Taking a Break to Recharge
Nutrition to Help Prevent Depression
You just ate a bowl of pasta and feel tired. Or you ate a tuna salad and feel ready to tackle the day. Ever wondered why you feel differently after eating? We at Unified Caring Association (UCA) have been curious about this as well. After doing some research on nutrition, we now have a better understanding of why food affects us so much. For example, recent studies show that a healthy diet may not only prevent depression but could effectively treat it once it’s started.
Nutritional Psychiatry
An evolving body of research on nutrition shows that a healthy diet can help prevent depression. The field of research on how food affects us psychologically is called nutritional psychiatry. Nutritional psychiatry is relatively new and it is not limited to one place or group. Nutritional psychiatry observes data regarding the association between diet quality and mental health across cultures, countries and age groups. One topic within these groups is depression and how the food we eat contributes, fixes or prevents depression.
An example of this research in action is a study mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. Researchers took a look at whether improving the diets of people with major depression would help reduce or eliminate their depression symptoms. Half of these people were coached on their nutrition by a dietitian. The other half were given one-on-one social support, a common technique for reducing depression. “After 12 weeks, the people who improved their diets showed significantly happier moods than those who received social support. And the people who improved their diets the most improved the most.” (Wall Street Journal) Other subsequent studies have found similar results: Eating a balanced diet that has fewer processed sugars, grains, etc. will help with depression.
In 2013, Dr. Jacka helped to found the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research. This Society held its first conference in the summer of 2017. Dr. Jacka also launched Deakin University’s Food & Mood Centre. This is an institute that focuses on researching and developing nutrition-based strategies for brain disorders, such as depression. With new and evolving research on how food affects us, other conferences and universities are including these findings in their lectures. An example of how this information applies is by the production of serotonin, which regulates mood and sleep. Not enough serotonin can result in depression.
Food Interactions
Eating a ton of high-processed foods and refined sugars often increases the risk of mental and physical health issues at any age. If we think about our heart or other muscles in the body, we take extra effort to condition them and keep them healthy. The brain is not much different. Our lifestyle choices reflect our brain’s health. Mental health should be just as important as physical health. A healthy brain is more resilient in difficult times, like while when we feel depressed. “A bad diet makes depression worse, failing to provide the brain with a variety of nutrients it needs… And processed or deep-fried foods often contain trans fats that promote inflammation, believed to be a cause of depression.” (Dr. Ramsey)
A bad diet also affects our microbiome, A.K.A., your gut bacteria. The bacteria in our guts have complex ways of communicating with our brain by signaling the body to produce different chemicals and hormones. This communication changes our mood. Think about when we get “hangry” from not eating, or the opposite, happy when we eat strawberries. To maintain a healthy and stable mood, we need to maximize the good bacteria and minimize the bad.
It is not to say that a good diet can replace medicine or therapy. However, it can serve as a supplemental treatment. The added bonus is that it can prevent other health problems, like diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and more!
Be open to the cornucopia of food.
There are so many different diets and articles out in the world for “healthy eating.” The main point is to eat in a way that your body responds best to. As some might say, “hacking” your body. A diet made up primarily of fruits and vegetables, good fats and proteins, yogurt and cheese, legumes, nuts, seafood, whole grains and small portions of red meat can provide nutrition our brain needs. It can also regulate our inflammatory response and support the good bacteria in our gut.
If we take everything in moderation and monitor our health, we can maintain a healthy lifestyle. The critical point is to listen to our bodies so we can understand what we need. Is it sleep? An activity like hiking? Or do we need to eat more berries and yogurt because we are feeling down? If we begin making small changes based on these observations, we can bring more caring into our bodies and lives.
Would you like to read more about UCA caring resources? We have other blogs on topics on UCA benefits: Medical Bill Negotiation, 2020 Clear Sighted Year, and Gut-Brain Connection! If you would like caring messages throughout the week, follow us on Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Twitter!
A UCA Member’s Personal Well-Being Journey
Well-Being
“Successful people are just those with successful habits.” — Bryan Tracy
Well-Being
Ever so often we are told wonderful accounts of our member’s stories. We shared some in Unified Caring Association members shared their reviews of our benefits. Since then we have had another of these stories shared with us. This UCA member who used the Personal Well-Being Survey self assessment. Excited, they gave a recount of their journey to a healthier life-style and better well-being. We want to continue to celebrate this good news with the rest of our caring community.
“As a member of UCA I have taken advantage of the HeartMath Personal Well-Being Survey. At the end of April of this year, I took the Personal Well-Being Survey and the results were quite frankly miserable and frightful. I scored [an] unwelcoming score of 19! Nineteen?!? I knew if I didn’t make changes in my life right then, I was headed down an anxious and exhausting road.
I decided to get together with one of my peers, who was familiar with this survey, and ask for guidance on how to make the adequate changes in my life, to help MYSELF. I have a hard time with stress management (first test scored 9) and emotional vitality (first test scored 19). I knew that if I didn’t hurry up and make changes in my life, I was on the path to unhappiness and a life full of stress. After talking with my peer, I started breathing exercises. How this has worked drastically in my life! I faithfully did my breathing exercise for 2 weeks, then it became 4 weeks, and now it’s a daily routine of mine. I’ve also implemented other techniques for myself. Morning affirmations, saying out loud what I’m grateful for, saying out loud what I can work on to make me better than I was yesterday. And let me tell you, these exercises have helped me in more ways than one.
I recently took the Personal Well-Being Survey, almost 2 months after my first survey and the results were so eye opening! I scored a total well-being of 86! Eighty-six!!!! WOW!!! I was blown away; my stress management was scored at 87 and my emotional vitality scored at 82! This test has opened my eyes, to the changes that I have made, I must continue doing! I’m so grateful that UCA has this available to me as a member and all other members. I will continue to make my changes and keep using the resources that UCA has to offer to better myself.
THANK YOU UCA”
We are so glad that this member has had so much progress in their personal well-being score, and for all of the tools that they continue to use! Thank you for sharing your journey with us all.
Would you like to read more about Unified Caring Association? Read our other blogs on caring such as 5 Tips That Help Better Our Lives, member benefits like UCA & Scholarships, and caring the UCA way (Invest in Others to Make a Caring Impact). We love sharing with our caring community and are excited to continue to do so!
5 Tips That Help Better Our Lives.
If we search the internet, magazines, and television shows we often find the theme to be how to improve aspects of ourselves and our lives, a.k.a. tips for better health. It is safe to say, we often search for answers and ways to improve our lives. Not just the lives of those we know and love, but our own lives too. Below we have a handful of answers to help with our continued practices.
1.) Practice Mindfulness- Unified Caring Association’s recent blogs on mindfulness and meditation are a great resource on this. When we quiet our thoughts, we allow our minds the freedom to be creative, solve problems, and heal.
2.) Be Positive- Positivity is self-generating. We hear and experience kind acts and how they are passed along, like holding the door open for someone who in turn picks up another person’s wallet that has dropped. Think about the 2002 movie Pay It Forward, and how one kind act generated a large movement that expanded beyond the initial town.
3.) Be Kind- Kindness is often linked with positivity, and is self-generating as well. However, being kind allows for the opportunity to receive positivity. Also, being kind applies to yourself as well. We can be hard on ourselves and kindness allows for the space, love, and patience we often overlook. If you are looking for a simple way to promote kindness in your day, check out UCA’s Caring Challenge for daily caring and kind acts.
4.) Show Gratitude- Gratitude can be shown in so many ways. We recently uploaded a blog about sharing gratitude through the gift of time and saying thank you. But there are many other ways that we can show gratitude to become better at it. One way can be by bringing a treat for your team such as cookies, fruits, etc. Another way to start recognising and brainstorming ways to show gratitude is writing down 3-5 things we are grateful for each day as a review for that day. The more consistent we are when doing this, the better we become at recognising and showing our gratitude.
5.)Smile- The most simple and tangible way to better our lives is to smile more. Smiling not only uses less muscles in our faces, it often subconsciously makes us happier. If we try to incorporate smiling in our days we will feel better and doing the four other suggestions above becomes more natural.
These five options are a great way to begin reviewing and practicing ways to better our health and lives. Once we incorporate these tips, we begin to experience the freedom of a more successful and stress-free lifestyle. We become more creative and experience more happiness in the moments we come across each and every day.
Would you like to read more about gratitude, mindfulness, how to promote better health, and Unified Caring Association? Read our other blogs and visit us at our Unified Caring Association website to learn more about caring and caring acts. We are happy you are here, and to share our experiences with you. Thank you from the Unified Caring Association Team!
Meditation: A Tool for Self-Care
Life is chaotic and noisy at times, and we all can get stressed out from this. What self-care tool is available to use that can help calm the chaos? Meditation or quiet-reflection. Often times when we quiet our minds we are better able to cope with our everyday lives and during high-stress times, and even improve our health over all.
Stress from everyday life can affect our mental and physical health. It can increase our heart rates, blood pressure, increase our rate of breathing, and more. If the stress is experienced over a longer time period, our adrenal glands become taxed and “…overproduce the hormone cortisol. Overexposure to this hormone can affect the function of your brain, immune system, and other organs.” (https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/what-meditation-can-do-for-your-mind-mood-and-health-) More recently, health studies have shown that meditation has beneficial effects in combating stress. Meditation is a proactive activity where your attention is focused inwards, inducing more relaxation. “Meditation is thought to work via its effects on the sympathetic nervous system, which increases heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure during times of stress. …’it will help you lower your blood pressure, but so much more: it can help your creativity, your intuition, your connection with your inner self,’ says Burke Lennihan, a registered nurse who teaches meditation at the Harvard University Center for Wellness.” (https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/what-meditation-can-do-for-your-mind-mood-and-health-)
Results from research on meditation and the brain have been published and reviewed for years now. Benefits of meditation, or quieting the mind, are“…now being confirmed with fMRI and EEG instruments. The practice appears to have an amazing variety of neurological benefits – from changes in grey matter volume to reduced activity in the “me” centers of the brain to enhanced connectivity between brain regions. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2015/02/09/7-ways-meditation-can-actually-change-the-brain/#39f4a1431465) This reduced activity allows for creativity and problem solving to dominate without overtaxing the mind. (a.k.a. it basically becomes effortless and allows for new solutions to present themselves.)
Once our minds become quieter we are able to become more focused, creative, and resilient. Want to know how to get started? Unified Caring Association has many different meditations tools available for its members for any time of day. Some of these are:
| Type of Meditation | Example |
| Uplifting & Positive | Affirmations & Meditations: Healing Body and Mind Spirit |
| Breathing Makes Everything Better | Relax and Breathe |
| Relaxation & Rejuvenation | Healing Spirit: Guided Meditation for Relaxation, Anxiety, Depression, Self Acceptance |
| Healing | Louise Hay-Assisting in your own healing |
| Exercise Made Easy | Happier in 5 Minutes- Laughter Yoga |
| Sleep Better Tonight | Guided Sleep Meditation for Insomnia (Sleep, Relaxation, Calm you Mind) |
If you are looking forward to reading more about Unified Caring Association and other caring acts, check out our other blogs: Caring Connection 24-7, It all Starts with Self-Care, Caring Through the Gift of Time, and Unified Caring Association-Your Life is What We Care About. Or visit our website to check out our Caring News, membership benefits, and other healthcare tools!
It All Starts With Self-Care.
