse and more difficult.
Accumulated stress
Many mental health problems can stem from accumulated and repressed things: accumulated stress and repressed emotions.
Our body holds onto the memory of every stressor we ever experienced in our life: every inflammatory food we ever ate, every all-nighter we’ve ever pulled, every time we mentally overrode our fatigue and grit our teeth to complete a workout, project, or long fatiguing week at work. It’s all stored in our cellular and genetic memory.
All of the accumulated stress can then manifest itself in the present as the daily stress we experience, as our diminished ability to cope with current stress, as digestive problems, food intolerances, autoimmune disorders, and also as anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems.
Repressed and unprocessed emotions
But our body doesn’t “accumulate” just physical stressors: it also preserves and remembers all the mental, emotional, and psychological stuff that has affected us in life.
Negative and unprocessed emotions we have suppressed can cause various problems for both our overall well-being as well as our mental health.
Trauma
Mental health problems are also strongly affected by trauma, which dysregulate our nervous system. If we have traumas from the past stored in our body, we’ll be afraid, we’ll not sleep well, we’ll have immune disorders, we’ll be anxious and probably even depressed.
Also, the link between post-traumatic stress disorder — PTSD, a type of trauma — and depression is inevitable and is receiving increasing attention.
Social problems
This one what seen in the situation during the Covid crisis when there was a lot of uncertainty, fear, separation, and limitation in socializing and personal contact.
Humans are social beings and flourish among people and in the community so all of these things can also have a major impact on our mental health.
What can we do to improve our mental health?
Acceptance
We have to accept the fact that we are not our emotions and that there’s nothing wrong with us if we feel anxious or depressed.
Emotions are oftentimes just mental expressions of what is happening in our bodies and in the world around us. Sometimes it’s also quite useful that we don’t fight and resist those emotions: oftentimes the more we fight them and try to push them away, the more they will persist and fight back. Once we accept the fact that we are not our emotions, we can feel them and then let them go their own way.
Start asking better questions
We are neurologically designed to answer questions. Our brains do it constantly, usually, it’s done even without us knowing it, but we don’t realize that once we consciously ask a question ourselves, our brain has no choice but to find answers to that question. And oftentimes we do this the wrong way: we unconsciously ask the wrong questions that are counterproductive and will push us further down the negative slope.
So change the question from “What is wrong with me?” and “Why is this happening to me” to “Why did it come to this?” “What could be the reasons behind it?” “What can I learn from it?”
Defang false beliefs
Our beliefs about ourselves and the world around us will directly change the way we see and experience ourselves and the world we live in. The best way to defang these false and poisonous beliefs is through journaling and/or working with a therapist.
Once we have worked through those, we have to install new beliefs about ourselves and the world we live in: one of the best ways to do this is with affirmations.
Socializing
Try to hang out regularly with people who mean a lot to you and with whom you feel better.
4. Spiritual causes
Although this sounds a bit woo-woo and can be hard to believe, many healers around the world believe that man is a spiritual, energetic, and physical being. Every human being has his own soul which is connected to the body. and an imbalance between these levels can have consequences on physical and mental health.
With anxiety and depression, perhaps the soul is telling us that something is wrong and is urging us to change something. We may have deviated from our true life path. Perhaps our current mission is not in line with our life purpose and goal.
Energy in the body is created through proper nutrition and lifestyle, but there is another aspect of how energy is created that is not well understood and cannot be easily explained. It is a different kind of energy, Energy written with a capital “E”, which can’t be seen and can’t be measured, but it is extremely important for us and our well-being. This capital “E” Energy is created when we do things that make us happy, when we engage in things for which we feel a purpose and a mission, and when we live a life that is meant for us.
I can speak for myself: the times when I feel best are when I was working on things that really made me happy and I felt a strong sense of purpose and mission, when I feel that I am on the right track and I’m doing what I’m meant to do. Interestingly, even though I work harder, I have the feeling that I can do everything and I feel great because the energy that I put into work comes back to me, fills me, and pushes me forward.
However, when there is no such joy, sense of purpose, and mission in our lives, various problems can often occur: fatigue, lethargy, apathy and also mental health problems (anxiety and depression).
Interestingly, there are anecdotes and case studies from the times when women did not have such a position in society as they have today and mostly at home and doing household chores. Many of them felt depressed at the time, even though “they had everything they needed and did what was supposed to be their purpose, what men and society expected of them”. At the time, women felt deep guilt for feeling that way, but from today’s point of view, the fact that they felt this way we felt may not surprise us.
What can we do to improve our mental health?
Slow down and listen
Sometimes it helps to slow down and listen to what the soul wants to tell us. We often have all the answers and solutions to the questions and problems we face inside of us, we just have to learn to ask for them and hear the answers.
Many times slowing down, asking and answering, we find some answer to the problems we are facing. This “higher knowledge” can be accessed when the mind and our internal analyst calm down, which is achieved in peace and quiet, with deep relaxation, breathing techniques, and deep meditations.
Even various therapies by healers and therapists can often be very helpful with new insights and discoveries.
Find your purpose and mission
Experts are discovering that having a strong purpose and mission in life, that gives us momentum, motivation, and energy, is one of the best predictors of long life, good health, happiness, and a lower risk of death from all causes.
When searching for our own purpose and mission in life, we can rely on several indicators: what we like to do, where we feel “purpose”, which activities give us and return us the Energy, in which activities we achieve the flow, where we are unique and where can we influence others and the world around us.
All these are indicators that maybe something is part of our purpose and mission.
Psychedelic substances
In some cases, psychedelic substances help a lot to face our own illusions, demons, and fears and deal with them. They also help us connect to a true, infinite source of Energy, discover our purpose in life, and connect with Creation and forces greater than ourselves.
There are also more and more studies discovering that psilocybin therapy and MDMA therapy are much more effective than other traditional psychotherapeutic therapies and pharmacological drugs in treating a variety of mental health problems: anxiety, depression, bipolarity, PTSD, suicidal tendencies, and so on.
Here I would point out to not try them yourself alone, since they can be dangerous and are often illegal. This point is for informational purposes only.
When I think back, my hardest days were due to a combination of all the above factors: physical fatigue, digestive problems, accumulated stress and unprocessed emotions, and the feeling that I didn’t belong somewhere and that my life wasn’t going in the direction I was hoping and wishing.
On days like that, it’s hard to muster the motivation and hope that things will get better, but the famous saying goes:
Sometimes I just need a good night’s sleep. Sometimes I have to talk and express my struggle to someone close to me. Sometimes I have to go out of my head and do a good workout. Sometimes I have to take a day completely off and allow all the repressed stress and repressed emotions to come out. Sometimes I just have to wait for my digestion to do its job and discard the things that were causing me problems.
As I have mentioned several times throughout the article, the key is not to let dark days and mental health problems define us. We are not our emotions, we are not our thoughts and feelings.
Just because we feel depressed doesn’t mean we are depressed and that there’s anything wrong with us. Emotions are like weather: they come and go.
Be aware of how you’re feeling. When you feel unwell, try to figure out why did it happened, take it slowly, and don’t fight back the emotions because they might turn even more rebellious against us.
Modern life can also be very stressful at times: in case it is so severe that you don’t see yourself out, then please, definitely visit a professional who will be able to help you.
Very good, very thorough. I’d add enforced darkness to possible remedies--14 hours per night has been clinically proven to restore balance in bipolar (and other disorders). For example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9611672/