Mental Health Week 9-17 October 2021

Mental health & your gut

Mentally well people are positive, self-assured and happy. They are in control of their thoughts, emotions and behaviour. This enables them to handle challenges, build strong relationships and enjoy life.

Sustaining mental health requires time and effort. The more you invest in your mental health, the stronger it will become. There is now overwhelming research and evidence supporting the importance of gut health on the state of our mental health, a factor many of us often neglect.

Our gut is sensitive to emotions like anger, anxiety, sadness, and joy – and your brain can react to signals from your stomach. 
The gut or “second brain” can operate on its own and communicates back and forth with your actual brain. There is a strong relationship between having mental health problems and having gastrointestinal symptoms. On the flip side, it has been shown that having anxiety and depression can cause changes in the gut microbiome because of what happens in the body when it has a stress response.

There are many ways you can enhance your mood, build resilience, and eat a balanced and nutritious diet – so that your gut and your brain can be healthy.

Stay connected and view our daily tips for keeping your mental health in tip-top shape.

Community

MENTAL HEALTH TIP

Helping others isn't just good for the people you're helping; it's good for you too. Helping someone can help with your self-esteem and make you feel good about your place in the world. Feeling as though you're part of a community is a really important part of your mental health. You could try volunteering for a local charity, or just being neighbourly.

Most people would agree that giving to others is a wonderful idea. It’s a pro-social behavior that shows kindness, empathy and support. However, there’s also more to it than that; when you give to others it can have a direct positive effect on your own mental wellbeing.

Small acts of kindness towards other people, or larger acts – such as volunteering in your local community – can give you a sense of purpose and make you feel happier and more satisfied about life. Sometimes we think of wellbeing in terms of what we have: Our comfort, our income, our home, our car, our job. But evidence shows that what we do and the way we think actually have a far more meaningful impact on mental health and wellbeing.

Positive mental wellbeing means feeling good – about yourself and the world around you – and being able to get on with life in the way you want.
Helping and supporting other people, and working with others towards a shared goal, has been shown to be good for our mental health and wellbeing. To give to others is one of the five evidence-based steps we can all take to improve our mental wellbeing.

NUTRITION TIP

Choosing healthier meals, snacks and drinks can be more challenging when you’re away from home. Sometimes the available choices are only those higher in saturated fat, added sugars, added salt and kilojoules.

A few simple tips can make it a whole lot easier to eat a variety from the five food groups and limit discretionary foods and extra kilojoules.
Think about what food and drink might be available and plan what you will have.
Consider taking some food and water with you.

Takeaway food

• Choose bread based options like wraps, kebabs, souvlaki, hamburgers.
• Avoid deep fried and pastry options.
• Include extra vegetables and salad.
• Choose smaller portions or share with someone else and add a green salad to reduce the kilojoules of the meal.
• Limit high fat, high salt sauces and toppings like cheese, fatty meats and mayonnaise (ask for less).
• Drink plenty of water.
• Don’t upsize unless it’s with a side salad.

At restaurants

• Consider asking for an entrée sized or a smaller serve.
• Think about asking for extra vegetables or salad with your meal. This is especially good for limiting kilojoules when eating out. A salad can be a good entrée choice if others are ordering entrees.
• Ask for dressings and sauces to come separately so you can add a smaller amount yourself and save on fat and kilojoules.
• Skip the chips and go easy on the bread.
• Avoid large serves of pasta and rice dishes with few vegetables and high fat sauces.
• Choose a lean piece of meat, skinless chicken or seafood
• Avoid fried, battered and crumbed choices; instead choose steamed, pan fried, braised, poached, baked, roasted or grilled.
• You can always try asking for a dish to be prepared as you would prefer. Most restaurants would like to please you where they can.
• Consider splitting a meal with a friend and asking for salad on the side if you are trying to limit your kilojoules.
• Finish with fruit or share a dessert if you want one. Sometimes you only need a taste of a delicious dessert to be satisfied.

Drinks

• Satisfy your thirst with water before you go out
• Drink water with your meal
• Limit alcohol and alternate drinks with water
• Think about when you most enjoy an alcoholic drink, for example, before or during a meal, and limit your drink to that time.
   

Learning

MENTAL HEALTH TIP

Learning new skills is always a useful endeavour, however, what we like best about it here is the positive effect it can have on your wellbeing. Also that it doesn’t have to be super complicated! Learning doesn’t only mean enrolling in courses or getting formal qualifications. There are myriad ways to bring learning into your life.

Learning has been shown in the research to help improve and maintain our well-being. It can boost self-confidence and self-esteem, help build a sense of purpose, and foster connection with others. People engaged in learning report feeling better about themselves and a greater ability to cope with stress, as well as feeling more self-confidence, hope and purpose.

Some scientists think that setting goals and working towards them plays an important role in the way learning influences well-being. Setting targets and hitting them can create positive feelings of accomplishment and achievement, and can also be motivating to do more.

NUTRITION TIP

Food labels can be very confusing and tricky to understand. Often we don’t have the time to spend trying to work out what they mean and how to use them.

While food labels can carry many different types of information, the main things to look at when choosing healthy food are the Nutrition Information Panel.

The Nutrition Information Panel on a food label offers the simplest and easiest way to choose foods with less saturated fat, salt (sodium), added sugars and kilojoules, and more fibre. It can also be used to decide how large one serve of a food group choice or discretionary food would be and whether it’s worth the kilojoules. 

Read more about understanding food labels here.

Connections

MENTAL HEATH TIP

Make an effort to maintain good relationships and talk to people whenever you get the chance. Having friends is important not just for your self-esteem, but also for providing support when you're not feeling too great. 

When it comes to wellbeing, other people matter. Evidence shows that connecting with others and forming good relationships – with family, friends and the wider community – are important for mental wellbeing.

Relationships are important for wellbeing

Building stronger, broader social connections in your life can increase your feelings of happiness and self-worth. Many of us would like to spend more time with people who are important to us. Sometimes, having a busy life can make this difficult.

But evidence shows that our relationships affect both our physical health and mental wellbeing. Mental wellbeing means feeling good – about ourselves and the world around us – and functioning well.

Nurturing our relationships can help us feel happier and more secure, and can give us a greater sense of purpose. That makes investing in relationships one of the five evidence-based steps we can all take to improve our mental wellbeing. 

NUTRITION TIP

Eat with other people - not TV

We also know that people who eat with others and eat at the dining table, are more likely to eat regularly and eat well than those who eat alone or in front of the TV. Meals with others tend to include more foods from the five food groups. For example, people often report that they can’t be bothered cooking vegetables just for themselves.

Television watching is associated with eating more discretionary choices like take-away or convenience foods and fewer foods from the five foods. It also makes it much more difficult to recognise and respond to our body’s signals about hunger and satiety.

Good meal planning and making healthy choices can sometimes be tricky but a few useful tips can make it easier.
 

Lifestyle

MENTAL HEALTH TIP

Sleep is really important for our physical and mental health. Sleep helps to regulate the chemicals in our brain that transmit information. These chemicals are important in managing our moods and emotions. If we don't get enough sleep, we can start to feel depressed or anxious.

Drinking and smoking aren't things that we always associate with withdrawal symptoms, but they can cause some which impact on your mental health. When you've had a few drinks you can feel more depressed and anxious the next day, and it can be harder to concentrate. 

Sunlight is a great source of vitamin D. Vitamin D is a really important vitamin for our bodies and our brains. It helps our brains to release chemicals that improve our mood, like endorphins and serotonin. Try to go out in the sun when you can, but make sure you keep your skin and eyes safe. 30 minutes to two hours a day of sunlight is ideal. During the winter, some people become depressed because they aren't getting enough sunlight - this is known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). 

Activity and exercise are essential in maintaining good mental health. Being active not only gives you a sense of achievement, but it boosts the chemicals in your brain that help put you in a good mood. Exercising can help eliminate low mood, anxiety, stress, and feeling tired and lazy. It is also linked to living a longer life.
You don't need to run a marathon or play 90 minutes of football; a short walk or some other gentle activity might do the trick.

NUTRITION TIP

Eating regularly

It’s essential for weight control and especially weight loss, to recognise and act on the feedback your body gives you about when and how much you need to eat. However, it’s also important to aim for a regular eating pattern of meals, or meals and mid meals.

A planned pattern of eating is more likely to include the recommended number of serves from the five food groups. A spontaneous, unstructured eating pattern is more likely to include too many discretionary foods which means too much saturated fat, added sugars, added salt and kilojoules at the expense of fibre and important nutrients.

Don't skip breakfast

Breakfast skippers are more likely to be tempted by unplanned discretionary choices during the morning and large serves at the next meal or snack. Just think of how yummy those large baked muffins look at morning tea if you’ve missed breakfast!

People who regularly eat a breakfast based on wholegrain cereal or bread, low-fat milk or yogurt, and maybe some fruit or vegetables are much more likely to be eating well and lose weight than those who skip breakfast.

Awareness

MENTAL HEALTH TIP

It can be easy to rush through life without stopping to notice much. Often people can actually use this as a strategy to avoid the discomfort that can accompany stillness. However, the research is finding more and more that paying more attention to the present moment – to your own thoughts and feelings, and to the world around you – can improve your mental wellbeing.

Mindfulness for mental wellbeing

Some people call this awareness mindfulness, and you can take steps to develop it in your own life. Mindfulness, sometimes also called present-centredness, can help us enjoy the world more and understand ourselves better. Being mindful, and becoming more aware of the present moment, means noticing the sights, smells, sounds and tastes that you experience, as well as the thoughts, feelings and sensations that occur from one moment to the next. Mindfulness for mental wellbeing, or being aware of yourself and the world, is one of the five evidence-based steps we can all take to improve our mental wellbeing.

NUTRITION TIP

Once you know which the healthier choices in the supermarket are, shopping can actually get easier, quicker and cheaper.

• Plan meals and snacks for the week and make sure you buy everything you will need.
• Write a list and stick to it.
• Don’t shop when you’re hungry so you are less tempted by unplanned choices.
• Concentrate on buying foods from the Five Food Groups and limit discretionary foods.
• Use your label-reading skills to work out which are the best choices and look for these each time you shop.
• Click here to learn about basic foods which you can stock up on.