The Mind/Body Connection & Health - YLAM230006

SPEAKER A This programme presents ways to optimise health and wellbeing when considering lifestyle changes. Please consult with your health care provider to ensure they are suitable for you. SPEAKER B Hello and welcome. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Have you ever gotten butterflies in your stomach? You know, that queasy, nervous feeling in your gut? Why do we get that? Well, usually we're anxious about something, which means it's connected to what we are thinking about. We are going to talk more about this mind body connection next. SPEAKER A This is your lifestyle as medicine, a production of 3ABN Australia television. SPEAKER B It's great that you've joined us as we learn more about how you can shape your lifestyle as medicine. Whole person health is a key focus of lifestyle medicine, which recognises that health is achieved by caring for all aspects of our being. An important phenomena that exists when addressing these is that often one affects another and together they lead to either health or disease. An area of interaction like this is between the mind and the body. Health psychologist Jenifer Skues is here today to talk about this with us. Welcome, Jenifer, glad to have you again with us. SPEAKER C Thank you. Good to be here. SPEAKER B Yeah. Now, Jenifer, last time we talked all about our amazing brain, and now we're going to delve a little bit deeper in terms of how the brain is connected with the body and what that means in terms of our health outcomes. So share with us a little bit about, about that as we head in that direction. SPEAKER C For a long time, psychology primarily worked with the brain, but that brain body connection has, I think, come to the fore more recently because of the impact on health, the psychological impact. And this is because what we think transfers to every part of the body and the body responds, or the emotions respond. And I've got a really good cartoon. I love listening or reading peanuts. And this was one, I'll just read it out. It was about the mind body connection. And you've got Lucy talking to Linus. And Linus's shoulders are slumped over where he's looking down like that. And he says, this is my depressed stance. And he said, when you're depressed, it makes a lot of difference how you stand. Okay. The worst thing you can do is straighten up and hold your head high because then you'll start to feel better. And he said, if you're going to get any joy out of being depressed, you've got to stand like this, which is that slumped look. SPEAKER B Yeah, that's cool. SPEAKER C And when you have a look at people who are depressed, what do they do? They often look down, slump their shoulders and they don't they certainly don't look up. And physiologically, there's a whole cascade of chemicals happening that brings a system down. When we're looking down and slumping, when we look up, there's another cascade of chemicals and messages from the brain to the body and the body to the brain that uplifts everything. SPEAKER B That's so interesting. SPEAKER C How often do you think, the way I'm standing, what I'm doing, makes a huge difference? SPEAKER B It's kind of like the brain is actually reflecting what's going on in the mind in terms of a physical reflection or display of what's happening. SPEAKER C It is. It is. It follows what the brain is thinking and the way we hold our body and we do things and we don't realise, like when we're stressed, you look at the nonverbals attention and clenched teeth, and that is giving messages to the brain and the chemical system that not all is well and we're under stress. Therefore, let's pump some adrenaline and cortisol. That's the response. So being aware not just of the brain and how it works, but how it impacts the body and the body impacts the brain is where we're going with these next few sessions. Now, there's a great quote I've used just to give a bit of a picture here, and it's about the brain that controls the body. It's an Ellen white quote, and she says, the brain is the capital of the body, the seat of all the nervous forces and of mental action. The nerves proceeding from the brain control the body by the brain. Nerves. Mental impressions are conveyed to all nerves of the body as by telegraph wires, and they control the vital action of every part of the system. All the organs of motion are governed by the communications they receive from the brain. Now, that was written in 1872, well over 100 years ago, and as you can see, it was one of Ellen White's actual insights, and it had to be inspired. She wouldn't have known that the science wasn't there in those days and she didn't have a science degree or understand on that level. But today, science has clarified and said the same thing. They found that this is what actually happens with all the technology we have now. So they're telling us what we were told 100 years ago. So it's interesting, isn't it? So, yeah, so we have a lot happening between that brain and the mind and the body. That's very important. I don't know. Ever thought about it? SPEAKER B Yeah, I was just thinking back to that peanuts illustration, and I was wondering about you know, if he changed his posture and was, you know, standing upright and straight, would that actually affect the mind in a different way? SPEAKER C Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And this comes back to the nonverbal side. We think of communication as verbal, but what he was showing, or linus was showing that it's actually physiological. What we do with the body makes a whole difference to the brain and the chemistry in the body. And a good example of that is smiling or frowning. When we smile, we actually uplift the chemistry in the brain and the body, and it's to do with the action of, when we do that smile. And I did read, I don't know how true this, it says 26. It takes 26 muscles to smile and 62 to frown. So in other words, it takes a lot more muscles to do the frown. When we frowned, it gives the body a very negative message and the chemicals in the body start to drop down at the cellular level. We lose essential chemicals and impulses for mood and for wellbeing, and we end up in a very negative state by doing that. And then if you're looking at someone who's smiling or frowning, we actually have mirror neurons. So we take over, we absorb that and mimic it. So we will probably do the same thing, not realising. They've done interesting studies on people who are smiling, for example, and they found that when people smile, that there's a whole biochemical cascade of positive chemicals that happens, but it's not just for the person, it's also for the person looking at the smile. And even if you look at a picture of someone smiling, it has that effect on the system as well. SPEAKER B That's so amazing, isn't it? Because, I mean, we've heard about how it's good to surround yourself with positive people, and this is obviously physiologically backing that up. And I guess it's probably, if we are positive, that's going to have an even better influence on those around us, because their mirror neurons will pick that up and it will give them a lift. SPEAKER C That's right. And if you're not feeling good, it's like peanuts. If you lift up and you smile, you're going to feel better. Your chemical, it's a biochemical factor. So this is where it's important how we use our nonverbals, like facial expression or tone of voice. You know, you have a look at the different nonverbals, someone has a gruff tone of voice, then it's very different to someone who has a really pleasant tone of voice. And, I mean, even animals respond to this. I find if I'm too firm in my tone, my female cat, she runs, she disappears. It's too much for her. But if I speak to her in the right tone, she's relaxed and comfortable. So even animals are affected by our nonverbal communication. So imagine children, babies, adults. SPEAKER B Yeah, absolutely. Like, those details are just so powerful. It's interesting to be able to realise that connection. SPEAKER C It is, yeah. SPEAKER B Are there any other things that we can think of about our bodies that will affect how we feel and our minds and how they function? SPEAKER C Okay, just to recap that, we need to not just think about how we're feeling or what's going on, we need to look at what the body's doing and change the body posture and the situation. And it does work, I find if you actually smile when you don't feel like it, it's like, fake it till you make it. Principle is one I learned when I was in a psychiatric hospital. And we'd get them smiling at each other even if they didn't feel like it. And they said it definitely made a difference. So this is where we can improve our mood and our wellbeing just by the way we hold ourselves. Stand up straight, walk tall. All these sayings we have, which will really help a lot, but why? And that's because the communication system in the body is in your whole nervous system. Right. We actually have nerve pathways from the brain through to the body. Okay, there you can see, there's a male and female. You can see all that wiring that goes from the brain down the brain stem. We've got the central nervous system that runs down either side of the spine. And interestingly, if that gets damaged, there was someone who had a major stroke and that was damaged when he actually died. They then did an autopsy and found the damaged central nervous system. The brain had grown a whole new central nervous system on the outside of it. SPEAKER B Wow, that's amazing. SPEAKER C It is, isn't it? So this is the mind body connection. So if we come back to look at our nervous system, if we come back to that diagram, because it's going to show us a lot about what we do. So once it leaves the brain, and then you can see it branches out right down to the tips of your fingers, and it goes right through to the soles of the feet and the toes. You have most like the sensitivity of the nervous system. It culminates in those two areas, which is why touch is incredibly sensitive and often the feet become a problem. When we're in trouble. We either get hot feet, we can't cope, the feet get very sore. And that's because all those nerve endings, they say if you massage the feet, then it's like giving the body a massage. So have a foot bath, put magnesium oil on lavender, all sorts of things. If you're feeling bad, you're having a bad day and the feet are very tired or a bit sore, do something to help your feet, because that will make a huge difference. It's a very positive thing to do. So it's what we, again, what we do with the body resonates with the brain and every part, every cell of the body. Okay, the next part of our nervous system that we look at is what we call there's a peripheral nervous system that runs around the ribcage. It's rings that run around the ribcage and it actually goes from the spine down the brain, the brain stem down, the central nervous system radiates around. Now, have you ever cracked or injured a rib? I don't know. SPEAKER B I have, but I know of other people who have and it's not very comfortable. No. SPEAKER C They say, what pain? Well, it's not the rib that's in pain, it's the actual nervous ring of nerves. And they find that that ring of nerves radiates through to the gut, to the lower part of the body, to the heart, to the lungs. So if we have a problem in the spine or we've damaged that, it actually can upset the organs throughout the body, depending what part of the back has been injured or is having problems, so that peripheral nervous system, we can have a pain in the lower back and we've got a gut problem. The stomach's not doing well. And they don't realise that if you treat the lower back and correct that to allow the nerves and the pathways to run through and de inflame the system, then the gut will be fixed. So that's why understanding the whole nervous system is vital. And of course, a lot of people will be aware of the sciatic nervous system and that's when it runs from the hip area right down through. And often people say, oh, my sciatic. I've got sciatic pain. And that's. You get pain in the nerves when they're inflamed. And that means we've probably got too much, well, inflammation in the body. We can do an injury that will inflame it, the cells are reacting and this is where a lot of inflammatory disorders will cause those problems. And this is where, if you get knotted muscles, it can impact that part of the nervous system in the lower back. So again, massage, treating yourself, de stressing, lots of things will help, but all those nerves run down that psyotic nerve system down into the feet. So again, the brain body connection, we need to treat the whole system. That system I'm most interested in, or that I work a lot with, is the autonomic nervous system. And we're going to look at that more closely with, I think, in our next session. But what we're doing, the autonomic nervous system, it is. It's autopilot, and we'll just sort of describe it. At the moment, there's two branches. We've got the sympathetic branch and the parasympathetic. And that nervous system is connected. The sympathetic nervous system is connected through. From the central nervous system, and it comes up through this area here. So when we have a problem, we get this rush, and we can feel that tension there, okay? But the actual parasympathetic, the opposite branch there, that is parts of the brain, the lower part of the brain at this, the brain stem and the lower genital area, is where the parasympathetic is. So that calms down and the other one speeds up. So this is where we're going to look at that, because it's important, if you want to treat stress trauma, correct the body balance. Using the autonomic nervous system is crucial in that process. So this is where we're going to head in that direction. SPEAKER B So, Jenifer, can you tell us a little bit more about how this mind body connection interplays in terms of our health outcomes? And, you know, if one part of the body is. Has a symptom, is it actually rooted in another part of the body or in the mind or something like that? Can you explain a bit more about that? SPEAKER C I find what happens, we often see the body separate from that mind connection. And people say, I've got a headache, I'm going to the doctor. You get tablets, but the headache gets worse or it increases. So what I do is help them to explore what's happening in the brain and the body that will cause that response, because there's a lot we can do because of this nervous system. We've talked about what the brain can do. So there are many, many symptoms, and we've got, I think, a couple of slides there. We're going to look at and have a look at some of these particular symptoms that occur. And if you have a look here, things that are mind body connected. And you mentioned before what we think is going to cause a reaction in the stomach or the way we feel. So if we've got heightened anxiety, we've got high adrenaline levels. Okay, but where's the anxiety? Anxiety is future fear, the what if syndrome. So when we think in fear, the adrenals kick in and our anxiety goes up. So if we change the way we think, we can control that mind body response. Okay, the chest pain is another one. And panic attacks. And panic attacks are the most treatable one because it's the body's reaction to stress and fear. And what it does, it just. It changes the breathing. When we're not breathing right in the body, the brain interprets it as a threat and it kicks in the adrenals and you get this surge of adrenaline, cortisol, and then the person goes into panic. And this is where. Yeah, where they then. But if they change the breathing, what they're doing is loading in too much oxygen, not enough carbon dioxide, because carbon dioxide's a natural ventolin. So you just breathe. Doctors used to say, breathe in and out of a paper bag. But I find if you just cup your hands and re breathe, it will reverse the symptoms. It's one of the easiest treatable things. But because it's such an awful experience, it's like mimicking a heart attack. People are terrified of it. And that makes, of course, increases its capacity to work. So this is where, again, learning, understanding that brain body connection. I mean, how many people have high blood pressure? They go to the doctor and says, oh, you're stressed? Some go, no, I'm not, but they are, because stress is doing things like increasing it, treat the stress levels and calm the system down. And we're going to look at those sorts of things as we go and that will treat that problem, insomnia. If we're stressed during the day and we don't have a good sleep cycle, there are so many reasons which I'm hoping, well, we will be able to address eventually, but it is to do with lifestyle, the impact on the brain and the body and our chemical balance, because we need melatonin to sleep. And then if we don't get the right amount of sunshine, particularly in the morning, we don't have enough melatonin during the day then. And we get that. Particularly females have the busy brain syndrome because their brain's highly active. And what happens is they then start to go to bed and they're tired as anything. And this happens with men as well. But I find men can often drop off to sleep easily, but women tend to go to bed and then their brain's doing overtime. They don't have enough the chemicals to slow them down and put them into a rest state. So it's a multifaceted. But that just gives you an idea of that brain body connection of what can happen. So we've got to be careful what we think and what we believe. The other one is palpitations and that your heart's racing again. That is stress. Too much adrenaline, cortisol, shortness of breath. Again, breathing is crucial. And when we are stressed and anxious and distressed that we change a breathing, we hold the breath, shallow breathing, or we do the panic attacks, the over breathing, taking too much oxygen, and the next one is sweating. We do perspiring. You know, we actually, it's one of the signs and symptoms that something is wrong, and it's the body's way when it gets stressed and inflamed, where it's trying to cool itself down. So this is where the brain tells the body to action these things. All right, so this is where we have to work with these things. So there, a lot of those are your physical responses. So let's keep. Oh, here we go. We've got another one there. We talked a bit about back pain, and that goes to every part of the body, so. But it is a symptom of the mind body connection isn't doing well. And sometimes we get back pain. We don't. What have I done? I don't even know. I've got, you know, why this is happening. But it can be muscle tension. Nerves inflamed in the back area, pinching. If muscles tense, they pinch the nerves. And this is the brain is stressed, and it's relaying it to the body and bracing. Excessive tiredness. In other words, you're not sleeping well. How often do you find you wake up going, oh, my goodness, what did I do all night? I'm so tired and yet I've slept. So it's insomnia. And we could certainly do some work on that because that's an important thing, that extreme tiredness and the brain not getting enough rest. It's not repairing, as we said, and that means we go to bed and it's not doing its job and repairing and refreshing for the next day, then we're going to be tired. So all these things are treatable by working with the mind and the body. Okay. We can get general aches and pains, and these are indicators, emotionally, mentally, and physically, we're not doing well. Headaches, neck tension, often just a little bit of massage. Use some. I use natural things like arnica or you get those rubs on and release the nerves and the muscles. Because the brain is stressed, you've got too much adrenaline, cortisol, and that is causing a lot of this light headedness. If you're over breathing and too much oxygen or your blood sugars are low, we're not looking after ourselves or we're distressed, we can get that lightheadedness. Okay, stiff neck. We again, stiffen up. It's a bit like the peanuts thing. What we do with our body is very powerful. So once you react and say you start stiffening and you don't realise the neck is, it's going to stop blood flow to the brain or minimise it, there's less blood flow. That means the brain is going to get stressed and the feedback loop is making it worse, not better. And when we're stressed and upset, change of appetite. Either you don't eat much at all or you increase. You do comfort eating. So all of these are mind body connected. Okay. And the last few there affects the bowels, right? That means, and people have a lot of inflammatory bowel disorders these days, all treatable. So constipation or diarrhoea, nobody likes having those, but they're indicators that the brain and the body isn't doing well. Dry mouth. When we're stressed and anxious, the mouth dries out, the stomach can get too much acid and it's going to overreact to everything. And then, of course, we can end up putting on weight. Emotions will cause weight gain, particularly, I find, both with men and women. But when they withhold emotions and they don't deal with them, the brain and the body just retains fluids or it sends food to the wrong area. So that's to do with eating and what we do. Again, you can correct all that. And of course, blood sugar problems is a big problem today. People don't eat properly, they get stressed and your blood sugars plummet. So this is about how can you protect yourself? How can you get your body running well, which means we've got to now work with the brain one to be aware of what the body's. To be self aware and to be able to be aware of what the body's doing at any given time. Okay, so poor physical emotional health weakens the body's immune system. So that means we're more vulnerable to things. We're more likely to get colds, infections, viruses, things like that, definitely. And it stops us doing things we don't feel like it. When we're stressed and anxious and upset, we tend to not exercise don't eat properly. I mean, we see it all the time, things like that. And we can abuse drugs, alcohol, things like that, or overuse doctor prescribed meds because of the way we are. Instead of treating the source, we treat the body or the symptom. SPEAKER B Yeah, totally. And I think almost all of us and our viewers would relate to that because like all of those symptoms, I think on every page I've experienced one or two or a few of those things and I think. Yeah, yeah, okay, that was this stress. That was that issue. That was that issue. And so it's interesting because it's true, because we do also have that tendency of thinking those symptoms are the isolated little problem rather than recognising. Hang on a minute, this is probably connected to this, connected to this, connected to this. And it's again coming back to having to look at all of it, working together in order to fix it and address those issues. SPEAKER C And I've given you a very brief overview. I mean, each of those systems and what's happening in our body and our brain, there is so much more information that can help people. So again, we're going to explore some more of this as we go through these sessions because it's just so good to know truth and to be able to use it, apply it. SPEAKER B Yeah. And another thing I was thinking about is, and this was stemming back to a comment earlier, is that when we're doing something with the body, obviously can affect the mind, but also the mind over the body and the importance of being able to use that very front part of the mind to choose what behaviour in order to manage it, to me was something that was quite critical in terms of achieving a balance in all of this. SPEAKER C Absolutely. And if we look to the body and as well as the brain, the body's giving us signals. The brain's not right, the system's not right. We have to listen to all aspects, how we're feeling, what the body's doing and what the mind is doing. SPEAKER B Yeah, that's so interesting. Taking all of that information in together and integrating it as a big picture is really important. Yeah. Which is what we do with lifestyle medicine. I mean, that's what it's all about is we're looking at all the different avenues and seeing how they interrelate together so that we can address the person as a whole. Yeah. Any final little thoughts? SPEAKER C Well, it's not all bad news. There's a lot we can all do, and including people who are listening to this, can do as we go. That can make a huge difference to something that we don't think we can fix in the body. So it's using the skills. That's what I do. SPEAKER B Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing once again from your wealth of experience, experience and information. We really, really appreciate that and we look forward to the next programme where we're going to discuss this a bit further. So, we've been discussing the mind body connection with health psychologist Jenifer Skues. You know, the mind and body are so closely linked that each can affect the other in powerful ways and even impact our overall health. Understanding this connection is thus very important for our well being. In the next couple of episodes, we will expand this topic and talk about balancing mind, body and emotions. You won't want to miss this. If you have questions or comments about this programme, or if there's a topic you would like us to discuss, contact us on [email protected]. 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.