Integrative Medicine for Mental Health: Addressing the Physical Side of Care

Psychotherapy can provide meaningful benefits, and medications may help in some cases, but outcomes for both are often improved when treatment also considers physical factors such as diet, sleep, daily habits, and the body's response to stress.

Recognizing that what happens in your mind affects your body, and what happens in your body affects your mind, makes it relatively easy to see the value of addressing an individual's care from multiple perspectives.

Integrative Medicine for Mental Health 

Nutrition and Diet

Diet plays a pivotal role in mental health.

Research has revealed that inflammation is a factor in many mental health conditions. What you eat can contribute to or reduce inflammation.

Nutrient-rich foods provide building blocks for neurotransmitters, essential brain chemicals, hormone production and balance, and biochemical reactions. On the flip side, a poor diet stresses your body and your mind.

Examples of how diet impacts mental health:

• Caffeine is a stimulant that can contribute to anxiety and anger, and interfere with sleep. How well and fast caffeine gets metabolized differs person to person and throughout an individual’s life. Even a morning cup of coffee may interfere with a good night’s sleep in some people under some circumstances.

• Your body is 50-60% water. Research has shown that even mild dehydration can cause negative changes in mood and energy, increased confusion and anxiety, and poorer sleep quality.

Supplements

We can’t always get the optimal nutrients for our specific needs through diet. Sometimes we need to give them a boost by taking vitamins, minerals, oils, probiotics, herbs or other supplements.

For example:

• Magnesium: Many of my clients are amazed at how taking simple magnesium gummies improve their stress resilience and sleep.

• Vitamin D: I live in the Seattle area of Washington State in the US. Our seasons are broken into what I call the sunny season and rainy season. We get many months of overcast weather. Almost everyone who lives here has low vitamin D in the dark months. Supplementation can be required to optimize vitamin D for the biochemical processes it facilitates, including those that impact depression and anxiety.

• Adaptogens: This class of herbal remedies have been used for centuries in many parts of the world. Adaptogens, like ashwagandha and maca root, help us adapt to stress. Though they are plant-based, we can’t really get the benefits from consuming them as food. We can take them as powders added to shakes, capsules, teas, or tinctures.

Lifestyle

Supporting mental health through daily habits is crucial.

Key lifestyle factors include:

• Sleep Hygiene: Stress impacts sleep, and sleep impacts how well you deal with stress. There are many natural remedies for improving sleep, including targeted nutrients like L-theanine and physical sleep aids such as weighted blankets.

• Physical Activity: Twenty minutes of moderate exercise can improve mood for up to eight hours.

Mind-Body Practices

Practices like mindfulness, breathing exercises, and other grounding resetting techniques are well-supported by research for their mental health benefits. They can:

• Reduce stress and anxiety.

• Improve focus and emotional regulation.

• Promote a sense of calm and well-being.

Complementary Therapies

Here are some examples of additional healing and wellbeing therapies:

• Acupuncture may help regulate mood and reduce stress.

• Massage Therapy eases tension and supports relaxation.

• Biofeedback teaches awareness and control of physiological responses to stress.

• Aromatherapy uses essential oils like lavender or bergamot to promote relaxation and mood balance.

By incorporating these complementary elements into mental health care, you and your providers can address challenges from multiple angles, creating a well-rounded approach.

Applying Integrative Medicine for Mental Health Principles to Anxiety Relief

When Integrative Medicine for Mental Health developed as a new discipline, I jumped at the chance it offered for further training in an approach I had always taken to my work with clients. It's a natural fit for me, especially since my first career was as a medical lab technologist working in hospital microbiology labs, and because of my long-time belief in the mind-body connection. 

The concepts are also present in my self-help/helper-help books, most explicitly in Feed Your Calm: Anti-Anxiety Anti-Stress Diet and Supplement Tips for Stress Resilience, which examines what happens in your body when you are stressed, and the role what you eat plays in supporting or undermining it.

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