The Very Best Tips to Look After Your Mental Health: Best of 2019 #88
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee presents a "greatest hits" of mental health tips from experts like Natasha Devon, Rahul Jandial, Tara Swart, Felice Jacka, and Matt Haig. This episode focuses on practical, 5-minute daily interventions for mind, body, and emotional well-being, drawing from his new book "Feel Better in 5."
Deep Dive Analysis
10 Topic Outline
Introduction to Mental Health and Episode Structure
Understanding Mental Fitness and Self-Care
The Power of Meditative Breathing on Brainwaves
The Importance of Thoughts and Brain-Body Connection
Effective Journaling for Processing Thoughts and Emotions
Dietary Interventions for Improving Mood and Depression
Navigating the Overload of a 'Nervous Planet'
Reclaiming Time and Being Present in Life
The Importance of Physical Activity and Sleep for Mental Health
Disconnecting to Reconnect in the Modern World
5 Key Concepts
Mental Fitness
Mental fitness is the practice of ring-fencing time each day to restore one's chemical balance, similar to how physical exercise is prioritized for physical health. It involves self-care activities that are not commoditized but genuinely help maintain mental well-being.
Fractals in Nature
Fractals are geometric shapes found exclusively in nature, such as in trees, grass, coastlines, and lakes. Scientific studies have shown that observing fractals can lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in humans, indicating a hardwired connection to nature's calming effects.
Meditative Breathing
Meditative breathing is a powerful technique to calm anxiety and stress by deliberately controlling breath patterns. It works by influencing the vagal nerve, which connects the brain to the lungs and heart, thereby calming electrical activity in the brain, similar to a vagal nerve stimulator.
Brain-Body Connection
This concept highlights the inseparable link between our thoughts, emotions, and physical state. Psychological factors like confidence or anxiety directly affect nerves and hormones in the body, while physical states like being cold, hungry, or tired impact the quality of our thinking.
Nervous Planet
A 'nervous planet' describes the modern world where individuals feel stressed due to the 21st-century pace of living and an overloaded culture. It also refers to humanity's interconnectedness, where emotions and psychology influence each other on a wider scale than ever before, often leading to collective mental strain.
7 Questions Answered
Mental fitness is about proactively taking time daily to restore your chemical balance, much like physical exercise. While mental illness refers to specific conditions, mental fitness is the vertical axis of well-being, focusing on preventative self-care.
Meditative breathing works by sending signals through the vagal nerve, which connects the brain to the heart and lungs, to calm electrical activity in the brain. Studies show deep, slow, deliberate breathing can shift brainwaves closer to a calmer alpha state.
Our thoughts are crucial because physical factors like sleep, diet, and exercise primarily improve the quality of our thoughts, enabling clearer thinking, better job performance, and stronger relationships. The brain-body connection means our mental state directly influences our physical health and vice versa.
To start journaling, one can use a blank diary and begin by recording daily events and how they felt. Over time, it evolves into exploring emotions, intuitions, and hypothetical future actions, serving as a tool to objectively sort thoughts and create a narrative for personal growth.
Yes, research like the SMILES trial has shown that dietary changes can significantly improve symptoms of major clinical depression. Participants who received dietary support experienced a much higher rate of remission compared to those receiving social support.
Living on a 'nervous planet' means experiencing stress due to the accelerated pace of 21st-century life and an overwhelming culture. It also highlights how our interconnectedness amplifies collective emotions and psychology, leading to widespread mental strain.
The feeling of a time shortage isn't due to a lack of hours but an 'overload of everything else' and a societal conditioning to constantly think about the future rather than appreciating the present. This forward momentum, driven by accumulation and external validation, prevents people from feeling 'enough' in the moment.
17 Actionable Insights
1. Adopt a Whole Foods Diet for Mood
Make gradual positive dietary changes over three months, such as swapping refined carbs for whole grains, increasing vegetables, fruit, and legumes, adding nuts, seeds, fish, and olive oil, while reducing junk and processed foods, to significantly improve symptoms of depression.
2. Ring-fence Daily Mental Fitness Time
Dedicate specific time each day for ‘self-care’ to restore your chemical balance, as this is crucial for mental fitness and countering a culture that fetishizes overworking.
3. Practice Meditative Breathing for Anxiety
Use meditative breathing to calm anxiety, especially before stressful tasks or when feeling overwhelmed, as it’s a powerful way to quell the ‘anxiety storm’ in your brain by calming electrical signals.
4. Journal for Emotional Processing & Future Decisions
Use journaling to process emotions, reflect on interactions, and plan future responses, allowing you to sort out thoughts, gain objectivity, and make better decisions by getting them out of your head and onto paper.
5. Take Charge of Your Life Choices
Avoid living life on autopilot by stopping and stepping back to recognize and exercise your choices in what you tolerate and how you respond to life, rather than letting life just happen to you.
6. Externalize Anxious Thoughts to Reduce Stress
Reduce stress by externalizing anxieties or negative thoughts through writing them down or speaking them aloud to a trusted person, preventing them from building up and releasing them from your brain-body system.
7. Cultivate a Positive Mindset
Actively work on changing your mindset and thoughts, as this can make it easier to implement physical health practices and improve overall brain function and relationships.
8. Practice Present Moment Gratitude
Counter the societal tendency to constantly focus on future accumulation by practicing gratitude and appreciating what you have in the present moment, rather than always striving for more.
9. Recognize Your Present Sufficiency
Challenge the conditioning that you are ’not quite enough’ in the present moment and that you always need to become a ’next version’ of yourself, by recognizing that everything you need is already within you.
10. Engage in Physical Exercise for Mental Health
Engage in physical exercise like running to help manage mental health issues such as panic attacks, as the physical symptoms of exercise can provide a sense of control over similar sensations experienced during panic.
11. Unplug and Just Be
Create dedicated time and space to unplug from work, worries, and external demands, allowing yourself to simply ‘be’ through activities like yoga, reading, or running, to foster mental well-being.
12. Exercise Outdoors for Enhanced Mood
Exercise outdoors, preferably in nature, as it magnifies endorphin production, lowers stress hormone cortisol, and can shift your mindset to celebrating your body rather than punishing it.
13. Practice Yoga for Anxiety & Self-Care
Incorporate yoga into your routine, not only for physical benefits but also for its positive impact on anxiety, by providing dedicated self-care time and encouraging slower breathing.
14. Create Space Away Through Exercise
Use physical activities like running to create a personal space away from people, work, and other distractions, which can be a significant aid for mental well-being and a sense of control.
15. Start Journaling Daily Events
Begin journaling by simply recording what happened to you each day, which can help you identify patterns, understand your mood triggers, and learn about yourself.
16. 4-Count Inhale, Hold, Slow Exhale
Practice deep, slow, deliberate breathing by inhaling for a count of four, holding for a count of three, and then slowly releasing, especially before engaging in a stress-provoking task, to calm brain electricity.
17. Track Progress to Reinforce New Habits
To make new behaviors stick in the long run, track your progress and celebrate your successes, as this is a key principle for habit formation and positive reinforcement.
6 Key Quotes
What all self-care is, is ring fencing time every day to restore your chemical balance. And that's what mental fitness is.
Natasha Devon
It is a resource available to you that has been harnessed for millennia. And then now you have crazy brain surgeons providing you the electrical proof if you're a skeptical kind of person. To me, that's magic.
Rahul Jandial
But if you think about it, if we stop and step back, we have a lot more choice in what we tolerate and what happens to us and the choices that we make than we necessarily think, because it's easy to just sort of go on autopilot.
Tara Swart
And there was just this massive difference in the depression scores after three months. And we were just completely blown away.
Professor Felice Jacka
The problem clearly is that isn't that we have a shortage of time. It's more that we have an overload of everything else.
Matt Haig
And we're not encouraged to just be grateful in the moment for what we have or know how to appreciate what we have.
Matt Haig
3 Protocols
Meditative Breathing for Anxiety
Rahul Jandial- Breathe in for a count of four.
- Hold your breath for a count of three, three, two, one (a couple of counts).
- Slowly release your breath.
Journaling for Self-Reflection
Tara Swart- Get a blank diary or journal.
- Start by writing down what happened to you today.
- Over time, delve into recording emotions and intuitions.
- Use the journal to sort out thoughts, get them out of your head, and look at them objectively.
- Create a narrative that can be reviewed to make different decisions for the future.
Dietary Intervention for Depression (SMILES Trial)
Professor Felice Jacka- Swap refined carbs (white flour, white bread) for whole grain versions.
- Increase the amount of vegetables and fruit in your diet.
- Start eating more legumes (lentils, chickpeas).
- Include nuts and seeds in your diet.
- Eat fish regularly.
- Incorporate olive oil into your diet.
- Reduce the intake of junk and processed foods, sweets, cakes, chocolate, and fried foods.