Tag: mental health

The Hidden Force Behind Your Food Cravings: It’s Not About Willpower

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 0

If you’ve ever battled with food cravings and told yourself it’s just a lack of willpower, it’s time to rewrite that story. Cravings aren’t about weakness or self-control—they’re the result of complex signals from your body, including messages from the tiny but powerful microbes living in your gut. Understanding this connection can replace shame with self-compassion and empower you to make meaningful, lasting changes to your health.

The Gut-Brain Connection: Why Your Cravings Aren’t Just in Your Head

Your gut is home to trillions of microbes that thrive on the food you eat. These microbes aren’t passive bystanders—they actively communicate with your brain through a system called the gut-brain axis, influencing how you feel, what you crave, and even your mood.

Here’s where it gets fascinating: different types of gut microbes prefer different kinds of food. If your diet is high in sugary or processed foods, you’re feeding the sugar-loving microbes. These microbes produce chemical signals that amplify your cravings for sweets, ensuring they get more of their preferred energy source. It’s not a lack of willpower—it’s biology!

On the other hand, if you eat more fibre-rich foods, like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, you’ll nurture fibre-loving microbes. These microbes produce substances like short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which help regulate appetite, promote satiety, and reduce cravings for unhealthy foods.

A Microbial Tug-of-War in Your Gut

Imagine your gut as a kitchen, full of busy chefs. Each chef likes to work with their own preferred ingredients.

  • If most of the chefs in your kitchen are sugar enthusiasts, they’ll keep requesting sugar to cook up their favourite dishes. These demands show up as cravings and can feel impossible to resist. It’s not willpower; it’s your sugar-loving chefs making sure their orders are heard loud and clear!
  • But if your kitchen has fibre-loving chefs, they’ll be requesting fruits, veggies, and whole grains for their recipes. As you cater to their demands over time, the number of fibre-loving chefs in your kitchen increase, while the sugar-loving chefs reduce their numbers. As a result, you start to find wholefoods more appealing and the cravings for sugary foods slowly start to fade.

The beauty of this system is its adaptability. By slowly changing your diet, you can shift the balance of chefs in your gut, making healthier choices feel more natural and less like a battle.

How Long Does It Take to Shift Your Microbiome?

Here’s the encouraging part: your gut microbiome is incredibly dynamic. Research shows that microbial populations can begin to shift in as little as four days when you make dietary changes. However, for more sustained and significant changes, a few weeks to months of consistent effort are often needed. The key is patience and persistence—this is a journey, not a quick fix.

Practical Steps to Support a Balanced Microbiome

  1. Start Small
    Begin by adding more fibre-rich foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and nuts to your meals. Even small changes, like swapping sugary snacks for a handful of berries or adding a side of roasted veggies, can help.
  2. Diversify Your Diet
    Different gut microbes thrive on different types of fibre. Eating a wide variety of plant-based foods supports a more diverse and resilient microbiome.
  3. Reduce Processed Foods
    While it’s not about perfection, cutting back on sugary and highly processed foods can help shift the balance away from sugar-loving microbes over time.
  4. Stay Consistent
    Remember, your microbiome responds to what you eat most often, not occasionally. Consistency is key to nurturing long-term changes.

Leave Shame Behind

It’s time to stop blaming yourself for cravings. Instead, see them as signals from your gut microbiome—a system that’s been shaped by your past food choices but is entirely capable of transformation. By making gradual, realistic changes to your diet, you can shift the balance in your gut, reduce cravings, and feel more in control of your food choices.

This isn’t about willpower—it’s about working with your body. Every small, consistent step supports your health, and over time, you’ll notice the difference. Replace self-criticism with curiosity and compassion, and watch as your cravings and overall well-being begin to change.

source: freepik AI

Gut Health is Important for Mental Health

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 0

At Thrive Wellness, we recognise that mental health is multifaceted, and addressing it from all angles is important. While psychological therapy plays a significant role in mental health care, did you know that your gut health could be just as important? The gut-brain connection influences everything from mood to cognitive function and improving the health of your gut could be your ticket to a happier mind.

The Gut-Brain Connection: More Than Just a Feeling

Your gut and brain are constantly communicating through what’s known as the gut-brain axis – a two-way street where your gut can influence your mood, thoughts, and overall mental health, and vice versa. Here’s how it works:

Neurotransmitter Production: Did you know that a significant amount of serotonin, the “happy hormone,” is produced in your gut? A healthy gut is essential for maintaining optimal serotonin levels. An unhealthy gut can disrupt serotonin production, leading to mood swings, anxiety, or even depression.

Inflammation and Immunity: A disrupted gut can lead to systemic inflammation which has been linked to mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety. A healthy gut helps maintain a balanced immune response, reducing inflammation and potentially alleviating symptoms.

Nutrient Absorption: Your gut is responsible for absorbing the nutrients that your brain needs to function effectively. If your gut isn’t healthy, you might miss out on essential vitamins and minerals important for mental clarity, emotional balance, and resilience.

Microbiome Balance: Your gut is home to trillions of microorganisms, collectively known as the microbiome. These beneficial bacteria help regulate mood by producing and modulating neurotransmitters like serotonin and GABA. They also help maintain the gut barrier, enhance nutrient absorption, and regulate immune responses. When the microbiome is imbalanced – a condition known as dysbiosis – harmful metabolites and endotoxins are produced, leading to inflammation and poor mental health.

Why Psychological Therapy Alone May Not Be Enough

Psychological therapy is an essential part of mental health care, but it’s not the only piece of the puzzle. While therapy can help you manage emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, it may not address the underlying physical issues that could be contributing to your mental health struggles.

This is where a Certified Practicing Nutritionist (CPN), also known as a Clinical Nutritionist, can help. Through comprehensive assessment of your medical history, current symptoms, lifestyle factors and laboratory testing, a CPN can create a personalised plan that includes dietary modifications and therapeutic supplmenentation to support and enhance your mental well-being.

Research shows that this evidence-based, dual intervention approach of tackling mental health from both the inside and out produces better outcomes than psychological therapy alone.

Microbiota-gut-brain bidirectional relationship. Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/medicine/articles/10.3389/fmed.2022.813204/full

How Clinical Nutritionists assess and improve your Gut-Brain connection

Certified Practicing Nutritionists (CPNs) are tertiary qualified, clinically trained, Practicing Nutritionists who assess and address a person’s nutritional biochemistry and metabolism by providing customised recommendations within a clinical and nutritional medicine framework to improve health. Using dietary and lifestyle modifications along with therapeutic supplements, CPN’s aim to remediate the metabolic dysfunctions that drive a person’s poor health and/or chronic disease states. Here’s what you can expect when working with a CPN at Thrive Wellness to improve your gut-brain health:

  1. Comprehensive Assessment: Upon scheduling your appointment, you’ll receive an information pack and questionairres for you to complete detailing your health concerns, symptoms, lifestyle, dietary habits, and your health goals. Your CPN will review this information prior to your initial consultation, identifying key areas and questions to explore further during your first meeting.
  2. Additional Assessments: Your CPN may suggest further investigations, such as additional questionnaires, food diaries, or laboratory tests (e.g. blood, saliva, stool). A comprehensive stool analysis, for example, can profile your gut microbiome’s diversity and abundance, shed light on the health of your gut lining and mucous, nutrient breakdown and absorption and measure inflammation.
  3. Customised Recommendations: After evaluating your information, your CPN will provide tailored recommendations, education and support to help you implement the recommendations. Restoring gut health following dysbiosis typically involves five to six consultations over a 6 month timeframe, sometimes longer. Initial recommendations are based on population-based scientific studies, wheras prescription following specialised testing allows for a higher level of personalised health care due to your specific biochemistry and needs being identified. As not everyone requires advanced testing to get results, a cost-effective option can be to engage in an initial 2-3 month course of therapy and only pursue additional testing if you’re not getting the results you want.
  4. Nutritional Medicine – Supplement and Dietary recommendations: Your CPN will prescribe evidence-based therapeutic supplements and dietary modifications to address underlying issues. For example, if you’re lacking in key nutrients like magnesium, B-vitamins, or Omega-3 fatty acids, supplements might be recommended to fill the gaps, enhancing your mental health outcomes. Select clinical probiotic strains and prebiotic fibres will be prescribed to modify gut microbiome composition. Although making permanent changes to gut microbiome diversity and abundance takes a long time and requires a diet diverse in plant-foods to sustain it (possible without ongoing supplementation), faster improvements in mental health from taking psychobiotics occur on average, within 6 weeks. Such outcomes are due to the metabolites that the psychobiotic strains produce having a modulatory affect on the micorbiome-gut-brain axis and immune system, leading to significant reduction in depression and anxiety. Of course, gut health is just one system that may be contributing to and impacted by your mental health, as others systems are also affected, your CPN will provide you with recommendations that address your whole body and bring it back into balance. For this reason, early improvements in energy, mood or sleep may occur in just a few days.
  5. Transition to self management – Once balance is restored and your mental health wellness goals achieved, your CPN will provide you with a plan for maintaining your health, along with education on how diet and lifestyle alone can acheive this without the need for ongoing supplementation. Clients with a long history of being unwell, may cling to supplementation out of fear they might become unwell again. The supplements used for restoring homeostasis however are often not needed ongoing, with the exception of specific circumstances. An example of an exception is an individual experiencing ongoing stress, who has a genetic SNP or other variant that increases their susceptibility to poor gut, immune or mental health. Another example is an individual who is unable to make the necessary diet and lifestyle modifications to maintain their health. Your CPN will discuss your individual needs with you, and customise ongoing supports for you accordingly.

Ready to improve your Mental Health?

At Thrive Wellness we’re passionate about providing multidisciplinary, evidence-based, comprehensive, holistic mental health care. We value psychological therapy as an important primary mental health intervention. Our psychologists help you manage emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, and provide you with evidence-based strategies to reduce stress, however they can’t address underlying biochemical, genetic or metabolic issues that could be contributing to your mental health struggles. If you’d like to support your body using clinical nutrition and nutritional medicine interventions, reach out and request a CPN consultation. After all, when it comes to your well-being, why settle for anything less than complete care?

Image by pikisuperstar on Freepik

Balance: Video gaming as a space for growth

, , , , , , , , 0

Author: Christopher Wright – Psychologist, Clinical Psychologist Registrar
Published: 5th February 2024

With the advent of technology dominating our daily lives, video games have emerged as an alternative form of enjoyment for many young people. As a psychologist intrigued by the mechanisms of the human mind and an avid gamer myself, I had always believed there were often overlooked positives in the engagement with video games. Not only are there the emotional “good” feelings they give, but it also acts as a medium for improving problem-solving and making meaningful connections.

In the health field, our understanding of neuroplasticity has shifted over the years, and with the presence of an aging population with neurodegenerative conditions, emphasis has been placed on ways to reignite the brain’s ability to remodel and adapt. Throughout these studies, it has been discovered that computer-based training has the potential to increase cognitive proficiency through “restarting” different parts of the brain, enabling neuroplasticity to be activated (Pappas and Drigas, 2019). It was therefore hypothesised that through this form of stimulation, no matter the age, that cognitive ability could improve in different areas through video games. Complex three dimensional games like Super Mario 3D World were indicated to improve hippocampal-associated memory (long term and spatial memory), showing increased gray matter in that region (Clemenson and Stark, 2015). This suggests then that problem solving skills can be enhanced through gaming.

Not only does gaming provide multiple opportunities for improvement of cognitive ability, there several other potential benefits to videogames, including:

  1. Stress Relief: Through providing a dynamic sensory experience and a healthy escapism, video games can reduce feelings of anxiety and tension.
  2. Emotional Regulation: Opportunities to self-regulate can occur often in competitive video games, with frustrations and anxiety being a common occurrence during these games. This allows the brain and body to experience these stressors and enable the body’s natural relaxation process, which can elicit similar responses to real-life stressors.
  3. Social interaction: Online multiplayer and couch co-op games can facilitate social interaction between friends or create new ones. There is opportunity for development of communication and teamworking skills through these activities.
  4. Creativity: Many video games, called “sandbox” games, encourage creativity through providing options to build and explore virtual worlds. This can encourage imagination and even innovation.
  5. Hand-Eye Coordination: Action oriented games require precise movements and quick reflexes, which can be transferable to real world activities.
  6. Learning Opportunities: There are many games that include educational elements such as history, geography, science, and mathematics. In RPG’s (Roleplaying games), conflict resolution can involve negotiation, compromise, and peaceful resolutions.
  7. Goal Setting and Achievement: Often video games will clearly identify goals and also notify the player when they achieve these goals, providing a sense of accomplishment and motivation for young players.
  8. Emotional Expression: Video games frequently explore different themes that can elicit emotional responses from players, increasing emotional awareness and promoting emotional expression in the real world.
  9. Community and Belonging: Online video games commonly co-exist with communities where people may feel more comfortable interacting in a more anonymous space, encouraging identity exploration in a safe space.
  10. Improved Concentration: Like the brains ability to adapt through neuroplasticity many videogames require extended durations of focus to be able to complete tasks, which can coincide with increased ability to focus in less interesting or engaging tasks outside of video games.

So, with all this in mind, how do we find the balance between a hobby that can also negatively impact our young person’s physical health, academic performance, and social relationships? Placing time limits on screen time to ensure that gaming doesn’t impact schoolwork, social obligations, and supporting young people to engage in physical activity. If these options are not having the desired outcome, it could be worthwhile talking to your GP to get a referral to a therapist who can educate and provide tools to the young person and family to best balance their screen time.

Interested in further individual support?

I invite you to contact us on 07 4637 9097 or thriveadmin@thrivewellness.com.au to discuss our professional services and how we can assist you and/or the young people in your life to achieve your/their goals.

When contacting us to book your appointment, we recommend you request a 50min appointment with Psychologist Christopher Wright. Service provided and costs associated with these appointments are listed in the ‘Fees’ section of our website. You may also wish to discuss your concerns with your GP, and ask about your referral options and eligibility for Medicare’s Better Access Initiative, which provides partially funded Psychology appointments through Medicare. A valid GP Mental Health Care Plan referral is required for this.