A. Lose the sense of shame and accept your imperfect self
B.? Medication and psychotherapy, both of them
C.? Adopt a healthy lifestyle
I guess many of my friends didn't choose C, but in fact, life behaviors are closely linked to our physical and mental health, and the treatment of disease.
Professor Jia Hongxiao of the psychiatry department at Beijing Settlement Hospital, a physician contracted by Good Mood, shared this story:
One of his patients, whose condition was usually under very good control, had a recurring problem as soon as he entered the fall, and was found to have eaten too many grapes every day.
You see, the impact of lifestyle on the treatment of disease is not quite big?
Currently, many guidelines are beginning to emphasize the importance of a healthy lifestyle in the prevention and treatment of mental disorders.
Clinical practice guidelines for mood disorders, such as those from the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, suggest that improving the four lifestyle factors of diet, exercise, sleep, and smoking should be included as step zero in the treatment of psychiatric disorders, and need to be addressed before medication and/or psychotherapy can be initiated.
So, if you want to get better faster, you must keep these 20 words in mind~
01
Eat a healthy diet
Did you know? What we eat every day, how much of each food we eat and its share of the diet can affect the onset, severity and duration of mental illness.
To give you an example: the high-fat, high-calorie dietary patterns of the West increase the risk of depression and anxiety, while the Mediterranean diet has a protective effect on mental health and can reduce symptoms and improve cognitive functioning in people with mental illness.
Some of you are asking: what is the Mediterranean diet?
It is a dietary pattern in which plant foods such as vegetables, fruits, fish, grains and cereals, legumes, and olive oil make up the majority of the diet, and you can understand how to eat this diet by looking at the chart below
(Schematic of the Mediterranean Diet)
Through this picture, we can understand that the requirements of the Mediterranean diet are relatively simple: eat more plant foods and fish, and eat dairy products in moderation. fish, dairy products and white meat in moderation, and less red meat such as pork and beef and sweets.
Such a diet provides a variety of nutrients, which then interact with each other to achieve anti-inflammatory effects and improve mood and cognition.
Additionally, plant foods rich in dietary fiber have a significant impact on gut flora, which has been shown to be linked to the etiology of a number of psychiatric disorders, and which can affect a person's mood and state.
So is the Mediterranean diet suitable for Chinese people?
It is a very healthy diet, in the world's leading dietary rankings "U.S. News & World Report" (U.S. News & World Report), has been for five consecutive years, "the overall best diet" champion, you can according to their own reality to DIY!
02
Keep moving
When you're sick, people with mental illness tend to be emotionally unavailable, uninterested in anything, socially avoidant, and cognitively impaired, so they're more likely to be sedentary.
What does this mean? People with mental illness are more likely to develop physical illnesses such as osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease, as well as psychological and behavioral problems such as depression and substance abuse, making it more difficult to treat their illnesses.
In contrast, if people with mental illness can exercise daily, the benefits are multidimensional:
●? For people with depression/anxiety/bipolar affective disorder, exercise can reduce the severity and duration of emotional symptom episodes. The European Psychiatric Association guidelines on physical activity in mental illness even suggest that exercise therapy could be used as a first-line treatment for mild to moderate depression;
●? For patients with schizophrenia, exercise can improve mental symptoms, cognitive function, and reduce the metabolic side effects of medication, such as weight gain;
In short, exercise is a "good medicine" for preventing and treating mental illnesses, so even if people with mental illnesses are reluctant to do so, we still need to find a way to get them to
We can prefer teamwork-based popular activities, such as square dancing and basketball, followed by cycling, aerobics and gym exercises.
If the patient really does not want to do sports, it is good to pull him together for a walk every day. We have to remember 6 words: moving is better than not moving.
Control the time and frequency of exercise:
Exercise time and mental health is an inverted "U" relationship, 3-5 days a week, once a day, a 45-minute exercise is the best frequency.
If you exercise too long each time, or too many times a month, you will not only fail to gain mental health, but also bring negative effects.
Here we also want to emphasize that although exercise can be a "cure", it can only be used as an adjunct to treatment, and should not be used as a direct substitute for medication.
03
Sleep should be taken into account
Some of our friends have lamented the fact that, since their illnesses, a good night's sleep has become a "luxury" for me. "The first thing you need to do is to get a good night's sleep, and that's what you're going to do.
In fact, sleep disorders are common to many patients with mental illness.
Some data show that the prevalence of insomnia in patients with mental illness is as high as 47%, much higher than the prevalence of 10% to 15% of the normal population.
The reasons for this are twofold:
One is that mental illness itself can disrupt the quality of sleep, and psychiatric symptoms can also amplify or exacerbate sleep disorders;
The second is that some psychiatric medications can also induce sleep disorders, such as monoamine oxidase inhibitors, antidepressants such as 5-HT reuptake inhibitors, and so on. (ps: the degree of impact varies from person to person, don't choke on it.)
Sleep disorders not only significantly increase the risk of depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, alcohol abuse, and psychotic symptoms, but also allow mental illness patients to appear persistent and negative thoughts, reduce patient compliance with treatment, affect the effectiveness of the treatment, and even let the patient go on the suicide of the desperation.
Since long-term medication has certain side effects, is there a treatment that is effective and has fewer side effects?
You don't say, there is!
It is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I), which is a multi-dimensional psychological intervention that can solve the problems of difficulty in falling asleep, waking up easily in the middle of the night, short sleep, poor sleep quality, etc. It can also correct irrational beliefs about sleep, and reduce the impairment of daytime functioning.
What's more, it is also highly effective. Some studies have shown that CBT-I's short-term therapeutic efficacy is comparable to that of medication, and its long-term therapeutic efficacy is superior to that of medication.
It is currently used as a first-line treatment option for chronic insomnia disorders by a number of authorities, including the European Sleep Research Society. When this approach alone does not work, it is then up to the doctor to assess whether to use medication.
04
Quit smoking before it's too late
People with mental illness are also at high risk of smoking. According to some data, there are about 1.25 billion smokers in the world. Among them, people who are mentally depressed or emotionally anxious are twice as likely to smoke as healthy people, and 88% of people with mental illnesses such as schizophrenia are smokers.
Are you an older smoker?
If not, congratulations, one less stumbling block on the road to recovery; if so, I urge you to put out the cigarettes in your hands, because smoking really does bring a lot of adverse effects to mental illness.
●? Smoking will aggravate the positive symptoms of schizophrenic patients such as hallucinations and delusions, and destroy the cognitive function of psychiatric patients, especially the memory function.
●? Smoking accelerates the clearance of certain psychiatric medications from the bloodstream, and doctors will inevitably need to increase the dosage of medications in order to better control the condition, which increases the chance of adverse drug reactions.
●? Smoking is one of the leading causes of a 15-30 year reduction in life expectancy for people with severe mental disorders.
So, if you are still not addicted to smoking, hurry up to distract yourself from cigarettes through some methods, such as increasing outdoor exercise or developing other hobbies appropriately.
Dr. Holliday reminds you that if you are addicted to cigarettes, and you don't want to smoke them, then you should seek help from your doctor.
A lot of general hospitals have smoking cessation clinics, and quitting under the guidance of a professional physician can greatly improve the success rate of quitting, and can minimize the withdrawal reaction.
References:
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[7] https://oldwayspt.org/traditional-diets/mediterranean-diet
(Article image source: Photo Gallery)