A week has passed now since my last reflection, which was about the influence we can have on people, particularly those younger than us, who may look up to us. This week I am back with another reflection. This time I want to talk about mental health and the importance of maintaining good mental health.
It shouldn't come as any surprise for you to hear that rest and sleep are vitally important for any human. However with that said there's many people out there who will willfully ignore this precious information. The surprising thing is that they are some of the most successful people in society, US presidents, various prime Ministers from around the world, our own Taoiseach here in Ireland, they all routinely do not get their eight hours sleep I suspect. You can include CEOs of large multinationals, highly qualified doctors, nurses, engineers, construction workers, farmers, bin men, street cleaners ,bankers, you name it, there will be some not getting their proper quota of sleep. In the long run that will catch up with people.
The recommendation is that you get a minimum of 7 hours as an adult. That amount of time is far increased for younger children, kids from about two to the age of five should be getting anywhere between 10 and 14 hours of sleep and kids from the age of 6 to 12 should be getting between 9 and 12 hours sleep per 24-Hour period. Teenagers then should be getting between about 9 and 10 hours per 24-Hour period. Many of us are not getting this amount of sleep and I feel it will eventually catch up with us.
A good analogy here is the car that many of us use to get to and from or various destinations every day. The recommendation for a car is that you put good quality petrol or diesel into it. Another recommendation is to get the car serviced on an ongoing basis every say 20,000 km or once per year. If you fail to do so you're not going to have a very good car after say 10 or 15 years, instead you'll have a car that gives lots and lots of problems. The problems won't appear after a day, a week or a month, but will compound over time. The same is true for our bodies, if we don't look after them and our sleep is similar to the service from a car, then over time your body too will give problems,it's as simple as that. Again this won't manifest itself over days, weeks or months, but rather over years. So my advise to you if you are a night owl, is do your upmost to get good quality sleep of 7 hours or more per night and that increases to 8 or 9 hours recommended once you reach your sixties.
Okay so we've got sleep covered. What else is important for good mental health? Well for me good physical health feeds into good mental health so I'm going to talk about diet here because I believe that it is also important for good mental health.
The old expression we are what we eat comes to mind here. Sure one meal isn't going to make much of a difference or a week of bad eating habits is not going to make a difference but believe me months or years of certain eating habits will certainly make a difference, and it will be an adverse effect of course.
When it comes to a healthy body and healthy minds I have an holistic view. I think everything that we put into our body ultimately has an impact on our mind and our mental health as well. Our gut flora is of huge importance to our overall health both physical and mental in my opinion. So it's very important that we put good food into our bodies so that the gut flora can contain good bacteria as well as bad bacteria which makes up our microbiome. The diversity in our food types is vital here, so where possible try not to stick to the same food in your meals too much, try instead to branch out and try new things. Your gut, your body and untimately your mind will thank you for it in the long run.
Another key contributor to good mental health is exercise. Whether it's walking, running, swimming, hiking - it doesn't matter, just getting that cardiovascular exercise is what is most important. Most humans are great at making an excuses for nit doing things. I can't do it because I've got 3, 4, 5 children. I can't do it because I'm too busy with my job. I can't do it because I'm too busy looking after my elderly relatives. There's lots of excuses out there and we can all make them but I know lots of people who have lots and lots of responsibilities and busy lives who find ample time for exercise. They prioritise it, because they understand the importance of it.
The exercise could be an early morning swim at 6:00 a.m. It could be a walk with the dogs before you do the school run in the morning. It could be walking up the stairs at work and walking down the stairs at work everyday instead of using the lift. These small things can all add up but we've got to stop making excuses for why we can't do things and find a way to fit them into our schedule. Exercise is of vital importance and if we can sustain exercise throughout our lives it definitely leads to a healthier physical body which for me also leads to healthier mental well being.
The countries and cities in which we live these days are becoming more and more urbanised. More and more concrete, steel, bricks and mortar and less trees, plants and green space. This is bad. This is not good for our mental health.
This rapid urbanisation means that humans are spending less and less time in green spaces in parks, seeing open water, trees, forests in their day-to-day lives. Sure they might see it during leisure activities at the weekend, but in their day-to-day it's all greys, blacks and whites they see and not enough of the green of nature.
Aside from the detrimental environmental effects of this, loss of these green spaces and time spent in them could have hugely negative effects on people’s mental health and well-being is something that I have read in relation to this subject matter. There are more and more studies appearing every day that's correlation good mental health with spending time in green spaces and forests and in nature. Studies have shown that:
"Green spaces can lower levels of stress and reduce rates of depression and anxiety, reduce cortisol levels and improve general well-being. Not only can a simple walk in nature boost your mood but also improve your cognitive function and memory"
(This study was found on https://www.froglife.org/2022/03/29/the-benefits-of-green-spaces-and-nature-on-mental-health)
That's huge folks. We should really pay attention to this kind of information. Get yourself out into nature. Get yourself out into the green fields. Get yourself out into the forests. Surround yourself with nature whenever the opportunity arises. Your body and your mind will thank you for it in the long run.
Something else we can do is bring greenery into our houses. Got some house plants get some small little trees and shrubs and stuff like that you can grow inside if possible. I have some in my house and I must say, they make me smile, there is definitely something to be said for it.
That's it for this week's reflection, hopefully you enjoyed it and got something from it.
The image used above is my own taken in Conamara on the West coast of Ireland
