Having high levels of psychological (mental and emotional) wellbeing is often closely linked to the state of our physical wellbeing.
For example: If you are battling with an illness or living with a long-term physical health condition, it is no surprise at all that this can reduce your overall sense of happiness and contentment in life, and also provoke stress as you wait to see the what course the illness/health condition will take. With certain long-term conditions, you may well also go through a period of sadness and despair as you ‘grieve’ for the you prior to its onset that is ‘lost’ and adjust to a new physical way of being.
For example: Remember your brain is an organ like any other in your body (your heart, lungs etc.) It too can become ‘overworked’ and exhausted if your lifestyle combines high levels of demand with low levels of nurture. You would not consider it physically possible to put your heart and lungs under the strain of running marathon after marathon without the appropriate levels of rest and ‘fuel’, so why would you expect your brain to work at its optimum levels without the equivalent attention to providing it with rest and ‘fuel’. Lack of sleep, poor diet, lack of mental rest and taking in substances that can impede cognition can also contribute to our mental and emotional wellbeing becoming impaired.
Research would tend to suggest that males are sometimes not as proactive as females in terms of looking after ourselves physically:
- The (Register General Annual Report 2018) shows in NI, males tend to die younger than females.
- The (British Heart Foundation Factsheet NI) shows that 1 in 8 local men will die from coronary heart disease compared to 1 in 13 women.
- The (Public Health Agency Fact Sheet) shows that in 2018/19, more males than females in NI met the BMI classification of overweight or obese.
So is it time for a diet and lifestyle change in your life?
Well by striving to put a plan in place that aims for advancement (not perfection) in terms of:
- The amount of physical exercise/activity in your life.
- The type and volumes of foods and liquids you take in.
- The time you dedicate to sleep and other physically restful/recharging activities.
- Reducing the volume of potentially damaging substances your place into your body (alcohol and drugs).
Not only will you be caring for your physical wellbeing more, you will be taking steps that will have a positive impact on your mental and emotional wellbeing too.
Not only will that most important in your body (your brain) be fit to work better and harder for your benefit, looking after yourself more will ‘say something’ to your unconscious self about your innate worth and value which will benefit your esteem too. You do matter, you are of worth and value, so you are deserving of care and attention being given to looking after you!.
The Men’s Health Forum in Ireland have pulled together a range of useful information, resources and tools on their website which can help you develop the insight and wisdom on how and where you should make advances in your physical wellbeing, and also has links out to some useful free resources to get you stated.
Click Here to visit the Men’s Health Forum Ireland website.