Our Naturopathic Approach to Mental Health in Calgary AB

Mental health encompasses more than just how you think and talk to yourself. You can also feel it physically through muscle tension, racing heart rate, faster breathing. Mental health can even impact other body processes, think about stage fright and getting diarrhea or having a stressful event cause you to skip your period. Mental health has a whole body impact, and our naturopathic doctors in Calgary AB take an approach that assess and treats the whole person.

How the whole body approach may look in Calgary AB

There are many diagnostic and monitoring questionnaires for mental health conditions including anxiety, depression, OCD, PTSD, bipolar, etc. if you have worked with a mental health provider before you are probably familiar with these already. We use these tools in naturopathic medicine as well, but we also take additional approaches to monitoring.

As previously mentioned, there may be additional body systems that can impact how you feel mentally when they are not functioning optimally. For this reason, investigation using a thorough intake, physical exam and testing may be recommended.

For example, your naturopath with ask about worsening of mental health symptoms in the week before or during your menstrual period, a condition that may be diagnosed as PMDD. Comprehensive hormonal testing and treatment of the underlying hormonal dysfunction will likely be a course of treatment.

If a high stress life is impacting your mental health, testing cortisol or other hormonal and nutrition markers may be recommended to know if treatment for high stress is necessary.

If your digestive system is dysregulated with gas, bloating, diarrhea or constipation, this is an added source of inflammation that can travel from the gut and impact the health of the brain, including changes to the production of happy hormones, neurotransmitters and inflammatory markers. For more on the gut-brain connection, check out our article on this topic here: https://www.actionhealth.ca/how-are-stress-and-gut-health-connected/

Body systems are interconnected, and for this reason we don't see mental health as an independent system, we see it as a whole in part with the rest of your body.

Naturopathic tools to treat mental health conditions

In naturopathic medicine we have a wide range of tools to help support mental health in addition to treating underlying causes that we have talked about above. There are of course nutraceuticals and supplements that may be recommended, many have similar actions in the body to various medications used to treat mental health conditions. There are also supplements that may be recommended to use along side any prescription medications you may be taking to better support you.

In addition to nutraceuticals, there are various lifestyle practices that will be discussed to help manage mental health symptoms. These include the positive effects of exercise and movement, dietary changes if nutrition is lacking or digestive symptoms are present, and of course we will discuss mindfulness practices, brain training and tools that can be used to manage mental health symptoms on a day to day basis. These lifestyle factors should not be taken lightly, they can have incredibly positive effects in the long term and help any medications and supplements work optimally.

Ideally, our naturopaths prefer to take an approach that uses supplements to help you better engage in lifestyle practices, and then find a time when the supplements are no longer necessary for you to maintain these improvements without supplements or medications. This is not always the case, but it is always a part of our plan for your long term health.