First, an explainer: the cost of living crisis refers to the increase in the cost of essentials, such as food, energy, electricity and fuel as a result of inflation rates.

Inflation rates are higher than they’ve been for 40 years, and that increase has a severe impact on households across the UK.

One less obvious impact is on obesity. People with financial issues are often forced to buy cheap food that’s low in nutrients and high in calories.

The infographic below has been designed to show how mental health is being affected across multiple demographics.

Cost of living crisis and mental health

RELATED CONTENT:

1. Symptoms of depression
2. How to cope with anxiety
3. Expert guide to being less stressed

The post How The Cost Of Living Crisis Affects Mental Health appeared first on MensFitness.

Related: Weight Training In Old Age Can Halve Risk Of An Early Death

Marc Donovan, chief pharmacist at Boots

What is depression?

Unlike many physical illnesses, mental health issues cannot always be seen. But that doesn’t mean they’re not there.

It’s totally normal for people to go through periods of feeling down. But if the feelings are interfering with your life and won’t go away after a couple of weeks, then it could be a sign of depression.

Depression can affect people differently, but the symptoms are often the same. It’s important to speak to your GP if you‘ve noticed changes in the way you’re thinking or feeling, and you’re worried about your mental health.  

Related: Weight Training Guide For Men Over 50

What are the signs of depression?

Clinical depression is a continual feeling of sadness for weeks or months at a time, which can affect your work, social and family life.

Symptoms range from mild to severe. They can include feeling hopeless and helpless, having low self-esteem, feeling guilt-ridden, having no motivation or interest in things.

They can also include feeling anxious or worried, having suicidal thoughts or thoughts of harming yourself, as well as avoiding contact with friends and taking part in fewer social activities.

There can be physical symptoms, too, including feeling constantly tired, moving or speaking more slowly than usual. Disturbed sleep, having no appetite or reduced sex drive, as well as various unexplained aches and pains are other signs.

Constipation, lack of energy and changes in weight can also be physical symptoms.  

Related: How To Reduce Your Biological Age And Feel Younger

How can you treat depression?

A combination of lifestyle changes, talking therapies and medicine can help for depression. Getting a treatment plan from a GP will depend on whether you have mild, moderate or severe depression.

Lifestyle changes such as exercise, eating a healthy, balanced diet, cutting down on alcohol and giving up smoking can help.

Sharing your experiences with others and talking about how you are feeling can also make a big difference. Talking therapies including cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can be used for mild or moderate depression.  

Many people struggle taking that first step to getting professional help. That’s because they don’t know where to turn to first or whether their mental health concerns should be discussed with a healthcare professional.

Anyone who is worried should see their local pharmacist. They can listen to their concerns and signpost to other appropriate healthcare services that may be helpful. Your GP is also there to help with any mental health concerns.

Related: What To Expect During A Prostate Cancer Screening

Boots recently launched a collection of private on-demand digital mental health services that offer patients a range of tools and support that they can access quickly and conveniently. The help, advice and support that can now be found at boots.com includes talking therapy and Boots Online Doctor Depression & Anxiety Treatment*, which offers a GP consultation followed by a tailored treatment and support plan and, if appropriate, prescription medicine.  

*Treatment is subject to an online consultation with a clinician to assess suitability. Subject to availability. Charges apply.  

For ‘convenient care without the hassle’, visit onlinedoctor.boots.com

The post What Are The Symptoms Of Depression? appeared first on MensFitness.

But that moment, along with countless others – in a career marked by the outward success of four Six Nations championships and two Heineken Cups to go alongside that World Cup winner’s medal – was just part of a wider story. One in which he was battling anxiety and depression despite, from the outside, appearing to have it all.

“It ended up so fairytale-like for me compared to what I could have possibly imagined,” says Wilkinson, who works as a mental health ambassador for health insurer Vitality and has long been a practising Buddhist – something which he has previously said helped him make sense of his own mental health.

“You become attached to [the fairytale],” he adds. “And then it stops. You come out of the flow state into the material, physical experience of the world.”

Jonny Wilkinson on why success doesn’t buy happiness

These attachments to success, says Wilkinson, did little to improve his mental health. Winning could never ease his low mood or sense of constant worry.

He was, he says, only able to start improving his wellbeing by opening up about his feelings and being vulnerable.

“When it becomes a practised habit,” says Wilkinson, “it’s no longer really being vulnerable and opening up. It’s recognising that it’s about facing challenges and understanding why things are there – going deeper and, I think, getting better.”

He says that, while he feels the conversation around mental health is improving, we need to start considering what life looks like beyond those first ‘beautiful’ moments when we tell someone else about how we feel.

“I coped and survived my way through matches, because I put so much of a fear of failure onto myself” – Jonny Wilkinson

“So much of it is about coping and getting through,” he says. “I get that, because I’ve been in that space. But by their very nature, coping and managing, for me, are a survival state.

“It’s actually what I did with so much of my life in terms of my rugby career. I coped and survived my way through matches, because I put so much of a fear of failure [onto myself].”

These techniques became more and more reinforced, however, leading to further anxiety.

So instead, Wilkinson began delving deeper, considering how people believe they need to suffer to succeed, as well as exploring spiritual ways to become more grounded in the present moment. This is where his Buddhism really comes to the fore.

His passion for the topic is every bit as powerful as his urge to win when on the rugby pitch, albeit from a more rounded place and without the need, as he sees it, to become attached to specific achievements and goals.

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A post shared by Jonny Wilkinson (@jonnywilkinsonofficial)

“Challenge doesn’t come in the form you want it, otherwise it’s just not challenging.” – Jonny Wilkinson

It’s these goals, he says, that we need to get better at understanding:

“If they’re an attempt to fill a hole, or have a lack of connection to self-worth or fulfilment… then it just doesn’t work. It’s almost like you put all your eggs in one basket and say, ‘When I get this, everything’s going to be good.’ Then when you get it, you go, ‘Oh god, what now?’ Then you think, Well, maybe the next one will do, but you already have your evidence [that these kind of goals don’t work].”

This is where Wilkinson believes being more reflective and honest with ourselves is key. “When challenge becomes the understanding of growth,” he says. “that’s opportunity, that’s connecting more with who you really are and connecting more with life. Challenge doesn’t come in the form you want it, otherwise it’s just not challenging.”

Facing up to failure, rather than searching solely for success, is what Wilkinson is driving at:

“If you had a big sports tournament coming up at the end of the year and you said, ‘Right, we’ve got a year to plan our fixtures before that,’ who would you choose to play against? You’d pick the best teams in the world. Some might say, ‘You’re going to lose.’ But that’s the point.

Wilkinson continues with the rugby analogy:

“What we’re actually saying to ourselves is, ‘Give me the 80-nil games, give me those games when everything happens exactly as I wanted, so I don’t have to grow.’

“But then as soon as you sit in that space, the unfulfillment level is huge. The inner voice that says, ‘It’s my nature to expand infinitely and to explore my boundless truth,’ is saying, ‘I’m not OK with this.’

Wilkinson says that even when taking the route of safety and comfort, challenges will still present themselves:

“That challenge will be unrest – enormous unrest. That was how I played my entire rugby career. It was, ‘someone’s trying to take me on, I need to win this. I need to win this battle. I need to win it.’ The problem is, if you win every battle, you don’t go anywhere.

“Losing, and in that way suffering, is still so challenging and so painful and tough, but it’s no longer suffering if you are able to view it with perspective.”

Jonny Wilkinson on reframing stress and anxiety

There’s also, says Wilkinson, a need to try and understand that we can positively frame stress and anxiety when facing challenges in life.

“In the Zen Buddhist tradition, [you] pose conundrums with people that take them into a level of anxiety. The whole point being in that space, there is growth, because it’s the shedding of ‘what I had and what was giving me some kind of comfort was essentially stopping my expansion… Do I release it and go into the unknown or do I hold onto it and stay with what I do?’

Wilkinson believes that embracing such challenges is fundamental, but he isn’t naive enough to think it’s easy. Rather, he highlights that our challenges and attempts to understand our lives and mental health are a never-ending processes. Understanding that, he says, has been key for him:

“It’s not a journey because it’s not going anywhere. There’s no destination, it’s an adventure. Life deepens, it doesn’t go linear from here to there… Now is all there is.”

Understanding suffering

Ultimately, what Wilkinson is espousing is a kinder, more gentle approach to life. One which doesn’t put its store in material success or achieving endless goals without really exploring why we’re trying to attain them in the first place. This, again, comes back to suffering, something which in the past he has claimed he felt was essential in order to achieve his goals as a rugby player.

“The idea about suffering, the one that I think is the one that got me [as a player], is not so much that you have to go through it to get what you want, but the idea that getting what you want at the end of it is going to be better than the suffering.

Wilkinson says that he has instead come to accept that what he has gone through, and what we all go through, is part of a deeper exploration of life.

“It’s not my life, it’s life working through me,” he says. “My job is to get out of its way so I can experience the the intuition, the wisdom, inspiration, the creativity, the beauty, the love – all that stuff, which is inclusive and universal.”

To some it may sound a bit out there for a man who became known for his uncompromising and professional focus on the rugby pitch. But staying present and being kinder about who we are, and who we want to be, is an easy and powerful message to get behind.

Jonny Wilkinson was speaking earlier in the year as Mental Health Ambassador for health insurer Vitality as part of Mental Health Awareness Week

Words: Joe Minihane

RELATED CONTENT:

1. How to cope with anxiety
2. Roman Kemp on why we need to talk about suicide
3. Rugby icon Gareth Thomas on tattoos, HIV and fitness

The post Jonny Wilkinson Interview: Stress, Success & Buddhism appeared first on MensFitness.

“We associate summer with being happy, positive and having a great mindset,” says John Junior. “You would think that low mood wouldn’t affect you in the summertime, but it does.”

Junior is one of a growing number of people who struggle with seasonal affective disorder (SAD) during summer.

What is Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)?

The condition, first identified by psychologist Norman Rosenthal in 1984, is usually associated with winter, with sufferers complaining of low mood and depression as it gets colder and the days become shorter.

Research by BUPA suggests three in 100 people will suffer from SAD in their lifetime, with most people getting their first symptoms during their 20s and 30s.

What is Summer SAD?

While winter SAD is increasingly understood and accepted as a condition, summer SAD remains opaque, unknown and often misunderstood. Those who have it report battling with insomnia, weight loss and suicidal thoughts.

“It’s like I have a persistent low mood in the summer and a loss of interest in things,” adds Junior.

“I feel worthless, despairing and have a lack of energy, no matter if I go to the gym and eat well. This always happens in the summer. It never happens in the winter. I don’t know why.”

Junior, nominated for a BAFTA for a short film he made with the team behind Hollyoaks – after he revealed how a storyline in the show about suicide helped prevent him from taking his own life – has become an advocate in raising awareness around summer SAD.

It’s an issue, he says, that many still struggle to get their heads around.

Summer SAD & Body Image Issues

“In summer my low self-esteem definitely seems to heighten,” says Tom Home.

Home is the founder of blOKes, a not-for-profit mental health platform that offers men support online. He says that summer has for a long time been the hardest part of the year for him:

“I suffered quite badly with acne until I was about 23. I’m now 26. And because of the various antibiotics I was on, my skin would flare up. Often, direct sunlight and heat in particular would be the cause and it would take the form of being quite noticeably red.

“I would feel quite awkward and embarrassed. I’d be very conscious about spending too much time outside in the sun or in the heat which, affected my ability to enjoy life.”

Home also says that issues surrounding his body can be exacerbated in summer by seeing other men with ‘perfect’ bodies on the beach or in the park, as well as seeing strangers and friends in similar situations on social media.

“You go on Instagram or you go on Facebook and you see, not just celebrities, but even some of your friends who have a different body to you. They have these washboard abs and it often made me feel self-conscious.”

Researchers at the University of Vermont suggest that the bodily focus Home describes isn’t necessarily summer SAD, but rather a wider issue with body image.

But what both Home and Junior say about seeing others happy in the summer leading to them feeling low tallies with research about summer depression.

“It’s very real”

While research into summer SAD isn’t as widespread as that into its winter variant, there is an understanding that SAD varies depending on location.

A 2012 study in Comprehensive Psychiatry found that cases of winter varied depending on latitude, with respondents in India reporting higher incidence of summer SAD, possibly because of higher heat and humidity. High pollen counts have also been suggested as a cause.

Even further back, a 1996 study in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry found that summer SAD was nine times higher in tropical climates. Heat and humidity were both said to be triggers, something which fits with new work by scientists at the University of Vermont.

Juan Antonio Sorto, a US-based PhD graduate who has done work raising issues around mental health in the Latino community, says that fits with his experience.

“When I was younger, summers were extremely difficult, because of the time change in the United States in spring,” he says. “My mental health associated with SAD just seems to intensify due to the longer hours and added commitments to my family and employment.

“When we spring forward, it does not help. I often look at my watch around 7pm and see how bright it is outside, and how I need to manage the remaining two before it gets dark. I try to be in bed by 10pm, but that often turns into a struggle.

“My mind needs additional time to process that it is dark and time to get some sleep. Summer is seen as the happiest part of the year. So any sign to highlight the contrary is often seen as complaining and sometimes spoiled.”

Managing Summer Depression

Sorto says he manages his summer depression by exercising and setting fitness goals for the autumn:

“I run at least three miles per day early in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon, when I really feel SAD taking place. I also set long-term goals, such as training to qualify for the Boston Marathon.”

He is, though, concerned about the lack of knowledge around the subject.

“There’s very little known about it but it’s very real,” he says. “I learned about it in 2021 through a Google search, when I wanted to know why my mood would change in the afternoons.”

Putting the kind of physical activity which Sorto mentions front and centre of your life is, says therapist Clair Morrow, a good way to help deal with symptoms associated with summer SAD.

“One of the frontline treatments for moderate depression is behavioural activation,” she says. “Essentially, that means doing stuff that makes you feel better. Nine times out of 10 that is exercise, moving your body, socialising and connecting with people.”

However, it’s also vital that we start to consider the roots of why people feel low in summer.

“I’m a bit more interested in the meaning of it,” Morrow adds. “I would be thinking about expectations. Why do you think summer should be so great? Has that always been the case? And if not, why not?

“Social media doesn’t help, especially with pictures of people eating outdoors, hanging out outside and enjoying holidays. If that’s populating your psychic landscape and it’s not your reality, it’s unhelpful.”

Morrow advises moderating or deleting social media for those really struggling.

Specific treatments for summer SAD are harder to come by compared with winter SAD, where light therapy has been shown to work well.

Researchers are also concerned that as climate change gathers pace and the planet warms, summer SAD will likely become more common and therefore demand for treatments greater.

For now, working out, accepting that you prefer winter, being kind to yourself and potentially seeking therapeutic counselling are the best ways forward.

Photography: Shutterstock

5 steps to help deal with seasonal effective disorder in summer

1. Be cooler

This might seem antisocial, but if you don’t like the heat, there’s no shame in staying indoors and finding cooler places during the summer months.

2. Open up

Summer SAD can seem as if it’s somehow ungrateful at a time of year when people are supposedly at their happiest. Services such as @blOKes provide a safe online space to share your experiences.

3. Limit social media

Instagram, Facebook and Twitter have much to recommend them, but if you struggle with body image in summer, try deleting apps from your phone or setting aside specific times for social activity, rather than endlessly scrolling.

4. Stay close to home

Some sufferers have expressed difficulty with going on holiday during the summer. If this sounds like you, then try to travel when you’re happiest, during autumn and winter.

5. Seek therapy

Speaking to a professional can help you get to the root of your problems with summer SAD. Check out NHS IAPT services or, if the wait is too long, look at affordable private therapy options.

Words: Joe Minihane

RELATED CONTENT:

1. How to combat seasonal affective disorder with nutrition
2. Why you need to take a ‘mental health day’
3. Good mood foods: 7 ways to ear for better wellbeing 

The post Seasonal Affective Disorder & Depression in Summer appeared first on MensFitness.

All that changed in August 2020, when his best friend and the producer of his radio show, Joe Lyons, took his own life. Lyons’ suicide was a deeply shocking event, which left Kemp and his friends bereft and searching for answers.

There had been no clues that Lyons was suffering. He did not speak with any of his friends or family about how he felt.

Roman Kemp: Our Silent Emergency

In those raw months after his death, Kemp made Our Silent Emergency for BBC Three, an urgent and unflinching documentary exploring male suicide and the seeming inability of men, in particular, to open up about how they’re feeling.

Now, he’s fronting a new campaign with Nivea Men and Talk Club, designed to get more men checking in with their feelings.

New research for Nivea has found that 44% of men avoid talking about their mental health. 32% feel lonely, and many equate vulnerability and openness with weakness.

“I made it just to tell my own story about how I’ve been dealing with it, and the stories of other people,” says Kemp, about the impact of his documentary. “I really hope that it has helped, and certainly within my own friend group it has.”

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Roman Kemp on his own mental health struggles

What makes Our Silent Emergency such a powerful watch is the fact that Kemp doesn’t shy away from discussing his own mental health struggles.

He is open about the fact that he has taken antidepressants since he was a teenager. He has talked with his parents on camera about his suicidal feelings and issues with depression and low self-esteem.

“It’s ridiculous to think that humans are constantly happy or constantly sad, you know. Some days are great; some days are bad,” he says when discussing his own mental health.

He continues to take sertraline every day to manage his mental health. This is something which, he says, caused something of a stir when he was filmed taking one alongside his daily dose of vitamin D:

“When we did the doc I was always so shocked when people were like, ‘Oh my God, you took a tablet on camera.’ When we were filming it did not feel in any way shape or form an integral part of the show. But so many people said how embarrassed they are to take it – that is so abnormal to me.

“How come men are so quick to go to their mates and say all they’re doing to get in shape, but they’re scared of talking about taking something for that?”

Kemp says that breaking down this stigma is more important than ever. He has become a keen advocate of ‘asking twice’, following the example of men in the film who lost a friend to suicide who always follow up ‘Are you OK?’ by asking the same question again. This, they say, tends to give a more honest answer, leading to healthier conversations around mental health.

Improving mental health education

His true passion, though, is improving mental health education, right down to the youngest kids in primary schools. In Our Silent Emergency, Kemp visits a pioneering school in Tamworth, Staffordshire, where children discuss mental wellbeing and illness in a way that is aimed at breaking taboos and opening up conversations, which too many adults struggle to have.

“I don’t think we’re getting it right at all,” he says when asked about the way mental health is approached in schools. “What I’d love to do is to be able to speak to more schools on a level and just say,

‘Look, why has it never been pushed in schools? What’s the thing that’s stopping it? Who do we need to speak to for that to change? Why are kids learning about their heart and their lungs and all those different systems of their body… Yet mental health is still not really looked at. The idea of suicide is never spoken about in a school.’

For me that is a subject that should be in your GCSE exam. You should know what your brain is capable of, and what depression looks and feels like.”

Kemp says that he would love to see this approach pushed rapidly. Especially as those of us who have left school are likely to be dealing with poor mental health in the long term.

“For everyone over the age of 16, we are going to be in a crisis area for the rest of our lives, because we weren’t taught about these things as kids. But we have an opportunity to push for that to not be the same in the future.”

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Raising awareness

He is keen to emphasise, however, that he is not a lobbyist. Rather, he wants to tell stories and raise awareness in a bid to help move the conversation along.

“I’m not going to sit here and go, ‘We’re going to do this and we’re going to do that,’” he says. “What I’m trying to do is just ask the questions. If something is not being done, then why is it not being done? If they’re looking for solutions, I don’t necessarily think I’m that guy.

“But if, over the next five years, I can meet or help parents to ask their children’s schools, ‘What are you doing for my child’s mental health and for their education?” that’s a great thing.”

One approach that has shown to have good results are dedicated ‘buddy benches’. These are seats where kids can sit at school so others know that they want to discuss their mental health.

It’s something which Joe’s Buddy Line, the charity set up by Lyons’ family and for which Kemp is an ambassador, has helped pioneer.

“For kids in schools, it’s little tricks like that [that work],” he says. “That’s the kind of thing that we want to push, to say, ‘You just have to talk about it and it does get better.’”

For all his concerns about the lack of mental health education in schools, Kemp does believe the situation is improving.

“As Brits, we’re very cynical,” he says. “We’re often thinking ‘Everything’s f****d, it’s just getting worse,’ but no. You look at how far things have come, it’s fantastic.”

Destigmatising suicide

He highlights the fact that men increasingly approach him, whether in the pub or even while playing football, to talk about their mental health and how suicide has affected them or their friends. That, he says, suggests progress is being made. In that spirit, he wants to see the word ‘suicide’ be used more openly.

“I want to change the word suicide from being something that is seen as a dirty word,” he says. “People will talk about suicide as if it’s a swear word. I’ve done interviews where people don’t want to say it and they don’t want to bring up that word.”

He highlights AIDS as an example of how destigmatising a term can lead to improved understanding and acceptance:

“People didn’t want to talk about it. It was the same with cancer: they just called it ‘The Big C’. Nowadays, how many adverts do you see for cancer research groups? It’s something that isn’t seen with as much fear [because of greater openness].”

The most important thing, says Kemp, is to keep the conversation going, because our mental health is constantly changing. It’s part of a process that never ends.

“It changes every day, it changes all the time,” he says. “It’s up to us as mates and it’s up to us as people to keep that in check – to keep those coping mechanisms going.”

If you’re experiencing suicidal thoughts, visit thecalmzone.net or call their dedicated helpline (open every day from 5pm to midnight) on 0800 58 58 58.

Words: Joe Minihane

The post Roman Kemp On Why We Need To Talk About Suicide appeared first on MensFitness.

The result is Coward: Why We Get Anxious and What We Can Do About It, a book by turns brutally honest and hilarious. Clare’s dedication to his subject is hugely impressive, with in-depth interviews with leading mental health experts and first-person experiences that many would baulk at.

The result is something wholly unique. It’s not self-help, says Clare, rather his way of acting as a guinea pig for anxiety sufferers everywhere.

“I think a lot of my coping strategy has been trying to cheapen my pain by turning into a product I can sell,” he jokes. Though it did have a serious purpose. Writing it down, he says, was a way of motivating himself to get better.

These are some of the treatments he tried and how they affected his anxiety… 

Exercise and diet 

We all know that eating well and moving more are good ideas. But in and of themselves, says Clare, they did not prevent him from feeling anxious.

“Exercise and a better diet are not going to cure someone’s anxiety, unless they have it very mildly,” he says. “I would say they are great foundational things that make it easier for the other stuff to work.”

But that doesn’t mean they don’t have value. Over the course of a few months, Clare began eating a vegan diet and started running daily. He lost three stone and ran a marathon.

“That was a great confidence builder for the other work that I did on myself,” he says, “because I never thought I could do that. I would never have believed I could have changed my diet or run that far, but I did.

“Then I started thinking, Well, if I can do that, is it possible that I’ll be able to not be anxious in certain situations? That is quite a persuasive thing to have knocking about in your head.”

And even if exercising more and eating well don’t improve your anxiety, there are still clear benefits, he says: “The worst that ever happens when you’re doing these things is that you’re making it less likely that you’ll get long-term health problems.”

Psychedelics and antidepressants

Clare has been taking antidepressants for most of his adult life. But for his book, he wanted to try drugs that have enjoyed plenty of coverage in recent years: psychedelics.

A growing body of research from institutions including Imperial College London and New York University suggests that drugs including MDMA and psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, can alleviate anxiety and depression. He had pinned much of his hopes on ending his anxiety onto this increasingly popular cure.

In order to do so, he had to come off of his antidepressants, which inhibit the reabsorption of serotonin in the brain. Psychedelic drugs increase serotonin’s release, meaning that when both drugs are taken together, they can cause serotonin syndrome, causing tremors, a racing heart and potentially death.

Clare placed much hope in these drugs, taking psilocybin under supervision in the Netherlands. “I was flying through tunnels,” he says. “I met an angel who spoke to me. My body exploded. The dead came back to life and spoke to me. The room filled with water and I was a jellyfish swimming through it.”

Clare was told that afterwards he would be in a heightened state of consciousness and that his anxiety would be alleviated. The reality was the complete opposite. “I felt like I was having a massive comedown,” he says, and he broke down in tears with his wife, as he explained that all his hopes that psilocybin would cure his anxiety had come to nothing.

Clare points out that a Johns Hopkins study that claimed to prove the efficacy of psilocybin in a double-blind trial was problematic. “You can’t have a real control group when you’re doing psychedelic studies with high doses,” he says. “When you take a load of magic mushrooms, you can’t be in the control group and not know.”

Clare points out that prescription antidepressants such as sertraline have a far better efficacy rate compared with psychedelics. He still takes his medication daily.

Cold-water immersion 

Swimming in icy rivers might hold an appeal for a certain subset of hardy souls. But Clare was keen to get beyond the nature communion aspect and consider cold-water immersion in a wider context. He began by taking cold showers and baths, first following renowned ‘Iceman’ Wim Hof’s cold-water immersion and breathing techniques.

Hof’s methods – which involve exposing yourself to the cold, either in a bath, shower or outdoor setting; and taking sharp breaths before breathing out and not breathing in for anything upwards of a minute – have gained a legion of fans who say it has eased the release of stress hormones and lessened their anxiety.

RELATED: The Science Of Cold-Water Immersion

Clare says the cold allowed him to see his anxiety coming, watching like an observer as a panic attack washed over him before realising it had passed. Then he went swimming.

“I spoke to a few researchers, including Mark Harper and Dr Chris Van Tulleken,” he says, “who did a small study for a BBC show called The Dr Who Gave Up Drugs.”

This study in cold-shock response suggested repeated exposure to cold water could reduce inflammation, which is a cause of anxiety and depression. The same, brief exposure to something dangerous is the same principle behind vaccines, says Clare.

“I did the protocol in [Harper’s] paper, which is six consecutive days with three minutes, where the water temperature is around 14 degrees.”

He warmed up after his swims by running alongside the river near his home. Clare says in that moment he felt centred and calm. ‘I enjoyed the experience,’ he writes. ‘It felt meaningful to me.’

Hypnosis and hypnotherapy

In Coward, Clare writes that hypnosis exists in a ‘no man’s land’ between legitimate treatment and alternative medicine. There is, he says, scant evidence that hypnotherapy works better than placebo treatments. Yet, it was hypnosis that he says had the most marked, long-term effect on his anxiety:

“I am not saying that hypnotherapy is a well-evidenced intervention for anxiety. However, I have to report for the sake of honesty that I went to four sessions of it and I’ve never had a panic attack since. I think it may be as simple as during those sessions I was encouraged to talk about my feelings.

“That you do so under supposedly hypnotic state conditions means it can be especially easy to talk about embarrassing or traumatic things.”

Ultimately, says Clare, he felt understood when he went for hypnotherapy. More than trying to understand the physiology of a panic attack, he believes that being believed and heard when discussing such intimate feelings and what triggers them is key to dealing with anxiety.

“Until you feel, at some level, your anxieties have been listened to and that the message has been received,” he says, “it’s not going to go away.”

Words: Joe Minihane

The post How To Cope With Anxiety appeared first on MensFitness.

If you’re struggling with your mental health, one of the first things any professional will tell you is to get some exercise.

The release of dopamine and endorphins from working out has been shown to improve mood – even if doing so in isolation without additional treatment isn’t a long-term solution for severe cases of mental illness.

But new research has found that music can have an equally powerful impact on mental health and wellbeing.

The study pulled together data from 26 studies and a total of 779 patients from across the globe.

It found that singing, listening to music or playing an instrument had a positive impact on wellbeing. The study also found that our brains release the feel-good hormone dopamine when our favourite tunes reach their peak.

Playing music alongside exercise or other forms of treatment, including during therapy, made it even more effective.

Researchers believe that the rhythm of listening to or playing music stimulates the neocortex. This leads to relaxation and a pleasant ‘flow state’.

The study may be small, but it points to yet another non-clinical intervention that we all have access to – a small way to boost your mood if you’re finding things tough.

Words: Joe Minihane

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