Moving Your Mood Up - 250036

SPEAKER 1 This program presents ways to optimise health and well being. When considering lifestyle changes, please consult with your healthcare provider to assure they are suitable for you. SPEAKER 2 Hello and welcome. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Psychology professor Sonia Lyubomirsky wrote in her book the how of Happiness that exercise may very well be the most effective instant happiness booster of all activities. Are you looking for a mood lift? Stay tuned as we explore how to move your mood up. SPEAKER 1 This is yous Lifestyle as Medicine, a production of 3 AB in Australia Television. SPEAKER 2 On this program we explore ways that you can shape your lifestyle as medicine. Joining us today is Lorenzo Berry, who is a lifestyle coach with a graduate diploma in lifestyle medicine. Lorenzo has a passion for keeping active and he's going to share with us about moving your mood up. Welcome to the program, Lorenzo. So glad to have you. SPEAKER 1 G', day, Kaysie. So good to be here. SPEAKER 2 Yes, it's been a while since we connected on this program and I'm just excited about the topic you have to share with us today. And you know, everyone experiences low mood at some point in their life and it seems like though in recent years this has become quite a big issue. The issue of, you know, mental well being. Just how much of a problem is it today? SPEAKER 1 Yeah, well, it's amazing, Kaysie, that we live in an age in which we have so much opportunity to be connected, but yet we have an increasing number of people who are experiencing negative mental health episodes. SPEAKER 2 Yeah, it's quite prevalent and something that's I think of concern everywhere. You know, people are noticing it, people are saying what can we do about it? How can we have practical things to do that will really help people to address this as something very intentionally so what are some of the factors that are feeding into this? SPEAKER 1 Yeah, well, look, Kaysie, there's probably the easiest way to explain it would be to look at the categories of risk factors that can have a negative impact on our mind. So the first one would be a biological impact. Now, if someone has an existing health condition, so say a chronic disease that they've been working with or struggling with for some time, that can be a significant factor that would bring a person's overall mood and sense of well, being down low. Yeah, yeah. There's some other factors that are in the biological, I guess, framework. Another one that's gaining a lot of research at the moment is, is in the area of brain derived neurotrophic factor. So it's known as BDNF because everyone gets tired of using the full title, it seems. And the easiest way to Think about what BDNF is. It's like fertilizer for your brain. SPEAKER 2 Okay. SPEAKER 1 And so this fertilizer makes neurons grow. So it's really important for neuroplasticity, the ability to be able to accommodate new tasks, new learnings, new viewpoints into one's life. It also keeps our brain functioning well for longer. So it's very important for overall brain health. SPEAKER 2 So are people having not enough of this BDNF in their brain? Is that the trouble? Is that what's happening? SPEAKER 1 Yeah. So people who have long term depressive or anxiety episodes have been measured to have lower levels of BDF in their brain. And so our body produces it. And so we'll talk more later about what we can do to help our body produce more, some other biological factors we'll move through. Another topic that's very pertinent in health research at the moment is our gut microbiome. So this is for maybe the viewers who not so familiar with it. The microbiome in our gut is like thousands of different organisms. Yes, thousands, but there's thousands of different species of bacteria and there's viruses and often we get caught up with our virus and infectious diseases. But there can be good viruses, just as there's good bacteria, fungi, as well as parasites. And the real, real struggle is to, to keep these things in balance. So we've got more of the good stuff and not so much of the negative stuff. And this is all about helping our body to digest and extract, you know, the nutrients from our food. So it needs to be there, but they can take a hit as well. So if we've had even surgery, there may be some administration of medications can take a hit to our microbiome and that can influence our overall mood as well. SPEAKER 2 Hmm. Wow. So even the way you're. Yeah. The state of your gut health, so to speak, can have an impact on your mood, like as an extra factor. You could have multiple of these factors all at once. It sounds like if you have a chronic health condition and a bad gut microbiome, and then maybe you've had some surgery or whatever other things you've mentioned, you know, you could have a whole lot of things trying to push you down, couldn't you? SPEAKER 1 You could. And. Well, I don't, I don't want to make it sound too much doom and gloom, but there's more, there's more that can happen. And maybe just for those who maybe have more of a medical interest, if we can bring up the HPA access slide. So this is just really A junction between how the hypothalamus, our pituitary gland, and the adrenal axis, that together they've got their own separate functions, but together they regulate the hormones in our body. And essentially just think of these three working together to coordinate how our brain operates. And it regulates our stress, our mood, and even our sense of energy and vitality that we bring to the day. So it's a pretty important concept. And things like long term stress can have a negative impact on this HPA axis, and that will release more cortisol in our body, which is a stress hormone. And cortisol is not necessarily bad, but it's designed for that, you know, typical flight or fight scenario. And. But if we're not fighting and if we're not fleeing and those cortisol levels remain elevated, that high level of cortisol can also impact how we feel about ourselves. SPEAKER 2 So stress, chronic stress, I mean, that's a huge one. We all experience some of that more than others, sometimes some patches worse than others. You know, just. Yeah, it's something that's almost inescapable that we would experience some stress. But you're saying the chronic stress is what's really bad if it's. It's really then having an ongoing effect in having those stress hormones elevated long term? SPEAKER 1 That's right. That's right, Kaysie. Yeah. So, you know, when we're finding ourselves in a stressful environment, you know, we're looking for ways and strategies that we can bring that stress level down. SPEAKER 2 Yeah, sounds good. So that's quite a few different things we've mentioned that can be triggering or helping to feed into mood. Is that all? Are there more things that are feeding into this? SPEAKER 1 There are more. There's one more I want to talk about in terms of a biological impact, and that's systemic inflammation. Many of the viewers have probably heard of antioxidants, and, you know, the antioxidants gain a lot of attention because it can help boost our immune system. Well, it boosts our immune system by fighting random oxygenated or reactive oxygenated species. And so this is oxidative stress that our bodies just go throughout daily living. Even if there's no particularly stressful moments in our life. You know, this happens on a daily basis. But when our bodies reach a level in which we're not able to balance out the production of these oxidative stresses, then we're likely to move into a more depressed or anxious state as well. And so the amount of inflammation in our body is a trigger for this experience of Depression and anxiety. SPEAKER 2 And that draws a link with so many different things because almost all of the chronic diseases we have has some connection with inflammation. And so if we've got one of those going, there's potentially a flow on effect on our mental state that can be. Yeah, we can at least have a risk factor there. SPEAKER 1 Hey, absolutely, absolutely. And even just growing older can be a factor because without being aware of what's going to increase or maintain our gray matter, our brain, just the reduction of the size of our brain as we age can be an influencing factor as well. So, so there's quite a number of biological influences about why people may experience depression or anxious episodes throughout life. But it's not limited to biological, there's also some psychological ones as well. And I think most viewers would be familiar with, you know, low self esteem or low self worth. Now some recent research is shedding some interesting light on this area. You know, there's a lot of conversation in some circles at least, who uses more words a day, men or women. But it doesn't matter whether you're a male or a female. Apparently on average each adult human has about 55,000 self talk utterances each and every day. So you may say, oh Lorenzo, that's, that's a lot of rubbish. Well, I just want to challenge you and sort of say, well just take a quiet moment and think about what sort of conversations are going on in your head. And as you take that time, you become more aware of just how much you are talking to yourself. It's normal, it's healthy, even. However, one of the major challenges with the self talk is that some research is suggesting that up to 75% isn't uncommon of being negative. 75% of that 55,000 is actually working against us. SPEAKER 2 So that really tells us we've got to be more aware of what's going on up here, don't we? What we're thinking, what we're telling ourselves, the messages that are feeding back in. Because that could be just a vicious cycle, couldn't it? SPEAKER 1 And it is for so many people and growing numbers of people. And it's not age related like there's some major statistics like one in seven of the young people have experienced a negative health mental health episode and the 10 to 19 year olds globally is 1 in 6 people on the planet. And so we've got such a high incidence of mental health, negative mental health episodes that are taking place across the age spectrum. It's a massive challenge and unfortunately many of them are moving towards suicide because they can't seem to find a way to manage it. And this is why I want to talk about the topic today about simple ways we can use to move our mood up. Because what we're seeing since the, the COVID pandemic flow on effects, the, the sense of insecurity, the sense of increasing financial strain is impacting so many people and that means sometimes they may have to relocate for work. And so that's a loss of support networks. So these are some sociological factors why we're seeing an increase in depression and anxiety and the socioeconomic implications of this cost of living crisis. So some really significant more recent factors that have come into play alongside more long standing ones such as degree and quality of education as well as employment status. So whether you're working part time, casually as opposed to full time and not just your remuneration, but you know, just that sense of security in the work environment generally are some of the major sociological players when we talk about these growing problem of how do we deal and address our own and our friends and family's challenges with anxiety and depression. SPEAKER 2 And those things are very far reaching and broad factors, you know, affects the whole population, the whole country, kind of global. Like these are big issues that are having an impact on us and they're not easily fixed at large. But perhaps that's where we're coming to, what you're going to share about what we can do individually to help us improve our mood. SPEAKER 1 That's right. And if we can just jump to the slide there with the physical activity levels. So this is just public health recommendations. You can look this up on the government websites if you're viewing from Australia. If you're viewing elsewhere, I'm sure your country of origin has their own physical health activity guidelines. These are really important and significant and I just want to introduce this by way of a story. This is a true story. There was a gentleman who was feeling so depressed and anxious that he decided he was going to take his own life. And because he was unwell in terms of physical capacity, he thought to save the embarrassment on his family, he would end his life by running around the block as fast as he could, hoping to die from a heart attack. SPEAKER 2 Wow. SPEAKER 1 Well, he didn't die from a heart attack and he kept running around the block. And after doing this for several days, unsuccessfully killing himself, he actually discovered that he was feeling better, that the world didn't seem such a bad place. SPEAKER 2 Wow. That's amazing. SPEAKER 1 It's a true story. It's a true story and it highlights to us what can happen when we take exercise as a medicine. SPEAKER 2 Very interesting. Yeah, it's. It. I guess in his case it was a. Yeah, it was an unexpected benefit that he got from it. But there's obviously been quite a lot of research that has shown that exercise truly can be like a medicine to help with some of these challenges. SPEAKER 1 Absolutely. Just getting into the science of why it works. So if you were to consider those physical activity guidelines, which, you know, we want to start at that moderate level so we're not looking at the light. They say it doesn't count, researchers, but, you know, all activity is beneficial. But to really combat and to have a change of our thinking and change of our mood, we really need to look at moderate or vigorous categories. And so there's a couple of examples there on the screen and you can see the durations that are recommended. But what actually takes place when we begin to exercise according to these guidelines is, well, for starters, our cortisol levels are reduced. So remember that cortisol was our stress response hormone. So they begin to reduce. So if it starts feeling better about ourself and our life circumstances. And this also drives down inflammation. So what we also know about cortisol is that it's one of the primary hormones that will store extra energy. Typically we call it fat on our bodies. Okay. And fat in itself is, is no longer considered to be inert. It actually generates inflammation itself in our body. So it's this, this downward spiral where the two conspire together to bring us down. But exercise directly reduces the amount of inflammation in our body and it directly reduces the amount of cortisol that is circulating in our body. SPEAKER 2 That's really good because I mean, there were two big factors you talked about before that are contributing to low mood. And so exercise can address both of. SPEAKER 1 Those 100% more than that. More than just directly targeting, you know, I guess our weight and weight management. Bdnf, that brain fertilizer we spoke about earlier, it's not only produced in our brain, it's produced in our skeletal muscles. So the more that we're moving our muscles, the more our body can actually produce it. SPEAKER 2 Wow. SPEAKER 1 And so our mind and therefore our mood is going to benefit from it. Hmm. SPEAKER 2 And sounds like our brain function is going to be much better if it's getting extra fertilizer. SPEAKER 1 Well, not only. Well, in part because we're producing more brain derived neurotrophic factor, the bdnf, but we can actually increase the size of our brain through exercising. SPEAKER 2 Okay. So not only bigger, stronger muscles, but A larger brain mass. SPEAKER 1 That's right. Exercise increases the amount of gray matter in our brain. So this is very protective and preventative of some of those typically considered age onset conditions, which, as we've noted, as we age, our amount of gray matter begins to decrease. So really important stuff, Very, very important. Then we can talk about the endorphins, the chemicals that are released during exercise and immediately post exercise. So we're not just talking about biological influences that take place, we're now talking about psychological influences that take place. So they, they lift our sense of mood as well. Endorphins, they're, they're the feel good hormones. SPEAKER 2 So is this, reminds me, is this what you get when you have that, they call it the runner's high or something like that? SPEAKER 1 Yeah, yeah, they do, they do. The runner's high is probably one of the most well documented experiences of this, the release of endorphins. But it's not limited to running. So don't put off. If you're not a runner, don't worry. SPEAKER 2 Because I don't run very often. I walk more than run. But that's good to know. SPEAKER 1 Experience it through other activities. SPEAKER 2 Absolutely could. SPEAKER 1 And there's indirect benefits as well, Kaysie. You know, as you exercise, many people might find that they're feeling better about their body image or their body image begins to change to a more desirable shape. And so we have a sense of achievement, a sense of pleasing aesthetics. All these things come into play when we talk about lifting our mood. SPEAKER 2 So that's quite a multifaceted benefit package that's coming through with, with exercise. That's really hitting on a lot of key things there that we, we really need, don't we? SPEAKER 1 Oh, 100%. And the, the great thing is that it's accessible to each one of us. You know, some people may want to go and join a gym, others may want to just walk around the block or take their dog for a walk. Some may want to join a sporting club. I mean, we just got an example here. Rugby may not be for everyone, but, you know, you've got this opportunity to be engaged in physical activity both on game day as well as through the training sessions. And you're meeting new people. So we address these sociological implications of why we're feeling more depressed and more anxious. SPEAKER 2 So ideally, having some exercise that connects with people as well, you get an added bonus coming into that as well. SPEAKER 1 Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, this is why we see sporting clubs recruiting for new people. We see gyms offering group fitness classes. You know, we understand that as people, we are typically social animals. Some of us have greater social needs than others. But, you know, we are created more to be social beings. And so the opportunity to do something like this together can be really powerful. SPEAKER 2 Definitely, yeah. SPEAKER 1 You know, I'm frequently asked though, I mean, how much exercise do we need to do? Like, you know, we can read the tables and go, oh, well, you know, hours. We've got to measure this in hours a week. Do I really need to do that much? Well, that's a goal and I think it's worthy to keep that in mind as a goal. But research is showing as little as 10 minutes a day, 10 minutes of moderate exercise, where it becomes slightly difficult to carry on a conversation because you have to breathe that little bit heavier. That's moderate exercise. As little as 10 minutes a day will start giving you these physical as well as psychological health benefits. SPEAKER 2 That's really encouraging because that 10 minutes sounds very achievable. I think just about anyone could put that in. Like you could take one of your work breaks and just go for a walk around the building or something, you know, and you'd be able to slip that in if you weren't in the habit of it. So 10 minutes is a really nice thing to have in mind that you can see start with. SPEAKER 1 Well, absolutely. And there's other ways. I mean, you could take 10 minutes in your lunch break, you could park further away from work, or if you're catching the train or public transport, just get off a couple of stops early and make sure you got at least a 10 minute walk to get to work. And then you've got to walk that distance back again so you can double it without really having to change your life pattern too much. SPEAKER 2 Yeah. Nice. You can just work it in as best as you can. SPEAKER 1 Yeah. And who knows, you may be like the gentleman who was in the unfortunate situation who wanted to commit suicide. But as he started running as fast as he could, trying to give himself a heart attack, he actually discovered he enjoyed exercising and wanted to include more of it than just getting around his block. So he gave him literally a new lease of life. SPEAKER 2 So would you say then that just a 10 minute walk, I mean, probably some of us have had this from experience. Maybe it depends how vigorous you are. Would that be enough to give you a mood lift that would be lasting? SPEAKER 1 Absolutely, absolutely. And you could start noticing it in as little as 30 seconds after you commence. SPEAKER 2 Wow. SPEAKER 1 Anywhere between 30 seconds and two minutes, you will begin to notice the change that is taking place because of exercising and Again, you do need to start exercising at that level where it's slightly difficult to carry on a conversation. SPEAKER 2 That's very good because that means you don't have to wait too long before you. I guess it's the oxygen coming around and everything in your system that's starting to let the fog lift. But that I guess once you start to feel better, then you're more inclined to continue. SPEAKER 1 Well, that's right. That's absolutely right, Kaysie. Getting the first steps in is always the hardest. You know, there's an old saying, the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. SPEAKER 2 That's it, single step. So, Lorenzo, what are some key takeaways that our viewers can try at home to help give a mood lift? SPEAKER 1 Yeah, great question, Kaysie. And I think the important thing is that some is always better than none. You know, it's easy to put those recommended activity tables and say, oh, hours, but some is always better than none. And like we're just saying, you know, 10 minutes as much as it takes. And so some better than none minimize. Our time spent sitting is another one. Invariably, whether we're sitting at work or they're sitting for leisure, our spines take on the letter C. And when our spines are in that position, we just don't tend to feel real good. We're looking down, we're not even looking up. So just being aware of our body position can make a difference. And when we're got our leisure time, instead of looking at our smart devices, put them down and head outdoors. SPEAKER 2 Nice. SPEAKER 1 There's some great research around the compounding benefits of being outside in the fresh air. Whether you're by the beach, whether you're in the bush, the aromas, the pollens, the oils coming out of the eucalypts that we live in Australia are all beneficial for increasing our mood and well being. SPEAKER 2 Fantastic. So exercise outdoors is, is ideal. Thank you so much, Lorenzo, for sharing. Really appreciate that. We've been talking with lifestyle coach Lorenzo Berry about moving your mood up, being physically active to feel better mentally. I'm so glad you could join us for this discussion and I pray that this has inspired you to make the most of movement for your mood. If you have questions or comments about this program, contact us on Health at 3 ABNAustralia.org.au And remember to shape your lifestyle as medicine. SPEAKER A You've been listening to Your Lifestyle as Medicine, a production of 3ABN Australia television.