Women's Mental Health: Change Your Body to Change Your Mind

Your body and mind are connected.

The path to women's mental health and wellness is a body-mind partnership. Understanding how your body influences mental health and what you can do to re-establish and strengthen the body's natural balance is a step towards mental and emotional well-being.

Choose to use your body to create mental health.

1. I chose to grow more food and buy and eat the best food available within my means. My diet became more organic, eliminating some toxins my body (and yours) was never designed to tolerate.
2. I started meditating and doing yoga regularly. I found that relaxation is a key to both mental and physical health. I chose practices in which I was an active participant in evoking relaxation in my body--not something mindless like vegging out on the couch.
3. I took steps to get more connected with people in my life at work and in my neighborhood--and I added gardening to my solitary pursuits. Gardening grounded me and provided an outlet for my creativity while adding physical labor and its calming effect.

   It's not ALL in your mind.

   In her book Depression Free, Naturally, Joan Mathews Larson (1999)reminds us that there is a new science of health and mental health.

   Fortunately, in the last few decades, biochemists and medical doctors have begun to pinpoint scientific explanations for behavior that used to be labeled "psychological". These researchers have noticed that:

   • many "psychological" symptoms often cluster in families
   • certain physical changes in the brain (and body) can create mayhem emotionally.
   • an internal invasion of yeast parasites may create full-blown mental and physical illness.
   • food intolerances strongly affect our emotions.
   • airborn chemicals can alter our brains.
   • angry outbursts are predictable from a brain in a chemical state of high arousal all the time.
   • dozens of biochemical mistakes can result in bleak depression or anxiety.

   All of these are fixable, if we can identify them! (p.14-15)

   Give your brain what it needs to be well balanced.

   Women's mental health advocate, Dr. Jaon Mathews Larson warns us that:

   Modern brains are deprived of essential nutrients and it's driving us crazy! If you are feeling emotionally uncontrollable and/or physically exhausted, nutrient deprivation may be the cause. Research in Canada and the United States has shown that "emotional symptoms develop as a direct result of the unavailability of brain and body chemicals. These important chemicals create our stable emotions, behaviors, thoughts, and sanity." (Larson, Depression Free, Naturally, 1999, p. 17)

   Please grasp this one concept: there are natural substances in our bodies that need to exist in proper concentrations (some unique to each of us as individuals)and without them we cannot sustain health physical life and emotional balance.

   Sanity and well-being are influenced by vitamins, minerals, amino acids, essential fatty acids, endorphins, neurotransmitters.

   Choose to support your brain with natural substances.

   Many women find that drugs (pharmaceuticals) relieve their suffering and save them from lives of misery. Pharmaceutical drugs may buy you time to find alternative sources of relief.

   Many women also find that drugs meant to treat women's mental health conditions also poison them. Side effects are not only possible but usual and some are prescribed in doses close to lethal levels. Many people are treated by doctors who then prescribe more drugs to deal with the side effects and increase the odds that the interaction of drugs will be toxic and/or addictive.

   Natural substances that belong in our bodies have remarkably low toxicity. They seldom cause the kind of trouble drugs can cause--and often counteract the physical destruction that we experience as side effects.

   Take charge of your own mental health.

   What can you do if you are miserable, suffering from depression or anxiety and unstable thoughts and emotions?
   1. Find health care professionals who take the time to understand you biochemically. They will perform blood tests and other diagnostic procedures--and explain the results and implications to you in plain English. They will draw diagrams and pictures to make sense of the data and treatment.
   2. You may need pharmaceutical drugs to relieve your suffering. Work with a doctor who will closely monitor you and tailor the drugs chosen and the dose to you as an individual--a doctor who takes a keen interest in women's mental health and the specific needs of women.
   3. Support yourself and your mental and emotional balance with natural substances that will aid your body in its natural function, bringing your brain chemistry into balance naturally.