How to Support Healthy Mood with Integrative Medicine

During the dark days of winter, it’s not uncommon to feel down. In fact, January’s Blue Monday has the reputation of being the most depressing day of the year. A travel marketing campaign coined the term over twenty years ago, but with depressing weather and post-Christmas bills, it’s no wonder the name has persisted.

Because of the intricate connection between your body and mind, there is plenty you can do to support healthy mood. Read on to discover some factors contributing towards low mood, and how you can sail through Blue Monday.

How Does the Body Govern Mood?

A team of neurotransmitters manage your mood. These are chemicals helping messages to travel from one brain cell to another. If the activity of these neurotransmitters inside you doesn’t match up with what is happening in your life, unexplained poor mood can be the outcome.

One of the main neurotransmitters used to regulate healthy mood is serotonin. If it’s low, depression and poor mood can be the result. Serotonin helps to manage appetite and sleep, too.

Meanwhile, dopamine provides feelings of reward. It’s typically released in your brain following pleasurable experiences. If you’re lacking in dopamine, you will probably feel unmotivated.

Noradrenaline is part of your fight/fight response. If you have too little, you might lack focus and feel sluggish, while too much can lead to anxiety and restlessness.

Finally, GABA is a brain chemical helping to regulate calm and promote feelings of relaxation. A lack of GABA can lead to anxiety and panic.

Now you know how neurotransmitter imbalances can affect mood, let’s have a look at a couple of factors that can lie behind mood disturbances.

Gut Health and Mood

There is an intimate connection between your gut and your brain. Think about when you have butterflies in your stomach. This is an example of the crosstalk between these two parts of your body via an information superhighway called the gut-brain axis. The information is bi-directional, meaning in the same way exciting or stressful situations create changes in your digestive system, so gut health can influence your mood.

Information passes along nerve fibres running between your gut and your brain. However, the bacteria in your gut microbiome are also capable of influencing mood. Research has discovered people suffering from depression and anxiety have distinct differences in their gut microbes when compared to people with healthy mood. They seem to have fewer species of gut bacteria overall, and a higher proportion of the types of bacteria contributing towards elevated inflammation. Uncontrolled inflammation is a factor in most if not all chronic diseases, mental health issues included.

Most of the serotonin in your body is manufactured in your gut, with synthesis stimulated by certain types of gut bacteria. Although the majority of this serotonin remains in the gut, some of it does seem to travel to the brain along the vagus nerve. Similarly, GABA is synthesised by certain types of gut bacteria.

Hormones and Mood

Hormones are chemicals used to pass information and instructions around your body. Several different types of hormones influence mood.

The hormones produced by your thyroid gland are closely linked with mood. People with poor thyroid function and lacking in thyroid hormones often report feeling depressed, with low motivation. On the other hand, if thyroid hormones are too high, this can leave you feeling anxious and overwhelmed.

Imbalances in stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline can cause anxiety and depression. It’s no wonder stress and mood disturbances go hand in hand.

The reproductive hormones oestrogen and progesterone can significantly contribute to irritability, anxiety, and depression when their levels fluctuate. This often happens during a woman’s reproductive cycle and in menopause. Oestrogen and progesterone both affect the amount of serotonin in the brain. Progesterone on the other hand seems to enhance the actions of GABA.

However, there are numerous other potential causes of low mood. These include nutritional deficiencies, immune issues, viral infections, mycotoxins, and blood sugar imbalances.

Natural Strategies to Boost Your Mood

Love your gut. Feed your microbes with plenty of plant foods and enjoy fermented foods and beverages. Studies have found consumption of plant-based foods is linked with better mental health and happiness (1).
Get outside. Natural light, ideally first thing in the morning, is known to support mood.
Move more. Regular exercise, as long as it’s a kind you enjoy, can be a potent mood booster.
Nutrients important for optimal mood include B complex vitamins, vitamin D, iron, zinc, magnesium, and omega 3 fats. Herbs traditionally used for boosting mood include St John’s wort, ashwagandha, lemon balm and passionflower.
If your blood sugar crashes, this will create feelings of irritability and anxiety. Help stabilise it by choosing protein-rich snacks rather than sugar-filled ones.
Prioritise sleep. There is a close link between quality sleep and good mental health. However, if you’re affected by low mood, sleep can suffer. You might therefore benefit from adopting some strategies to help you sleep better. Think about setting a consistent bedtime and waking up time, avoiding caffeine after midday, banning screen time within a few hours of bed, and considering a supplement of magnesium before bedtime.

Help and Support for Optimal Mood

Because there are so many potential causes of poor mood, it’s important to establish the root causes. Although medication can be helpful in some cases, it does not address what’s causing low mood in the first place. Only by correcting root causes can lasting improvements be achieved.

If you choose to start your journey with an Integrative Health Assessment, we will investigate your symptoms and health history. We’ll recommend, if appropriate, functional tests to establish any imbalances in your body which may be contributing towards mood disturbances. For example, a GI Map can assess whether your gut health is impacting your mood. A DUTCH Complete will measure your sex and stress hormones, as well as examining neurotransmitter markers.

You’ll be provided with a detailed nutrition and lifestyle action plan to help you reach your health goals, along with recommendations for specialist support from our wide-ranging team of natural health therapists. For example, if an overactive stress response is contributing towards low mood, Emotional Freedom Technique can help reduce its impact on your life. Meanwhile, Integrative Hypnotherapy harnesses the power of your mind to bring about lasting improvements in mood.