Thousands of people suffer from anxiety and depression around the country. There are a wide variety of explanations and factors that contribute to anxiety and depression, but have you ever considered that inflammation could be playing a role? There are lots ofstudies that show that there is a clear connection between inflammation in your body and your mental health.
The connection between inflammation and mental health.
There are clear connections betweenchronic inflammation and mental health. Research on your immune system shows that proteins called cytokines produce an inflammatory attack on viral or bacterial invaders. These proteins also instigate sick behaviors like loss of appetite, fatigue, and a depressed mood.
Your sick behavior fosters healing because it encourages you to slow down and combat the invaders. But there is an obvious similarity between depression symptoms and sick behavior. So inflammation and immune system issues can lead to mood disorder symptoms and eventually to mental health challenges like anxiety and depression. Depression is more common in patients with type 2 diabetes, arthritis, and other diseases that have chronic inflammation as well, which indicates that inflammation could be creating depressed feelings or contributing to mental health issues.
People who suffer from anxiety can have an opposite problem from people who have depression. Anxiety can increase your immune response, but prolonged anxiety can release too much cortisol in your body. Cortisol turns off aspects of your immune system that fight infections and don’t allow healthy inflammation in your body.
Either way, anxiety and depression have a direct connection with inflammation that could be creating a problem for your health.
What can you do to help with inflammation and mental health?
If you suffer from anxiety or depression, you can try to do some things to help with inflammation in your body, and that in turn could help with your anxiety and depression.
- Work with mental health professionals. It’s important to note that you should work with a doctor or mental health professional to be sure you’re getting all the help you can with mental illness. There are medications, counseling, and other things you need to consult with doctors about to ensure you’re doing the best things for your mental health.
- Drink plenty of water. Your gut health requires plenty of water to help regulate your different systems and improve your overall health.
- Eat a healthy diet. You need to make sure that you are eating a healthy diet to ensure that your immune system is healthy and strong.
- Get plenty of sleep and exercise. You need to make sure you’re moving your body and resting your body appropriately to help with overall wellness.
- Try CBD oil.CBD has been found to help improve symptoms of depression by working with serotonin and your endocannabinoids to enhance your mood, and reduce inflammation in your body and brain.
How does CBD help with mental health issues?
The exact science of how CBD impacts your health is still being actively studied. Right now, much of the data has been ruled as correlated, instead of direct causation. Nevertheless, research on animals shows that CBD’s impact on the brain’s receptors decreases depression and anxiety symptoms. Even more encouraging is the fact that when you speak to people about their personal experiences with CBD, many of them cite anxiety and depression as the symptoms for which they have received the most relief.
As CBD helps reduce inflammation within your body, it canlessen your mental health symptoms. CBD also works with the receptors in your brain, improving serotonin and endocannabinoid health within your brain.
It’s a myth that CBD oil will give you a high, making pain and other mental health symptoms go away. CBD made from hemp doesn’t make you high at all, rather it improves your brain receptors and helps regulate how your body responds to serotonin and inflammation.
If you suffer from anxiety and depression, inflammation could be an underlying factor to your issues. It’s easy to introduce CBD into your diet with products likeKowa. The simple act of drinking Kowa's hemp-derived, CBD infused beverages can introduce CBD into your body, which can help you reduce inflammation and improve your mental health issues.