8 principles to achieve optimum mental health | Dan Banos | TEDxRockhampton

[Music] [Applause] thank you kindly you are right um i would like to thank you first of all for allowing me to introduce to you a passion that i have and um and allow me to introduce a concept that we call and you might have heard before called neuroplasticity neuroplasticity is nothing but the capacity the brain has to be able to adapt based on what we do so you and i have the ability to change some of the structures that bring has and also to change some of the processes and i'm excited about this concept because

the reality is that this concept is the basis for achieving an optimal mental health and these eight principles or habits that i'm going to encourage you to do will be challenging will be out of the ordinary but i believe will provoke you and it will allow you to visit the people and and share these concepts but it will also do something very important which is what was mentioned just earlier it will allow you to visit people like me less and that is something good believe it or not um so these eight principles i don't only

believe in them and practice them but they're evidence-based and so i would like you to if you can pay attention to this so that maybe take one or two or three and practice them when you get out of here principle number one it's a very simple one it's a principle of nutrition nutrition is an important thing and allow me to share with you something that some of you might know some of you might not know but a member the name of dan batna he teamed up with people from national geographic and the mission was to

find out a group of people or peoples around the world who can demonstrate that they can live healthier physically and mentally these are people who the norm was to achieve 100 years or older so as soon as they found them they named these zones around the world blue zones and they found nine characteristics i won't share them with you but i would like to share one which is related to this concept one characteristic was that centenarian cultures and centenarian groups of people have the basis of their diet as beans crazy isn't it i have an

advantage in there i'm originally from mexico and mexicans have a lot of beans i'm not 100 sure i will live to 100 but uh i'm hoping i will because like i said i believe this and i practice it what they have found is that people who live more than 100 physically and who are physically and mentally able above the average also only consume uh flesh or meat products only five times a month and it shouldn't be a surprise because even just recently maybe a couple of weeks ago the national council of australia who talks about

dieting has remodified the pyramid i don't know how many of you saw it but at the bottom the greatest amount of it is it's plant-based so the message is goal plant-based and that's what they found these societies have embraced so the principle number one is nutrition principle number two shouldn't be surprising principle number two is exercise now what we have found is that exercise is a matter of life we cannot achieve an optimal capacity if we don't become active there is a lot of research that i could share with you but allow me and perhaps

believe get out of here perhaps research it that exercise alone can have a great contribution on the diminishing of symptoms of depression and anxiety it's very simple you exercise and you generate endorphins good happy chemicals you exercise regularly and you will also generate the production of a neurotransmitter in your brain called serotonin neuropathy and dopamine all of these are related to depression parkinson's disease and also alzheimer's disease so to actively participate in exercise will definitely contribute to achieving an optimal mental health that will set you and the community above the average and will reduce visits

to people like me principle number three that will be water water is so important seventy percent of our bodies are made out of water eighty percent of our brains are made of components that are water that's a lot of that's a high percentage so it shouldn't be surprising again that to achieve an optimal mental health we need water perhaps more than what we utilize now let me share with you something there is certain chemicals that we can only achieve by eating foods certain types of food we already talked about food we didn't go in specifics

but there are certain foods that we can consume one of the certain types of food produces something or gives you something called tryptophan tryptophan is a substance that if it reaches the brain to good proportions will allow you to secrete more endo serotonin so tryptophan is the raw material that the brain needs to produce serotonin and you might be thinking well what does that have to do with water you're talking about food now and i'm confused what allow me to share with you why water is so important the reason why it's so important is because

water is one of the elements that allow these things that you consume and these nutrients to travel to the brain the the key is simple the the formula is simple more the more water the more tryptophan goes to the brain the more raw material we have to generate serotonin and the happier you become some of the things that water can give you is a great clarity in your mind but some of the things that it could give you if you lack intake of water is a reduced ability to be happier people who do not consume

enough water become more frustrated they have less clarity of mind and then it will affect as a default your mental health performance the next principle is sunshine i will keep this one simple we need the sun and that is basically it and there is three reasons that i can share with you why we need the sun or at least a couple one is if we allow ourselves to intake sunshine on a regular bay on a regular basis you can actually achieve a greater level of sleep your sleep will be increased it will be sounder and

you will feel refreshed next time that by default will increase your capacity to learn to memorize and to concentrate it's very simple sunshine as well believe it or not can also have an impact on the level of pain that you might have physically if anybody here or if anybody in the community has some pain sunshine can decrease the level of pain that someone has it's amazing what sunshine can do if take it in the right amounts let me share the next principle this is a principle that is very important temperance i don't know you ever

heard these words uh not many people have but allow me to share what this means temperance implies that we are to create and practice in our lifestyle schedule a balance a balance that will set you up above the average what that implies is we need to make sure that we allow ourselves to introduce certain habits and behaviors that will provoke and will allow you to have a better mental health performance you might be thinking well can you explain a little bit more let me share with you something our societies are run in such a way

that we tend to take something that is bad and make it good and sometimes unfortunately we take something that is good and make it bad one example is it's something that happened in the 1950s in the 1950s sometimes someone realized i think i think smoking is related to lung cancer so what people did in the 1950s is they introduced what we call the filter in the cigarette because the tower of the cigarette was related to lung cancer today we continue to know that smoking is one of the greatest causes of disease and death in our

societies so it didn't fix it another thing that we know that is harmful and we tend to embrace it is the use of alcoholic beverages australia reported in 2011 to 2012 that 19.7.7 that's a reasonable percentage 19.7 of relationship breakups of interpersonal relationship breakups occur as a result of an alcohol related problem and that doesn't account for a psychiatric condition that's a high percentage what alcohol can do to us is it can impair the frontal lobe cortex that allows us to make good and sound decisions research has shown us that consuming such substance increases our

likelihood of cheating between 30 to 50 percent funny that because a lot of the times when we do business there is always something like this involved so we kind of need to prepare a set of ourselves to go to to break a good deal but i'm not saying that everybody who does that is cheating but the the research and the numbers that's what they indicate another health harmful substance that decreases our mental capacity and our ability to deal with things such as depression and anxieties is coffee caffeinated drinks caffeinated drinks that stress our nervous system

and they stress it so much that can increase the level of depression or depressive symptoms and also the level of anxiety so what basically temperance this is we need to learn how to abstain from certain things that might be harmful and perhaps utilize certain things that are good for us within measure it's creating a balance and i think the picture describes that it's creating a balance in our life it's not only about what you drink or it's it's also about what we do in general if we work too much or too little can perturb our

performance or if we play too much in too little can also have an impact on our performance another one is a i would like to share with you a story which is a perhaps an incredible story in the 1990s no that was wrong 1919 that's a year in eureka california a hospital was facing a great epidemic of flu and it was getting out of control so much that the chief physician said i think we need to call the army i don't know we don't have a space so the army came and in turn they brought

tents coats and some blankets and so the overflowing hospital all those patients that were getting the infection were placed in these tents and the only thing that they had a part of the blankets were hot water bottles to keep the feet warm what they found is that the people who were in the tents were not dying as compared to the people that were in the hospital once someone realized what was happening they turned down the heaters in the hospital they opened the windows up and they put heavy underwear on the patients and the death rate

diminished the key today is spend time outdoors when you think about it many of these things are interrelated with each other if you exercise unless you go to the gym and that is okay too but if you exercise outside you get that air that you need to have scientifically it just makes sense you get oxygen and oxygen cleanses your blood the blood is the same blood that will come to your brain and we want to create the best environment that we can have in our brain in our systems to be able to create those happy

feeling neuro neurotransmitters the challenge is spend time outside and open our homes open the windows let the sunshine and let the air do what it's intended to do do what it was created to to do now the next one is rest i would like to emphasize something here we live in a society that is very outcome driven unfortunately we live in a society that indicates that for us to be able to succeed we have to achieve the greater goal of whatever position you might be having it's a society that says i have to put the

top level man or woman down so that i can be that person eventually and that creates a lot of stress we live in a society when we expect many many people many children to succeed to the top they can and we should expect such thing but sometimes we push so much that we lack the in the amount of rest that we should have one of the things that we know is that the idea that a staying later at night it's better because i achieved better is a fallacy it's nothing else but a self-deception some of

you and i had lived that too uh before i got to know about these principles and practices and some of you will know that or would have thought of i stayed late at night because i seem to achieve a lot more in the middle of the night it's like amazing but research shows otherwise a group of people have been taken and they have been exposed to an overnight an all-nighter party kind of thing no alcohol no substances the key was the only key isolated factor was keep them awake for as long as you can and

then the next day do a critical test a critical thinking test were compared to to a group a controlled group of people who had slept eight hours in the night the results will be quite interesting for you to know and i'll share them with you now you will be expecting this the eighth night control group the eight hours of sleep control group perform better in the test of critical thinking but the next thing you might not be thinking of the all-nighter group perform worse but they have a perception that they did better and then another

test self-reported test reflective showed that they not only had a perception that they performed better but they were more confident in their work was the other people that slept nicely the night before they performed better they were less confident but the results spoke for themselves rest can give you mental clarity can help you to remember and memorize things clearly can enhance your ability to be creative to think objectively and analytically rest is an important thing that we must not forget if we want to achieve optimal mental health and go above the average the last one

is trust there is an author in the 1900s who said that the greatest need of this world is that of people who stand for the truth as the needle of a compass to the pole it is the need of the world to have people who extend strong to principle even though the heavens fall it's quite an interesting concept might be a bit poetic as well but today it's very hard to develop trust in many things when you think about it i talk about rest and we have that tendency to be to be wanting to achieve

the latter of success and for that sometimes we have to put someone else down so it's hard to trust many people but what we found what they have found what these investigators at the beginning that of my conversations they found in terms of the people who live long healthier and happier is that they have three things in their lives one they have people they love clothes and they invest in that number two they also have a an amount of time that they spend with people who are like-minded people like you who mean here to talk

about like-minded things and perhaps different ideas to enhance our community and number three i lost it maybe i didn't sleep too well last night i'm kidding number three was they also they also showed they also showed that they met with regularity with those people that they that they resonate with so number one they got the parents grandparents and children close by number two they met together as a matter of fact uh the research goes deeper and they found that people who have some kind of faith and gather together at least four times a month reach

or or have a likelihood of reaching a higher expense expectancy of life of 14 years in simple words people who gather and have some similarities in faith four times a month they can expect to live 14 times uh 14 years longer that's just research uh i appreciate the presentation of before that talks about the meaning of life and just having a meaningful life and knowing what your life is knowing why you wake up every morning can give you seven years seven years extra i would like you to think about this because today even though it's

hard to believe in in people and society we need to achieve a sense of trust this new strategy goes beyond and declares or rather and emphasizes the idea that we can achieve a level of trust in a superior power you can call it god or you can call it whatever you desire something that gives you a sense of purpose what we have found is that it decreases anxiety increases motivation and gives you a happier life and let us just summarize because you might forget what these are news start nutrition exercise water sunshine temperance a rest

and trust in divine power today my challenge for you is to pick three of these you can do it even today and tomorrow one go to your gp your friendly gp in town and say gp what can i do to exercise safely do i have any conditions that will impede my exercises and if you don't and if he can give you some a hand to be able to develop a good exercise program with the limits and the capacity that you currently have exercise number two don't wait too long let's network after here but don't wait

too long to go to bed try to do eight to nine hours of sleep she liked that she wants to go and number three make commitments get those people you love those people that you embrace get a sense of purpose and make a commitment today new start is something that i challenge you to practice and if you want to practice and achieve a higher an optimal mental health a higher capacity this can be yours today you don't have to go to the psychiatrist you don't have to go to a psychologist unless you have a condition

that needs that professional input but otherwise you can achieve a higher capacity that will set you above the average thank you [Music] you