Consider the food that we eat: too little or too much of some foods affects our ability to be healthy and mentally clear. It’s a side of us that we don’t usually associate with misbehavior except that it is, directed at ourselves. Many people stick to only what they like to eat and miss out on essential nutrients, causing an imbalance of what our body needs to work at its best and because this deficiency impacts brain function, it affects our emotions and our ability to make sound decisions.
We are electro-biochemical beings that need a fine balance of biochemical compounds to operate efficiently. Biochemistry scientists tell us that the human body is almost entirely made up of just six chemical elements including calcium and phosphorus, but oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen account for 99% of all the atoms throughout our bodies, mostly as water. These are what biomolecules such as proteins, fats, DNA, and carbohydrates are made up of. Macromolecules of the food we eat is digested and turned into small molecules that can be absorbed into body fluids and transported to cells throughout the body.
A hungry man is an angry man
Remember the saying, a hungry man is an angry man? That is the perfect example of how lack of nutrients affects us. A lack of food can upset our well-being especially if we are used to eating regularly and are late for a meal. If we are not used to fasting and don’t know how to handle its effects, hunger can upset our moods. Nothing seems reasonable and we lose our patience because hunger is difficult to deal with, more so if we did not choose to go without food for that period. A poor diet affects our moods, responses, and memory, influencing our mental clarity and ability to respond adequately to anything.
If we are ignorant or not watchful about what we eat there is a high chance of missing out on some very important and necessary foods. If you can read there is no excuse to remain ignorant about this. Now that we have resources on the Internet where a lot of information is published, it is easier to find out things we don’t know about. Just be sure that the information you get is based on evidence, on reliable and proper research.
For example, we will find that nutrients such as B vitamins, especially B6, B9 and B12 are crucial for brain health as they help produce chemical substances called neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine and GABA, which regulate mood and emotional stability. Vitamin D too, has a role in serotonin production. A deficiency in Magnesium is linked to anxiety and depression because it has a calming effect on the brain. Vitamin C and E and other antioxidants also support brain health and emotional well-being. A lack of Omega-3, a fatty acid, is strongly believed to impact memory loss and depression. If we want to be able to think clearly and rationally it is important to know what foods support our ability to be mentally healthy. Hericenones, erinacenes and polysaccharides are also compounds that enhance brain health. Do consult other references or a dietician for more information on various sources of these nutrients.
Foods and moods
On the other hand, things that influence mental health negatively are diets high in processed foods and sugars; a high sugar intake is associated with an increased risk of depression and anxiety as it causes spikes and crashes in blood sugar levels, leading to mood swings and irritability. Too much sugar in the diet also leads to obesity and there is growing evidence that the fatter we get, the smaller our brains become, likely affecting our intellectual capacity to make rational decisions. Obese people are also at higher risk for dementia and Alzheimer’s and become a burden to family and society. If you can think clearly you won’t act against your own and everyone else’s interests, which is the cause of most of our problems. We don’t respond adequately and in fact act stupidly when we exert our wills ignorantly to indulge in our own thoughtless wants. And it is not just a nutritional and biochemical imbalance we have to deal with, though it’s logical to see that it is a significant cause.
While it is apparent that the food we eat or avoid may make us more prone to mood swings, and although there are medical conditions that affect our emotions, the main cause is our self, the ever-present ‘I’ that drives all that we think say or do. If we are capable of mindfulness or controlled attention, we are more aware of how we react to the things that evoke our reactions, the expressions of our emotions. Not a common skill for most people, but conscious awareness is the only thing that can help us overcome our tendency to react negatively to any situation or provocation. For those of us who don’t have recourse to spiritual teachings or mindfulness training, it is a challenge but not impossible. But we first must acknowledge and honestly face up to the feelings and emotions that we have and get carried away by if we are to understand them. One can only arrive at a solution if we define the problem.
Thoughts and mental postures
As any observer can see, pride is likely the most common mental posture humans adopt and one we hardly question: to feel pleased about something we relate to, either people, an idea or a skill. We take it for granted that it is a natural human trait. It is for many, and we take it for granted and don’t wonder if it has any basis, but if we bothered to think about it, there isn’t any. Pride is imaginary, a thought that we create “in our heads”. Even if it is justified by wealth, position, education or ability it is just a thought brought on by our ego, an idea we defend. Not that it is morally questionable, but it is a thought, an idea we imagine. What matters is how we behave because of it. Many of us have this secret prince or princess in our minds who won’t tolerate being offended or disrespected about things we feel proud of. This attitude separates us from one another, and separation is the cause of conflicts.
All our emotions have this effect. For instance, we get worked up, get angry and hate someone but never question why we should feel that way… we just do it. If it is not caused by an outright wrongdoing, it is always because that person’s looks, behaviour or words don’t conform to what we think is “right” – we have given ourselves the authority to play boss, to decide how they should conduct themselves. We are blind to the fact that we are acting as self-appointed judges of what is “proper”. This disapproval is also rooted in jealousy – not liking that others have something that you don’t. See how emotions sway us in unbeneficial ways.
Unforgiveness is yet another state of mind we allow ourselves to get into, clinging on to the hurt we feel for being wronged or offended. The degree of hurt is tied to the magnitude of our self-importance – the more important we think we are, the greater the pain. We feel that we are inviolable and hate to accept that the “offender” dared to say or do what they did. Note, we cannot be responsible for what goes on in another person’s mind and how they behave, but we can be mindful, attentive to how and why we react. Unforgiveness does us more harm than the person it is directed at, literally.
Physiology of emotions
The trouble with negative emotions is what they do to our bodies. When we stress ourselves with thoughts of rights and wrongs and should and should-nots it is we who suffer the consequences. Stress, mental conflicts, cause our bodies to release hormones that play havoc on our health. Remember the fight or flight response where our bodies produce these substances that increase blood pressure, speed up our breathing and generally agitate our physiology and you see how upset we can get – the total opposite of a calm and rational state. When this happens regularly, we can never remain cool and collected and will always react negatively in any situation.
Worse still, we become prone to headaches, muscle pains, fatigue, stomach upsets, sleep problems and get sick more easily due to a weakened immune system. As a result, we become anxious, restless, less motivated to do things, start having memory problems, feel overwhelmed and avoid friends, become grumpy, stop exercising, have difficulty sleeping and feel sad or depressed, and lose our sex drive. These are unpleasant states to be in and we become unpleasant people to deal with.
As if all this wasn’t bad enough, all these stress hormones released into our bloodstreams result in neck and shoulder pains because our blood vessels enlarge to allow faster oxygen delivery, causing us to clutch and tighten muscles in the neck, jaw and shoulders, increasing the tension in the muscles across the back, restricting neck and shoulder movement, making the pain feel worse. People who are stressed also turn to “comfort eating” – pleasuring themselves with foods high in fat and sugar to try to make themselves feel better but they become fatter and even more unhealthy. Isn’t that enough reason to try and find a way to avoid all this unpleasantness? Many of us claim to be seeking happiness but we are too mentally lazy to even think of what that means and persist in our childish egotistical ways of pleasing ourselves with temporary thrills through eating, sex, fantasy games, gambling, whatever can bring on that adrenaline rush of excitement. And forget about moral judgements, this is about unpleasant and even harmful consequences that we heedlessly invite to give ourselves the opposite of happy. Then we inflict other kinds of pain, our sour moods, on people around us. Silly just begins to describe this.
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