What is the Mind-Body Connection and Why Does it Matter?
Photo by Darkhan Basshybayev
Many of us understand the need to pay attention to our physical health. In recent years, the importance of our mental health has been gaining traction.
The mind-body connection refers to the powerful bidirectional relationship between your psychological health and your physical health. Your thoughts, emotions, and mental state influence your physical well-being, while your body’s health can impact how you feel mentally.
In fact, the American Heart Association has shared research stating psychological health is strongly linked to cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk and also influences biological processes and behaviours that cause CVD (Levine et al., 2021). Not surprisingly, treatment aimed at improving psychological health can positively impact cardiovascular health (Levine et al., 2021).
Anger and hostility can cause inflammation in the body, while many other types of psychological stress (e.g. PTSD, anger, depression, anxiety) can disrupt the balance of our autonomic nervous system (Levine et al., 2021). This disruption can trigger a chain reaction in the body that raises the risk of heart disease (Levine et al., 2021).
So, how do we go about increasing our mind-body connection?
Meditation, psychotherapy, mindfulness practices, effective emotional regulation, smoking cessation, heart-healthy eating, stress management, physical activity, and positive social relationships have been found to improve our cardiovascular health (Levine et al., 2021).
Yours always in authenticity,
Jody
References
Levine, G. N., Cohen, B. E., Commodore-Mensah, Y., Fleury, J., Huffman, J. C., Khalid, U., Labarthe, D. R., Lavretsky, H., Michos, E. D., Spatz, E. S., & Kubzansky, L. D. (2021). Psychological health, well-being, and the mind-heart-body connection: A scientific statement from the American Heart Association. Circulation, 143(10), e763–e783. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000947