Physician Assistant Elizabeth Hedlund discusses healthy ways to help improve your mood.

I’ve often wondered if the “winter blues” are related to vitamin D deficiency. Knowing the importance of vitamin D for healthy mood, combined with the long dark winters of Minnesota and the difficulty we have in naturally making vitamin D (even in summer months), I suspect that low vitamin D levels contribute to a depressed mood and seasonal affective disorder.

For most people, excluding those with severe mental health diagnoses such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, our moods can often be simplified from complex descriptions down to a basic level anxiety and depression. Stemming from depressed and anxious moods, sprout feelings of irritability, anger, sadness, apathy, despair, hopelessness, agitation, and worry. Physical feelings will also occur such as fatigue, body aches, nausea, diarrhea, racing heartbeat, shortness of breath, dizziness, or sweating.

Moods are rooted in multiple causes including genetics, hormones, nutrition, activity levels, sleep, and life stressors. Often, there is more than one cause at any given time, which indicates that we need to consistently work on following healthy lifestyle behaviors most of the time.

Fortunately, there are many tools that we have to help us through difficult moods, whether it be just 1-2 tools, or a whole toolbox full. Several of these tools are noted here:

Spirituality

We are human beings created in the likeness of God. In whole, we are physical, mental, emotional and spiritual beings. As Christians, our identity is in Jesus Christ and this leads us to a life of repentance, trusting in His death on the cross to save us from our personal sins, and ultimately gives us an eternal hope for life in Heaven. Our faith and hope are of utmost importance to our lives on earth. If we only look inside ourselves, we will never succeed. Spend time with God.

Professionals

Therapists, social workers, counselors, pastors. Sometimes we need people that have specific training to listen, teach coping skills, and help to change destructive thoughts-feelings-actions. The Tapping Solution techniques have been helpful for many and may be something to help you too. 

Nutrition

Healthy fats and proteins from whole foods are critical for a healthy mood. Avoid trans fats and processed foods when you can. Purchase the full fat variety of foods (ie: cheese, cream, butter, yogurt, etc). Avoid sugar and caffeine rollercoasters. Plus, there are a variety of supplements, including those called adaptogens, that may be helpful.

Sleep

Children and teenagers need 9-10 hours of sleep every night, while adults generally need 7-9 hours.  Quality of sleep is also important so if you are in bed for 10 hours and still wake up feeling tired, something is wrong.

Activity

Physical movement helps our body to reduce stress, balance hormones, and increase beneficial neurotransmitters. Just 10-15 minutes of exercise 1-2 times daily can help!

Environment

My grandmother used to sing a song, ”Let the sunshine in, face it with a grin, open up your heart and let the sunshine in!” Sometimes we need to just open the curtains, but often we need to go outside. Outside, we can focus on the surroundings, things to see, hear, smell, and feel. Take some deep breaths. For some, music is helpful, other times it’s journaling or painting. Sometimes, changing your environment means that you need to remove yourself from an unhealthy situation or people.

Medications

Prescriptions can be good tools, whether for short term or long term. This could be a specific anxiety or depression medication, or something to help with sleep, or just something to take in the moment when it feels like the world is crashing down.  

Deal with Stress Safely

Develop safe ways to deal with stress. Excessively using substances such as alcohol, marijuana, or cigarettes, often just leads to complications and more problems. We will always have stressors in our lives, unexpected changes or challenges, hurdles, and sometimes just really hard stuff that we need to work through. One tool that I’ve taught to many patients starts with identifying the chain reaction: THINK => FEEL => ACT.

Our attitudes and thoughts will direct our feelings, which then will direct our actions. For example, if someone is afraid of spiders, they may have all sorts of creepy crawly thoughts about spiders and what spiders might do to them, thus inflicting an intense fear or strong dislike for this 8-legged arachnid.  Because of these thoughts about spiders, the feelings that arise when they think of a spider or see a spider includes fear, worry, heart racing, sweaty palms, stomach turning, and racing thoughts. The action following the feelings will often be a fight-flight-freeze response. This response might be suddenly stomping on the spider, running away or climbing on the table, or maybe screaming for help from someone else because they find that their feet are suddenly cemented to the floor. 

So then, what do we do? We start by changing the way we think about spiders, then this can move forward to having different feelings about spiders, and ultimately a different action toward spiders. This example is incredibly simplified but can be applied to multiple thoughts and attitudes in our life.  However, please know that sometimes our deepest thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors are rooted in complex histories of abuse or trauma. These situations almost always require the help of a professional therapist, as well as supportive friends and family, and should not be taken lightly.

So… if you are wondering about your moods, and what you can do to balance them, improve them, or just get through a difficult season of life, please schedule an appointment with your health care practitioner. We can discuss and guide you in finding the tools that you need today.

Soli Deo Gloria!