Health Issues That Impact Your Mood More Than You Think

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A holistic approach to medicine is important. This is because health is holistic. A health problem rarely affects just one part of our life. Even something as localized as a toothache can affect our sleep, which can then go on to impact a much broader part of our life. As such, if you’re experiencing stress, anxiety, or other mood disorders, there may another issue that’s contributing to it. Managing your mind is important but so, too, is addressing the parts of the body that might be driving those changes in your mind.

Joint pains

As we get a little older, it becomes more likely that our joints are able to take a little less stress than usual. Back pain and knee pain are the most common of all. These pains can impact our ability to sleep well at night, which we will go into further detail about later. However, back pain and stress have something of a cyclical relationship. Back pain can cause stress, and this stress can cause the release of the “stress hormone,” cortisol. This hormone can cause parts of the body, such as the muscles in the back, to tighten, which can cause even more strain on the back. Changes to our weight can help us manage joint pain, but it’s important to find methods of relieving it in the moment, too.

Hormonal imbalance

What does it mean to feel “balanced?” While the experience of it can change from person to person, there’s no denying that our hormones play a large part in physically balancing us. Hormones regulate a lot of different parts of our life, including how our brains process and produce neurotransmitters like endorphins or cortisol, which can help us feel more motivated or stress, respectively. Changes to your diet can help you balance your hormones and you can even take a hormone-balancing smoothie every couple of days to top up and try to maintain or get closer to the balance that can affect many different parts of our life.

Your hearing

When our sense of hearing changes, we may no longer be able to hear people and sounds as easily as we used to. We have to strain to hear, and the effort this takes can genuinely be exhausting and stressful. Furthermore, people can become anxious about misunderstanding people, or about having to ask them to repeat themselves multiple times. This can lead people to isolate themselves from friends, family, and social situations because of the anxiety that it causes them. Sometimes, these same people will not even think to pin it on changes to their hearing. As such, it’s important to make sure you get regular hearing exams, so that you can understand the full range of your hearing and, if need be, find the hearing aids that can help it.

Your eye health

The links between our hearing and our mental health have been known for some time, now. However, the links between vision loss or changes to our eyesight and our mental health are lesser-known. However, they tend to have a similar kind of effect. As our eyesight changes, we find we have to expend more energy trying to do things that might have once been simple or even pleasurable to us, such as reading books or deciphering signs on the road. As such, getting frequent checkups and diagnosing eye problems as soon as possible is recommended. Many can be corrected either with glasses or surgery, which can allow us to experience a lot less stress while interacting with the visible world.

A lack of sleep

There is a lot that we do not fully understand about sleep. However, we know that, without it, both our mental and bodily health can start to take a steep turn for the worse. Amongst the effects of sleep are hormone imbalances that it makes it harder for our brains to produce the “positive” mood-related neurotransmitters. Another impact of a lack of sleep is the increased production of cortisol which, as mentioned, can cause a whole host of problems, including joint pain and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Doing what you can to improve your night’s sleep is essential, so don’t ignore it.

Weight issues

Weight can be a sensitive subject for those of us who are currently struggling with it, but if there’s ever a need for motivation to address it, then the improvements to your mood are well worth considering. The effects on our self-esteem are not the only reason to want to correct the issue of being overweight. Being obese can have a range of effects on mental health, including being linked to problems with memory later in life, decreased hand-eye coordination and grip, which can lead to a lessened sense of independence, and may even dull our abilities to experience pleasure. Alongside all the additional risks to our body, this should make the case for maintaining a healthy diet and getting more physical activity a very easy one to get on side with.