Mental Health: A Mirror Of Inner Strength



Mental health is essential in order to lead a more fulfilling life. Gender medicine and epigenetics play an important role in this. There are incontrovertible facts that we need to understand and accept in order to make smarter choices for our well-being. Expert Gerhard J. Mandalka, founder of a consulting firm for Body & Mind and a health center explains, what to do.

When we talk about mental health and its solutions, we must take into account the unique characteristics that distinguish women and men. Every emotion triggers physical reactions through the activation of corresponding hormones. The sum of these emotions changes our epigenetics and therefore our resilience.

Just because our body rewards us with a release of dopamine does not necessarily mean that it is good for us. Conversely, pain merely signals changes in our body, which can also occur when imbalances are eliminated. We can’t always trust our perception!

The ectoderm and mental health

Our nerves, skin, brain, sensory organs and adrenal medulla originate from the ectoderm, one of the three basic cell groups in our body. A mental health solution should therefore address all areas of the ectoderm, as this area is responsible for the reception and processing of signals within us.

The WHO definition of mental health is: “A state of well-being in which a person is able to fulfill their abilities, cope with the normal stresses of life, work productively and contribute to their community. “ This definition covers four key areas:

• Well-being
• Personal performance
• Coping with normal life stresses
• Contribution to the community

Stress – the invisible enemy

When we talk about mental health, we also need to talk about stress. Stress is not a mere description, but usually a negative evaluation of a situation and therefore unsuitable for initiating positive changes. The word stress should always be illuminated by concrete descriptions so that we can recognize what we are reacting to with stress.

It is not the situations themselves, but our evaluation of these situations that causes stress!

If we are frequently stressed, we are operating in an environment for which we have too few resources or too little security. Inner security is the antagonist of stress, and for this we need sufficient physical, cognitive and social resources in the respective situation. When we feel safe, we have time to react to external signals and do not need the immediate activation chains of stress.

Two important points:
> Eustress can only superimpose distress, not compensate for it
> It is not the situation but our personal evaluation that creates stress.

Well-being is more than just relaxation

Well-being is more than just two relaxation exercises at the end of the day, even if we learn to focus on conscious issues with mindfulness exercises. It has to do with safety (cognitive and physical) and contentment. Well-being grows from real highs and lows, requires self-confidence and a stable environment in which we feel safe and our senses can calm down. We need the feeling that we don’t have to be on constant alert.

Foods such as sugar or milk and stimulants such as alcohol or smoking create stress reactions in us that reduce the breakdown of normal waste products. As a result, our body becomes increasingly toxic, and we feel less resilient and have fewer ways of compensating for intense moments.

Confronting our limits

We build up resources within ourselves when we consciously confront our limits and then give ourselves time to recover. It’s about striking a balance between the two opposing poles. There are better and worse times for women to master a conscious challenge. The follicular phase is a very good time, while the end of the luteal phase is particularly unfavorable.

Women in particular need more exercise in order to have better digestion, and the negative effects of smoking are particularly high for them. It is much more difficult for women to stop smoking. On the other hand, the effect of a good diet seems to be much more positive for women than for men.

We need relaxation techniques, but even more important are a few hours a day with reduced stress on our sensory organs. Waiting for news and reacting quickly is a stress reaction, albeit a small one, which is very harmful overall.

Personal performance: energy and limits

People with low energy levels, restricted mobility or serious illnesses have a reduced personal performance capacity. This person has to push their limits more quickly, which is associated with stress reactions in the body. Everyone feels worse on days with particularly low energy than on comparable days with lots of energy. Energy and safety are very often interdependent.

On the one hand, we need to develop our physical and mental fitness through targeted stimuli, but we also need to recognize our personal limits. Not everyone will become an Einstein, a mega athlete or an outstanding musician.

That’s why we should always ask ourselves: Is my personal capacity (mind and body) sufficient to achieve my goals? Am I in a working and living environment in which I can easily keep up, or do I always have to go full throttle to keep up? Constantly having to keep up is much more strenuous for us than being able to increase the pace ourselves, even if the same amount of energy is used in the end.

Coping with normal life stresses: Reality and comparison

What is a normal life stress and who or what am I comparing myself to? There are people who seem to effortlessly juggle family, friends and business. Some of these people are very active online and suddenly many of them disappear. If you then look more closely for the reasons, it turns out that a mental or physical illness has got in their way.

If you believe the specialist books, 80 percent of our illnesses are determined by our lifestyle. These people have overextended themselves and, if they are lucky, earned enough money to buy support for the future.

The question is therefore very important for mental health: does my life plan match my goals and my resources? We can only do two things at the same time in our lives if they support each other. The decision to become a mother has a high price and a particularly valuable reward. We can only spend our time once, and this also applies to fathers. Either spend a lot of time on his children or on other goals.

Sometimes 30 percent is enough

Normal life stress means that we can sometimes do our normal job with 30 percent daily energy. At my health center, I see people chasing fantasies. Unfortunately, women in particular are blinded by other women because we only see the part of life that is consciously shown.

Despairing about everyday things and mastering everyday tasks is normal and part of a normal life. We need these two areas in life so that we can perceive happiness and also be happy with less happiness. We need a balance between all our feelings, and this is especially true for women because they react differently to emotions than men.

Women experience stories of unhappiness and illness much more intensely than men. That’s why they should pay more attention to what they talk about. We don’t help anyone if we harm ourselves. Women (and all of us) can immediately achieve more in life if talk is replaced by action. Only action gives us a real answer about other people’s possible reactions.

Contribution to the community: safety and belonging

We want to be important to our community because we associate this with safety. Social behavior is deeply rooted in our genetics, so we react automatically to many processes. We are safer and more radical in groups and immediately find apparent differences to other groups. We constantly compare ourselves in order to maintain or improve our position in the group. This is why many illnesses are associated with poorer social status.

Community is getting bigger and bigger and more and more unmanageable through social media. We want to be special in a special way in the community because specialness is rewarded with attention and recognition. Before the social media era, it was much easier for girls and boys to find their position within their social group.

Nowadays, we feel challenged to compete with people who live thousands of kilometers away. The group is no longer 50 or 200 people, but several hundred thousand, who can only show what they prefer without ever having to reveal the whole – which was normal in small groups. Hiding or masking bad sides was much more difficult – in contrast, we increasingly see our normal shortcomings.

What can you do?

Raise your daughters like the boys! Current scientific studies in the field of gender medicine have a clear opinion: raising women not only makes them ill, but even manages to reverse genetically positive dispositions into negative ones by the time they reach menopause.

Women in particular reduce their female children to their appearance and teach them how important it is what others say and how you are perceived by others. Listen to what boys are praised for and what girls are praised for and how we are more cautious about girls than boys. Gender and diversity start with clothes and the bow in your hair.

You have to realize that using the pill changes you as a woman. You remain a woman on the outside, but you no longer experience the cycle that is important for you because many of your hormones and therefore adaptation processes no longer take place. This is why you should pay attention to your current status and hormones when choosing and choosing the intensity of the methods. Hormones make us humans happy and stressed. What do you choose?