603 LIVING
HEALTH
Emotional Fitness Strategies for staying healthy BY KAREN A. JAMROG
Y
ou might figure you’ve got your physical health pretty well covered with regular exercise, healthful eating, and plenty of shut-eye. But don’t overlook your emotional fitness, which has far-reaching implications and, given the times we live in, might need a little more TLC than usual. Our mental outlook and emotions can affect more than our tendency to be grumpy or good-humored. Optimism, for example, has been linked with longer life and a significantly reduced risk of dying from several major causes of death, including cancer, heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease and infection.
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nhmagazine.com | July 2020
“There is a connection between what we think, what we’re feeling, what our behaviors are, and even how our body behaves physically in terms of illness and recovery,” says Ann-Marie Bishop, MSW, LICSW, an outpatient behavioral health clinician at Catholic Medical Center. “Our body tries to synchronize things so that they all work together, so if someone has a belief that ‘I’m going to be OK’ ... it leads to feeling better and it will kind of lean the body toward doing the things that it needs to do healthwise” to help achieve that outcome. Thoughts and feelings affect physical health indirectly by influencing behavior.
People who are depressed, for example, might attempt to cope through substance abuse or misuse. They might sleep too much, eat poorly or withdraw from others, says Justin Looser, LICSW, ACHE, the New Hampshire market director for Behavioral Health at Frisbee Hospital, Parkland Hospital and Portsmouth Hospital. But thoughts and emotions alone can also directly affect our physical well-being. Stress, for example, prompts the body to release cortisol, a hormone that hampers the immune system, leaving us more susceptible to disease. Chronic stress raises the risk of many health problems, including heart disease, digestive trouble, headaches and weight gain. The correlation between what’s in our head and what happens in the rest of our body has gained increasing attention among healthcare professionals, Looser says, with the recognition that whether a doctor is treating high blood pressure or some other ailment, “if your patient is going back to a house that’s fraught with financial stress, marital problems, family problems — whatever it may be — you’re never going to get to the root of someone’s overall health unless you address all of their socioeconomic and psychosocial stressors.” Many primary care offices, Looser says, now employ therapists to supplement and dovetail with physical care. In addition, individuals can help themselves through a variety of techniques. The first step is to pay attention to what you’re thinking, Bishop says. Rather than going through your days on autopilot as so many of us do, try to recognize your habitual thought patterns and change the thoughts that you associate with situations that make
illustration by gloria diianni
Thoughts and feelings affect physical health indirectly by influencing behavior.
