One

Stress causes cortisol to rise, and high levels of cortisol affect brain function. As you know, we all have stress, stress is normal, some of us deal with it better than others. Some times of our lives are way too stressful. Too much stress causes problems, and so can too little. So self care, giving yourself breaks. Investing time in your relationships, allowing time for play, and laughter. Giving yourself down time and allowing for adequate sleep. These will all help keep you well. If you can’t destress adequately on your own, there are herbs for that, seek help.

Two

It’s understandable to reach out for numbing when we’re down in the dumps. Ciggies, alcohol, caffeine , drugs, junky food, sugar, fried things, too much TV, no exercise.
These things cause inflammation in your body- including -your brain in varying degrees. Some of these things cause neurotransmitter imbalances that lead to depression. The subtle inflammation in your brain degrades your mental health.

When in the habit of excessive use of any of these numbing behaviours your mental health suffers. All the discomfort of addiction is caused by the withdrawal of the substance your using. Continuing to use perpetuates the discomfort. The only way to end it is to break the cycle and sit through the discomfort.

Three

It’s been conventional to treat mental illness purely as a physical imbalance in brain chemicals. Patients are treated with medication, a bottle of pills … or several.. .depending on how ’serious’ your mental illness is, and sent home.

But this isn’t working, consistent data from scientific reviews shows that targeting one or two neurotransmitters with pharmaceuticals often fails to provide overall meaningful clinical efficacy. Enormous amounts of randomised controlled trials have been used to study antidepressants, with the majority demonstrating only moderate superiority compared to placebo, leaving many patients experiencing treatment-resistant depression. Medication helps, no doubt it helps, and many people really do need their meds to function from day to day. But while benefitting from the ‘balance’ found through the meds, patients need healing. Mental illness is every bit spiritual as it is physical I have no doubt. And we are severely doing a disservice on the spiritual healing side of things for the average mental health patient in our country. They are given a bottle of pills and left to their own devices. - And this means not even assisting to get in to see a psychologist. The psychiatrist doesn’t do any cognitive therapy anymore, they just prescribe in 15 minute appointments.

Four

You need a good healthy gut and a solid nutritional profile to be mentally well. Most of your serotonin - aka happy juice - is made in your gut. You need a complete amino acid profile, healthy fats, some nourishing carbohydrates and all the colours of the rainbow for minerals and vitamins to keep your neurotransmitters firing happy. You need to eat well to be well. If you are deplete you are not going to be as well as you could be. There are a range of nutritional supplements and herbs that can help you get to where you need to be, so book a naturopathic appointment for help to make some health goals, get some investigations done and receive evidence based guidance on what you need to eat and take.