How to support your mood #7: warm up your brain.
Cold hands, cold feet, fungal toenails and pale nailbeds suggest a lack of healthy blood flow to the brain. Why? Because it is a lot easier for blood to travel with gravity, down to the ground, so if it’s not doing that successfully, it’s unlikely to be pushing against gravity up to the brain with enormous success.
Reduced blood flow to the brain = reduced energy production.
Reduced energy production = impaired brain signalling = mood disorder.
So, supporting efficient circulation is another route to avoiding anxiety and depression.
Many factors can contribute to poor circulation and it’s my job to understand which mechanisms are relevant to you.
Blood tests can provide some clues. If you have any blood results from tests run by your GP, I am always happy to look at them when working out the mechanisms driving your anxiety or depression. I apply optimal reference ranges taken from the research which are narrower than the NHS reference ranges. So even if your GP says that your blood test results are normal, I would still like to see them.
I ask for my clients’ blood pressure to see whether high or low blood pressure can be impacting circulation and therefore contributing to anxiety and depression. If so, I then need to identify which mechanism is resulting in suboptimal blood pressure and what can be done. For example, one of my clients came to me with blood pressure of 152/98, we worked through my Power of Food programme together and when next tested her blood pressure was 130/87. Her GP congratulated her upon the changes she had made and decided that blood pressure medication would not be needed. Her mood improved immeasurably too.
There’s lots of detail in the posts in this series because there is so much that can be done to inhibit anxiety and depression. I really hope that you are finding the information to be empowering. Any questions at all, please ask below.
If you would like to discuss working together, please book a free (absolutely no obligation) Zoom call.
Sources:
Empana, J. et. al. (2021) “Microvascular contribution to late-onset depression: mechanisms, current evidence, association with other brain diseases, and therapeutic perspectives”, Biological Psychiatry, 90(4), pp. 214-225.
Liu, M. et. al. (2022) “Cerebral blood flow self-regulation in depression”, Journal of Affective Disorders, 302, pp. 324-331.
