A Good Diet, Hugs and Rest

As the title of this blog post presents, there is a very simple self-analysis to complete in order to increase awareness of the sneaky factors that create an environment where mental health issues thrive.

FACTOR 1 - A Good Diet: I have touched on the aspect of nutritional mental health in previous posts and nutritional interventions for mental health issues remain a passion of mine. Simply put; you are a system/machine and just like any other machine when given the most high quality fuel you can expect the best performance. The opposite is also true, when you feed your body a diet poor in nutritional integrity then you can not expect to operate at your best or even operate at half capacity in some cases.

FACTOR 2 - Hugs: This is not a prescription to go on a forced hugging spree by any means (PLEASE DON'T). However, increasing your connection to a community (Crossfit, faith communities, yoga, podcasts, book clubs, poker nights, etc.) is one of the most effective interventions in the battle against addiction, depression, anxiety and other mental health pathology. Sidenote, hugs are great and you should go get some in a non-forced respectful manner.

FACTOR 3 - Rest: This is the big one and being able to increase one's commitment to healthy sleep schedule management can be one of the most positively transformative practices you can do. The confusion here can be authentic rest versus a numbing/dissociation behavior. Spending 3 hours of social media before you fall asleep is not rest, that actually stimulates the body and has the ability to reinforce anxiety and depression. Having a few drinks or smoking some cannabis might feel like rest but it is  actually dissociating you and numbing you from real relaxation, emotional processing and genuine authentic rest. So turn off the phone and the laptop 90 minutes before you go to bed and practice real rest. This is not easy, but neither is being stressed out all the time.