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Areas › Your body › Food, caffeine and fuel
Plenty of people park the physical thing while they do the psychological work, or the other way round, then wonder why progress keeps sliding back. A settled body gives the harder sessions more room. In practice this means telling your GP roughly what your therapist is working on, and telling your therapist what your body has been doing.
So eat, drink, be glad (Quran 19:26). It was said to Maryam in the middle of a frightening hour, so tending the body is not a distraction from what a person is going through.
مريم
فَكُلِي وَٱشۡرَبِي وَقَرِّي عَيۡنࣰ اۖ فَإِمَّا تَرَيِنَّ مِنَ ٱلۡبَشَرِ أَحَدࣰ ا فَقُولِيٓ إِنِّي نَذَرۡتُ لِلرَّحۡمَٰنِ صَوۡمࣰ ا فَلَنۡ أُكَلِّمَ ٱلۡيَوۡمَ إِنسِيࣰّ ا
so eat, drink, be glad, and say to anyone you may see: “I have vowed to the Lord of Mercy to abstain from conversation, and I will not talk to anyone today.”’
Qur’an 19:26read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Do not expect the nutritional side to carry the weight on its own. A systematic review of adding nutritional supplements to antidepressant treatment found small benefits at best, with the clearest signals limited to a handful of specific compounds. Care that covers body and mind is worth having, and the evidence points to modest gains rather than a transformation.
Schefft C, Kilarski LL, Bschor T, Köhler S. (2017). Efficacy of adding nutritional supplements in unipolar depression: A systematic review and meta-analysis.. European neuropsychopharmacology : the journal of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Working on both at once lifts two loads instead of one, so whatever you gain is easier to keep hold of.
Pick one small change and leave the rest alone. A full overhaul asks the most of you at the point when you have the least to give, and it usually collapses in the second week.
When you find yourself reaching for something sweet again, try asking what the reaching is doing for you instead of telling yourself off. Comfort, a small rebellion, a way to stay awake: the answer usually points somewhere useful.
A child struggling with attention, anxiety and daily reflux at once may be dealing with one problem wearing three coats. Undiagnosed coeliac disease and other food reactions can produce all of it, and the gut symptom is the clue worth following.