Mental Health: Start with the Body First
174. Mental Health: Start with the Body First
Today, I am embarking on a series of five episodes dedicated to the foundations of mental health. I know that you enjoy my episodes dedicated to love issues less, but I do it because I think it is my duty to speak to you about it.
I have more and more people who begin love coaching with me and they are young, early thirties, and have already experienced either burnout or a depressive episode.
This phenomenon is not just at the level of my coachees: A study by Santé publique France, published in April 2024, reveals a deterioration in the mental health of young people between 2018 and 2022. For example, 14% of middle school students and 15% of high school students present a significant risk of depression.
If you do not feel well mentally, first look at what is happening in your body.
We are chemical beings above all.
Our thoughts, our emotions, our mood, all of this is influenced by our physiological balance. An imbalance in our body can manifest as mental disorders.
And that putting this foundation in place for your health will help you in regulating your nervous system and therefore in your love life. I talk about it in my book S’ouvrir à l’amour at page 111. If you are lacking water, sleep, nutrients and full of inflammation in your body, your body will not exit survival mode because you regulate by breathing or if you work on your past. It knows how to prioritise.
That is why with this series on mental health I wanted to talk about simple but often neglected habits that have an enormous influence on your mental health.
In this episode 174, I am going to explore 5 essential habits that influence your psychological well-being, namely: hydration, movement, circadian rhythm, the intestinal microbiome, and blood sugar balance. For this episode I am going to base myself on the book Votre santé optimisée, le protocole quotidien qui va changer votre vie by Dr Emilie Steinbach and also share my personal opinion with a nervous system angle.
In the next episodes I speak alone or with experts in the field on the subjects:
- Episode 175: Psychonutrition: The indispensable nutrients for good mental health.
- Episode 176: The influence of stress and an excessively high cortisol level.
- Episode 177: Sleep disorders and their impact.
- Episode 178: The importance of breathing.
The importance of hydration
It is not sexy, but it is fundamental. Water is the foundation. Your brain is composed of nearly 80% water, and yet many of us spend the day in chronic under-hydration. Dr Emilie Steinbach in her book Optimised Health says that with age we may experience a decrease in our sensation of thirst. A study showed that a loss of body water equivalent to 1-2% of body mass can lead to a significant reduction in cognitive performance, resulting in decreased attention, increased mental fatigue and a reduced capacity to perform complex intellectual tasks. Source
The symptoms of deshydratataion? Dry mouth, less frequent and darker urine, increased thirst, unexplained fatigue, irritability, memory disorders… Does that ring a bell? Drink regularly before you feel thirsty and not too late in the evening (to avoid waking up at night). Set an alarm if necessary, flavour your water with aromatic herbs like mint or cucumber, lemon, whatever you like, but hydrate yourself (2 litres per day for women, 2.5 litres per day for men). And start the day by drinking a glass of water (I call it the internal shower of the organs).
My example at the beginning of my regulation process I often confused hunger and thirst because I was not sufficiently connected to my bodily sensations. A way to achieve this is to practise the Check-in tool that I propose in my book.
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Daily movement: your best natural therapy
I have already spoken to you about this: movement is life. According to WHO recommendations, it is advised to practise at least 30 minutes of dynamic physical activity per day. These activities can range from moderate intensity (moderate breathlessness, conversation possible) to high intensity (marked breathlessness, conversation difficult). Source
In her book Votre Santé optimisée, Dr Emilie Steinbach gives the minimum international recommendations in terms of physical activity for adults:
- 2 sessions of muscle strengthening targeting all muscle chains and aiming for muscle failure.
- Minimum 300 minutes of cardio at low intensity (150 min moderate intensity)
- At least 6000 steps per day
- Include sessions that improve flexibility, balance and posture like pilates and yoga
- Include 5 min of HIIT training to benefit from the hormesis effect which consists of stimulating the body’s defence and repair mechanisms by exposing it to moderate stress.
- If you have the dorsal state as your dominant state, doing sport may seem like a mountain to you — my recommendation is to start progressively, for example by doing 15 min of walking or not too intense sport, to create an environment where you feel comfortable doing it (with people or at home, if you don’t like going out to the gym I like the videos by Sissy Mua because she is fun and the videos are short) and add lots of pleasure. At the start it is normal that it is difficult to get moving (in this state you have little energy and lots of lethargy). To observe what helps you, also look at your well-being afterwards.
- If you have the sympathetic state as your dominant state, it is good to release energy daily but without over-activating your state by seeking too much intensity. You see the difference if at the end of the exercise you feel more relaxed or if you are on a high like on a cloud — that is a sign that you are overdoing it. You will see in episode 176 that the choice of intensity in sport (moderate or intensive) also depends on your stress level (cortisol level). If your cortisol level is too high, it is better to avoid intensive sports (HIIT, interval training…) and it is possible that you tend to seek intensity.
- Think about including free movement to listen to your impulses, what your body wants to do. This will help you afterwards to better understand what can relieve your body when it is activated.
- For people who are very disconnected and cannot feel sensations at rest, feeling sensations during sport can be a good first step because as it is more intense it is easier to feel.
- Before the age of 18 I was hopeless at sport except for dancing. Dance was my therapy for years: being free to follow my impulses in movement I think that deeply reconnected and liberated me. Honestly I did not enjoy it partly because my coordination was poor (note: this has a link with the dysregulation of your nervous system), I was mocked (you know, the girl who is chosen last in sport) and also because I did not have the energy.
- From the age of 18, I reconnected with sport: running, combat sport and dance. My motto was: I find sports that give me pleasure or I create circumstances that I enjoy (sports outfit, what I eat afterwards, the music I listen to, the good-looking people to look at…). With understanding I realised that it had helped me to release all my sympathetic energy. And I started yoga which helped me to connect to the body gently. If you want more advice for finding the yoga that works for you, listen to episode 123.
- From my 30s to 40s, I did mountain running and saw how much the body can be a powerful machine. There I was able to have intensive training, cold shower — I felt it was doing me good.
- From the age of 40, I felt with perimenopause that HIIT-type intensity, intervals were no longer good for me, that moderate-intensity weight training does me more good than endurance sports. That low-impact sports like lagree pilates did me more good than running because of my weight gain.
Respecting your circadian rhythm
Our biological clock, called the circadian rhythm, regulates our sleep, our body temperature, our hormones. When this clock is well set it optimises the amplitude of melatonin in the evening and the cortisol peak in the morning — this is what makes you wake up in the morning with energy and feel the need to sleep in the evening. When we disturb it – by going to bed late, by overusing screens – we disrupt our mental health.
Blue light, especially in the evening, blocks the secretion of melatonin, the sleep hormone. The result? Less restorative sleep, an exhausted nervous system, a mood in freefall. An exposure of approximately two hours to artificial or blue light in the evening is sufficient to reduce the secretion of melatonin in humans.
So yes, your Netflix or Instagram scrolling at 11pm has a price. To respect your circadian rhythm: cut screens at least one hour before bedtime or wear blue-light-blocking glasses, favour natural light in the morning (you need to expose as much skin and your eyes as possible) and at midday, avoid too-intense sports in the evening and try to have a regular bedtime and wake-up time.
I have been applying these tips since perimenopause and the depth of my sleep clearly changes.
The microbiome, this second brain
What if I told you that your mental well-being starts in your gut? The intestinal microbiome is this set of billions of bacteria that live in your intestine and that are in permanent dialogue with your brain.
The researcher Dr. Émilie Steinbach, alias Braingutscientist and author of “Votre santé optimisée : Le protocole quotidien qui va changer votre vie”, recommends consuming 30 different plant foods per week to nourish the diversity of our microbiome: vegetables, as little processed cereals as possible, legumes, fruits, mushrooms, aromatic herbs and spices while trying to eat the rainbow! She also emphasises the importance of natural probiotics to support intestinal health.
This link is called the gut-brain axis, and it is today very well documented. Several studies show people suffering from severe depression have a markedly altered microbiome composition compared to those in good mental health. Source
So if you want to take care of your head, start by nourishing your gut: fibre, fermented foods, natural probiotics… and reduce industrial sugars that destroy your flora.
Blood sugar balance: an underestimated pillar
The stability of your blood sugar directly influences your energy, your mood and your mental clarity. Glucose spikes followed by sharp drops can lead to fatigue, irritability and cravings. The French biochemist Jessie Inchauspee, alias Glucose Goddess and author of the book Faites votre glucose révolution, proposes simple tips to stabilise blood sugar:
- Start meals with vegetables rich in fibre, followed by proteins and fats, then finish with carbohydrates. The fact of eating foods in this order is controversial but I have personally seen a difference because I eat fibre at each meal. This sequence can reduce glucose peaks by up to 73% and insulin peaks by 48%.
- Moving after meals, even a short 10-minute walk, helps to use the circulating glucose and avoid peaks.
- Preferring a savoury breakfast rich in proteins and healthy fats to avoid blood sugar rollercoasters from the morning.
Conclusion
You see, before diving into complex explanations, take the time to come back to the essentials. Your mental health is deeply rooted in your body. Observe it, listen to it, nourish it, move it, respect its rhythm. We often look for answers very far away, when they start right here with simple lifestyle habits.
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Going further
And if you would like to work on your love patterns and transform your love life, you have the programme Opening Up to Love.
Sandy Kaufmann
is a somatic therapist and coach, based in Switzerland. She is the author of two books published by Éditions Eyrolles and has accompanied more than 600 people. She is the creator of the Somatic Deprogramming method and hosts the podcast “S’ouvrir a l’amour“, ranked in the French top 50 in the relationships category.
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