Video Transcript: Self-Care

Welcome back to mental health integration, the mini course. I am Brandon  Appelhans, and I'm glad to be with you again. In this section, we are going to be  talking about self care. In the previous section, we talked about medications and we talked about therapists and psychiatrists, and at this section, we're going to  be talking about how you can take care of yourself to make sure that you  actually experience life. Now, why is self care important? Well, it's really simple.  You have a lot of choices in your life about how you take care of yourself. Your  body is meant to work well, you have the choice on whether you want your body to work well or not work well. So how do you get to work? Well, the answer self  care. What about sleep and exercise and diet? Seems like these are the three  things that come up over and over and over when we talk about self care, are  you sleeping enough? Are you exercising enough? What's your diet like? And  that's because these are three of the things that help most when you're working  with your own mental health. Your sleep is critically important. There's been  numerous studies that have talked about the detriments of not getting enough  sleep. The detriments that happen if you're cutting sleep short, over and over  and over and then trying to make it up. There's been studies showing about  irregularity of sleep. What happens when you go to bed at different times and try to wake up at different times. And in all of these things you need to know, sleep  is a big deal. You want to live your best life. You should probably get some  sleep. Now, I have a two and a six year old at home, so I fully understand you  parents were like, You don't understand there is no sleep right now. Oh, yes, I  do. It was awful. There wasn't sleep. But do your best anyway. Because, man,  it's hard in that give yourself a little bit grace, because we all know it's hard. The  other thing about sleep is, if you sleep well, it does magic things to your body  your metabolism metabolizes better. Your disposition changes because your  brain chemistry changes, you are able to function better and think better. Your  processing speed and your brain goes up. All sorts of good things happen when  you sleep that has nothing to do with mental illness, they're just great. And on  top of that, if you're on meds, they probably work better. Now, some medications make you sleep more, or some medications make you sleep a little bit less,  potentially, but if you take the time to try and make sure you get enough rest so  that you feel rested, you'll be in great shape moving forward, and you'll give  yourself the best possible chance of making your meds work. The second thing  there was exercise. How much exercise do I really need? Well, there's more  research on this than we ever want to say as well, and also more contrary  information on exercise than you ever want to see as well. But there are some  basic things you need to know if you're like me, I have I have a blood sugar  processing issue. I have hypolacemia, so I exercise basically every day. That  has nothing to do with wanting to be buff or huge or anything like obviously, I am not the model of musculature, but it does mean that my brain feels better and  my body metabolizes sugar better, which means that my blood sugar levels can 

stay more even, and my medications work. So that's why I exercise, because it  makes me a better me, not because I want to be the strongest person in the  room, because if I did, I should clearly do steroids or something, because I have little muscles. That was a joke, don't do steroids. Exercise also pushes blood  into your prefrontal cortex, which can change your brain chemistry and actually  lower the amount of depression you're feeling over six to nine months. Exercise  has been shown to be as effective as an antidepressant, and mild to moderate  depression, and long term has even better outcomes. So if you're feeling a little  bit down, go exercise every day. You got this? Is there a amount that's right, or is there a amount that's too much? I have personally found that if I am doing  cardio, I like running. I'm not very good at it. I'm not a competitive runner or  anything like that. It just makes me feel better. If I'm up for a run, there's a magic line at about 40 to 45 minutes, where I will feel better for two days after a run if I  hit that mark, and otherwise I won't. So try it. If you need to see how exercise  impacts your body and do experiments on yourself, go try it. It'll help. The last  thing is diet. I don't eat any refined sugars, and I because I have a sugar  processing issue, and I tend to eat really clean whenever possible. So diet plays a big part in how your body is able to digest vitamins and minerals and how well  your body is going to feel. Also, if you're exercising every day, it's going to  dictate how well you feel about being able to exercise. So if you exercise every  day, your body's probably going to want to start your body's probably going to  start craving different types of foods, and that's great. Eat well, and it'll reward  you now. What about media? Natural Remedies just feel better, oils, prayer,  community, engaging spirituality. What about all of these other things that people tell you to do around mental health? Well, let's go ahead and walk through them  one at a time, starting with media. Can you overdo it with media. Yeah, if you  want to feel better, should you probably cut down your media consumption a  little bit? Yeah, yeah, depression rates and anxiety rates have been going up  since the advent of the smartphone. This isn't rocket science. If anxiety and  depression is going up at nearly the same rate that smartphone use is going up.  Maybe the two might be connected. So it might be a good thing to turn your  phone off every once in a while and leave it at home, or at least silence it, so  that you can actually function better. It also means that you'll probably sleep  better if you cut media in a couple hours before bed, and it also means you  might just feel better because you're not in comparison to other people all the  time. What about natural remedies? I take vitamins and minerals. I don't think  there's any magic bullets with mental illness. I think there's lots and lots and lots  of tools that we can put in our tool belt. And I think using as many as possible is  a great idea, but I am not going to say that you should use one thing and then  just avoid all the others. So do I take vitamins and supplements? Yeah, I take  some fish oil, I take vitamin b3, vitamin D, vitamin E. But I do those to  supplement what's going on with the rest of my self care, my diet, my 

medications, everything else. So does it help? Yeah, it does. I've tried doing it.  I've tried not doing it. If it's a placebo effect, it's a placebo effect I'm happy to  have. So go ahead and you can use those, but don't replace them. They're not a replacement for other forms of treatment. What if you should just feel better and  just be happy? I'm pretty sure that if you are still working on trying to get better  with mental illness, and you are working on medications and therapy and natural remedies and exercise and self care and all these other things you've probably  at this point, also tried feeling better, and it didn't work. So I want to give you the  grace to say, do your best. And that's enough. What about essential oils? Those  can change everything. I am not going to be the one who says essential oils  can't change anything, because research has shown, especially in hospitals that are using different essential oils, that they can actually make surgeons more  effective and different things like that. That was a study that came out of  Tennessee that I just thought was fascinating, if you want to use them once  again as a supplement to add to everything else you're doing, do it, but don't try  to just use essential oils to make you feel better. This. Use all the bullets in the  gun, not one of them, because it takes all of these things to get better. What  about prayer? Prayer, just like exercise, studies have shown forces blood into  your prefrontal cortex and actually helps you feel better. Yeah, so prayer is  great, especially contemplative or silent prayer. Do it? Does it solve everything?  No, does it help? Yes, does sometimes God want to do something through  prayer that actually will solve everything. Yeah, but make sure that you consult  with like your spiritual directors, your spiritual guides, your pastors, and make  sure you're not just drinking, you know, bad eggnog in the morning. Make sure  that you're getting the things that you need, and make sure that God is the one  who's saying. That you're being healed, not you just believing that the number of people that I've talked to who hit the hypomanic episode or a manic episode with bipolar disorder and thought that God was going to heal them, who were not  actually healed, and then who got off to their off of their meds, is staggering.  Don't do it. What about community? Yes, community helps find people. What  about engaging spirituality? Is that really helpful? You're taking a class on  mental health integration. Yes, it's helpful. You need to do that. Finally, I'm going  to give you one more tool. This is halt, hungry aim, really only tired, stressed.  This comes from AA. Normally they leave the s off. It's just halt. But these are a  great way of saying, Am I taking care of myself? So think about it. Are you  hungry, angry, lonely, tired or stressed right now, if you're two of those things,  you should probably go fix it. That's like seeing a yellow light. If you're three of  those things, it's a really good idea to just stop whatever you're doing and go fix  at least one of those things so you can feel better. Our mental illness doesn't get better when we don't take care of ourselves, take care of yourself, and it'll help  every other area of your life. Even Jesus did this right. Yet the news about Him  spread all the more so the crowds of people came to hear him and be healed of 

their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. If Jesus  is willing to step back and sit and pray and take time away from people in order  to be most fully himself, maybe we should follow his lead. Okay, self care is  important. Go ahead and do it. It's great. I'll see you in the next section.