How your health can affect your happiness

Written by Karl Perera BA, MA, DipLC
Updated: March 23rd, 2020

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How the State of Your Health Can Affect Your Happiness

If you are someone who continues to suffer from depression or just can’t seem to get out of your own funk, then you may be facing additional health issues. While it may not at first be obvious, how healthy you are plays a key role in determining your overall happiness and mood. If you want to make sure that you’re doing what you can to make yourself happy, consider some of the following changes that you might need to make.

  1. Drug or Alcohol Problems

Addiction comes with its own nasty pitfalls that can greatly deter from good health. Self-improvement requires achieving sobriety and recovery from substance abuse. You can’t feel happy and good while being addicted to drugs or alcohol. While both take a heavy toll on your body beyond mood and mental health, addiction also actively keeps your brain from being able to feel happy or good on its own. That’s simply how addiction and drugs work.

As such, you need to take the time to help yourself and get off drugs and alcohol. Whether it’s through a program or rehab, you’re going to feel a lot better in the long-run if you kick the habit. Fortunately, there is rehab that works with insurance , so those with healthcare are encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity. Those without health insurance can still seek treatment, either through out-of-pocket expense or via nonprofit organizations.

  1. Diet

The first step to examining how health affects our happiness is to determine if your diet is poor or rich in nutrients. With how everything is priced at the grocery store and at fast food restaurants, it’s easy to choose foods that are convenient or not necessarily good for you. They just tend to be cheaper and easier to fix. With life already busy, and you likely feeling exhausted, cooking meals that are healthy may seem like something that is beyond you at this stage in your life.

However, a poor diet can actually be the reason behind your melancholy. By filling up on fast food cheeseburgers and clogging your arteries with greasy fries or eating a carton of ice cream every night, you’re really not doing yourself any favors. For one, you’re probably adding to weight gain. This alone could have a large blow to your self-esteem. Second, those foods rarely give you the nutritional requirements that your body needs. Thus, you’re basically forcing your body to break down these foods without receiving the benefit that the food is supposed to offer. You’re spending energy instead of allowing the food to lend you energy. As such, you’re probably left feeling tired after you consume a meal.

By nixing the poor diet and eating healthy meals filled with vegetables and fruits, you’re sure to boost your energy levels, clean out your body, and start to feel a lot better about yourself.

  1. Exercise

By regularly exercising, you can not only improve your immune system and start to shed weight, but you can also add muscle definition. This can give you a huge self-esteem boost which can greatly impact your mood overall. Exercising also helps your body to perform better. Blood flow runs more smoothly, so nutrients, molecules, hormones, and other properties can be transported easily from the brain to other parts of your body efficiently. You’ll basically be running at peak performance.

Healthy Body, Healthy Mind

Instead of succumbing to the bleak outlook of your life, you can easily take your mood and happiness into your own hands. Follow some of these steps and really maximize the most of your life. There’s no excuse for not trying.

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Website Author and Editor Bio

Photo of Karl Perera, MA, DipLC Karl Perera is a fully qualified Life Coach, Teacher and author of Self Esteem Secrets. His qualifications include Masters and DipLC. He has taught at various universities including Durham, Leicester and Anglia Ruskin, Cambridge. He has run since 1997 and is an expert in Self Esteem and Self Development.