Whole Body Mental Health (Part 1)

A conversation with Chartered Psychologist, nutrition expert, author and advocate for a Whole Body approach to Mental Health and Wellbeing, Kimberley Wilson.

We discuss why the way we think about mental health, as separate from physical health, is seriously flawed, and talk about the importance of whole body mental health, that factors in nutrition and lifestyle and how they impact the brain.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Back to Being podcast,

Where I speak with experts,

Practitioners and everyday people about living a more healthy,

Active and mindful life.

My name is Kareem Rushdie,

And I've spent over a decade learning to transform my own chronic pain and stress so I can lead a life worth living.

Now I'm using what I've learned along the way,

As well as the knowledge and experience of my guests to share unique perspectives that can help you do the same.

Thank you for tuning in today.

In this episode,

I speak with chartered psychologist,

Nutrition expert,

Author and advocate for a whole body approach to mental health and wellbeing,

Kimberley Wilson.

Kimberley is a psychologist with a master's degree in nutrition and the author of How to Build a Healthy Brain,

Published in 2020,

And Unprocessed,

How the Food We Eat is Fueling Our Mental Health Crisis,

Published in 2023.

She has a private practice in central London,

Has served in the British National Health Service as a governor of a mental health trust,

And she also previously led the therapy service at Europe's largest women's prison.

In this episode,

Kimberley and I discuss why the way we think about mental health,

As separate from physical health,

Is seriously flawed.

We talk about the importance of whole body mental health that factors in nutrition and lifestyle and specifically how they impact the brain.

Kimberley's training,

Knowledge and experience in these areas is incredible,

And her passion for whole body mental health is infectious.

I learned so much from our conversation and hope you do too.

Without further ado,

Here's Kimberley Wilson on whole body mental health.

Enjoy.

Okay,

Kimberley,

Thank you so much for sharing your time with me and for accepting my invitation that I'm sure came out of the blue.

My pleasure.

My pleasure.

Yeah,

Really excited about the conversation we're going to have today.

There's a lot of things I want to talk to you about.

We'll see how much of that we can cram in to the hour.

Your two books in and of themselves are just so,

They're connected,

Of course,

But there's just so much interesting stuff there.

So we'll try and get to both of those.

And maybe to start with,

Your first book,

How to Build a Healthy Brain,

Included a lot of advice around kind of lifestyle medicine,

Preventative,

What's sometimes called integrated medicine.

So,

You know,

Some of the pillars you talked about were nutrition and sleep and exercise and meditation.

So one of the things I want to ask you,

Which I ask a lot of the guests on this podcast right off the bat is,

And we'll come back to nutrition a bit later,

But when it comes to meditation,

And then more broadly speaking,

Mindfulness,

What do these practices mean to you?

And how do they show up in your life before we get to perhaps how they help you work with the people that you that you work with?

I guess fundamentally,

If I were to boil it down,

It's about having the tools or acknowledging that sometimes your brain does dumb stuff,

And you can just ignore it.

You know,

It's the ability to create a little bit of space between what emerges from your brain and how you respond to it.

And for most of us,

For most people,

We have this kind of fusion between me and my thoughts,

You know,

I am what I think and what I think is who I am.

And once you understand a little bit about how the brain works,

You realize that that's really not true.

It's really not true.

Sometimes your brain,

I love the brain,

I think it's beautiful,

It's wonderful,

It's complex,

It's incredible,

But sometimes it just does unhelpful,

Dumb stuff.

And you need to be able to kind of bear that,

Tolerate it,

Be curious about it,

But then also be able to choose whatever response to it that is best for you.

So I think whatever you call it,

Introspection,

Meditative practice,

Mindfulness,

It's about creating that little bit of space between what emerges from your brain and then what you choose to do with it.

Yeah,

No,

I love that.

Viktor Frankl talks about,

You know,

Creating space between stimulus and response.

And that stimulus could be internal,

It could be thought,

Emotion that,

As you say,

We often identify with,

But it can also be external,

Be something somebody else said,

Or,

You know,

An event that we encounter,

And when we've got that space,

And we can consciously respond rather than habitually react,

It does have a great effect on us.

I've heard it said once,

You used the word brain,

But I've heard it said,

You know,

If your mind,

Once you stop and you observe,

And you take a bit of time,

You know,

To meditate or just to observe your thoughts without getting kind of drawn into the content,

You realize that if your mind was a person,

It's not somebody you'd take much advice from.

Oh,

Not at all.

You wouldn't invite them to dinner,

You wouldn't hang out with them,

They'd be saying all sorts of random stuff and silly observations in inane thoughts all the time.

Yeah,

Having you act on the craziest of impulses as well.

Exactly.

There's something a bit deeper there as well.

I mean,

You said to,

You know,

Learn to meet those activities of mind with,

With curiosity with a bit of distance between you and them.

I'm wondering if there's something you know,

You talk about in your clinical practice,

I think the other thing that's quite important for people to bear in mind is that however crazy the mind seems,

However illogical or irrational those thoughts are,

When you realize that the mind is just trying to keep you safe,

And it's still stuck on those old kind of patterns of survival and,

You know,

Accumulating as many resources as you can,

You can even meet it with a little bit of humor.

I often will thank my mind for going where it's gone and have a little chuckle about where it's gone and just let it,

I'm okay,

I'm safe.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I mean,

That is the other thing is,

It's,

It's doing its very best.

And sometimes you think,

Oh,

That's so sweet that you thought that was a good idea.

That was a reasonable,

That's really adorable.

I love you for that.

But we're not going to do that anymore.

And I think that is a really important thing because,

You know,

I see memes and I find them funny.

People are like,

My brain,

My number one enemy,

And I can understand what they mean.

But I think when you come to a position that your brain is doing its very best,

There are a lot of inputs,

There's a lot of information,

Both externally and internally,

I think that's one of the things that we miss is that there's a huge amount of information coming from your body all the time that your brain is trying to make sense of.

And so the state and condition of your body is going to be informing your thoughts and your feelings.

And too often we neglect our bodies and that becomes part of this kind of ongoing malaise,

I think for a lot of people.

But if you take it from a position of curiosity and compassion,

Then you can start to have a bit of relationship with your mind and it can make some of the responses less frightening.

There was an example that I put on my social media because I think it really was helpful for people that someone had asked a question on my Instagram and they'd said,

You know,

Why is it that years after my divorce from an abusive partner,

I still get terrified every time I see them?

It's years later,

I don't live with them anymore,

But I still get this terror response,

You know,

And I wanted to point out,

First of all,

A,

That that's a very common reaction for a lot of people.

It's very understandable.

And second,

That it's not a sign necessarily that you're broken,

That you've been irreparably damaged by this relationship,

That you're weak.

It's none of those things.

It's about how your brain is trying to keep you safe,

That your brain,

Your mind has made associations in the past between this person and threat.

In your mind,

This person is a risk to you and it will galvanize and generate all of those fear,

Fight,

Flight,

Freeze responses.

It will do that to keep you safe,

To keep you ready the next time.

And because you had such a successive long-term experience with that,

That's all the data your brain has about this person.

And what you need now is just to update the data.

It's going to take a little while,

But you need to just update that data so that your brain can begin to understand that the next time and the next time,

The next time you encounter that person,

You're not in danger anymore.

And it's just about a matter of almost a kind of the probabilities,

A statistical relationship.

Your brain is making a prediction of harm and over time,

It will stop making that same prediction.

And I think just framing it like that for a lot of people can help people to feel less angry with themselves or less disappointed in themselves,

Less like they're failing.

Actually,

It's your brain doing its very best to keep you safe.

And absolutely,

You can go,

Thank you,

Brain.

I loved you for that.

Thank you for that.

Let's see what we can do to kind of shift this prediction that you're making.

Yeah,

I love that.

I love that because it is helping people not to stand in opposition to those thoughts,

Not to stand in opposition to their brains,

Their minds,

Because when we do,

Friction gets created.

We suppress whatever we're thinking or feeling and it does come back to haunt us.

So kind of meet it.

We talk a lot in teaching mindfulness about meeting experience as it is.

That's a wonderful place to start.

Kind of connected question then,

When,

How much do you use meditation mindfulness in your clinical practice?

And what kind of,

You know,

What kind of effects do you see?

What kind of benefits do you see for people who do take up such practices after they come and start working with you?

So I suppose the first thing is that I don't use it for everyone.

And I suppose that's partly because I don't think it's right for everyone.

Certainly not at the outset.

And certainly when I was working with very traumatized populations,

Staying with your feelings was just a terrible idea.

When you,

When your history is of abuse,

Violence,

Harm,

Then the A,

You perhaps haven't learned the capacity to tolerate your thoughts and feelings.

And that's partly because B,

Your body has been in such a survival mode that you haven't had that cognitive reflective introspective opportunity.

And therefore you don't learn the tools to be able to bear them and then to behave safely.

So,

And that was one of the things that came up when,

You know,

And there was that kind of big wave of mindfulness in the kind of general social conversation and people were recommending it for everything.

And there were a group of us psychologists were like,

We need to be very careful about who we're suggesting should try this.

And we shouldn't be telling people to just,

You know,

Off you pop,

Sit down,

Quiet,

Think about your thoughts by yourself.

It's not a silver bullet.

It's not a panacea.

But you know,

There's,

There's more than one way to observe a thought.

So for,

For when I do use it,

It's often when people,

I've built up enough of a relationship with them,

They trust me enough to help guide them through it.

And it's partly,

It's particularly useful for people with IBS.

So I see people,

They have irritable bowel syndrome,

Which is very interesting functional gut disorder because quite often what happens because IBS is a stress sensitive disorder,

Stress is really key to a lot of the symptomology.

And what the,

My anecdotal observation is that a lot of people with IBS are introverts who have found themselves in an extrovert situation.

And so they're always overriding,

Override,

Override,

Override,

Override.

And so I will use a few techniques to help them just to stop and come down and,

You know,

Think about where you feel safest and what feels good for you and what you feel in your body when you think about giving a presentation and those sorts of things are helping to bring the observation back inwards or also when people are perhaps relaying a very difficult experience.

And the thing about psychotherapy is unfortunately the way our brains are wired is it's,

You can't really process an emotion without reliving it a little bit as well.

You have to,

We can't just like think about it and be like,

Oh,

That was,

That was very interesting.

And it's a purely cognitive experience.

There is a little bit of a reliving.

And so I will use mindfulness techniques to help people just recognize and stay grounded where they are whilst they might be revisiting quite difficult feelings.

And again,

That's about retelling the story and letting the mind,

The brain know that it's safe whilst it can encounter these very difficult thoughts.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

We refer to it as re-perceiving or de-centering sometimes.

Again,

It's coming back to space,

Putting a little bit of space between you and those sorts of emotions.

Fantastic.

You alluded earlier to the amount of information that's coming from our bodies that we're often not attuned to.

I think we're much more familiar with the idea that when we're stressed out,

When we're feeling,

You know,

Thinking negatively,

That can affect our bodies.

I think we're much less attuned to the fact that there could be underlying discomfort or issues in the body that are having a huge effect on our thoughts and emotions.

So I think it's a really nice segue into whole body mental health.

And you see how I did that?

Yeah,

I love that,

So smooth,

So good.

Very smooth,

Very smooth.

I want to know how you,

Because you came to this conclusion some years ago,

And I want to know how you came to this conclusion that kind of mainstream thinking,

The mainstream approach to managing,

Mitigating mental health challenges was flawed.

And then how did this whole body mental health philosophy emerge out of that conclusion?

Hmm,

The thing with this question is everything seems very neat in retrospect,

Doesn't it?

Everything's like a given lined up.

And so I would probably tell this story like,

Well,

First I did this and then I did that.

But I'm sure.

.

.

Give us the messy,

Give us the messy version,

Give us the messy version.

The,

I suppose,

A lifelong interest in brains and the idiosyncrasies of them,

And how two people can see the same thing,

But respond to it very differently,

Which you just think,

Oh,

Why,

Why,

You know,

If we've all got the same brain,

You know,

In the same way that we all have the same kind of heart,

You know,

A heart surgeon goes in knowing what to expect,

Your ventricles are in roughly the same place.

Like,

Why is it that we have these different responses?

So that interest in psychology,

Where I think it's synthesized was when I was working in prisons.

And so I'd had this grounding in,

In psychology and psychotherapy and early life and the importance of the early relationship.

And then I'd had this personal interest in nutrition.

And then the,

There was a replication of a study that came out,

Which looked at the,

It was an intervention study in RCT,

So randomized controlled trial,

Placebo controlled,

Double blinded,

So really what would be considered the gold standard in terms of demonstrating causality.

And so what they did,

And it was in a male prison,

I was working in a woman's prison,

In a male prison,

A young offenders Institute,

Improving nutritional status,

And it was through supplementation.

So one group got the supplements and the other group got a placebo,

Improving nutrition status in these violent male prisoners,

Reduced objective incidents of violence in the prison by over 30%.

And I was running a therapy service at the time,

The women I was working with had experienced enormous trauma.

Some of them were incredibly violent.

Keeping them safe was my main priority,

As well as keeping my team safe,

Because we were working with them in kind of quiet rooms on the end of a wing.

So managing safety and being aware of risk was part of my remit.

And I'd had all of this training in risk and safety and violence,

Which said things like,

You know,

Previous history and,

You know,

Trigger events,

And are there any upcoming anniversaries and people become anxious before their next court date,

And all of that stuff is true.

There hadn't been a single conversation about that person's physical status,

And in this case,

Their nutritional status,

And the impact that that might have on their behavior,

On their mood,

On the way that they might interact with someone,

The way that they might be interpreting the world.

And it just kind of struck me because it was so resonant with the work I was doing.

Like,

Hold on a minute,

We have all of these people coming in to give courses which haven't been accredited.

We're not sure they really work.

They're very expensive.

They don't give us the outcomes that we need,

Frankly.

And yet we have,

And this was a replication,

We have at least two RCTs demonstrating the same magnitude of effect that just improving nutrition makes this place much less dangerous.

Why are we not,

A,

Why are we not doing anything about it?

But also,

What does this tell us about how the mind functions?

What does this tell us about the assumptions that we make about volition and behavior and mood that we integrate,

That we associate just with personality and that we separate from what's happening in the rest of the body?

And so that's what got me started.

I was like,

Okay,

Let's see.

Yeah,

This idea that personality is something that is just up here in our heads,

Behind our eyes,

And it all comes from there.

I mean,

It reminds me,

Remember that some years ago,

Jamie Oliver went on a crusade to try and prove nutrition in schools.

And there was all these examples of schools that had a lot of so-called problem children,

Children with learning difficulties,

Pull out the junk food,

And everything changed.

Their behavior changed,

Their academic performance changed,

Their mood changed.

So you had this realization,

That's step one.

How did you then try to mainstream this idea and convince people,

Whether it be in institutions like prisons and healthcare systems,

Or just your colleagues in psychology?

I mean,

I didn't for a long time.

So it got me started in terms of research.

At that point,

I'd had a kind of lay interest in nutrition.

But afterwards,

I was like,

Okay,

I need to do a master's in this.

And I need to do a master's in nutrition that focuses on nutrition and the brain specifically.

So I did that.

And then along the way,

You kind of find all of this other interlinking research.

It was at the same time that the research into the gut microbiome was starting to blossom,

And all of the stuff that's coming out of UCC in Ireland.

And then also,

I think another really key part of the journey for me was the research on emotion granularity and valence.

Do you want to elaborate a little bit?

Yes,

Absolutely.

Sounds granular.

It's so interesting.

And it's so important to my work as a psychologist.

Because when I was,

And I literally remember being set this as one of my essays in my psychology undergrad,

Which was about,

The question was,

How can you spot a liar?

And it was talking about emotions and micro expressions.

And at the time,

The thinking,

The dominant thinking had been that there were these key human emotions that are universal.

Happiness,

Surprise,

Fear,

Blah,

Blah,

That are absolutely universal,

Kind of baked in.

And then there are these few extra ones along the way.

And this had been what we were being taught.

And then this new field of research that actually,

I don't think that's the case at all.

That's really not how it works.

Because what we see cross-culturally is that there are different meanings associated with the positioning.

And the language is very careful.

It's kind of like,

I can't remember the terminology,

It's like facial positioning,

Like actually the kind of what your face is doing.

And what you're doing at that point,

When you're looking at somebody else's face,

Is that you're not getting a true representation of what they're feeling.

You are making an assumption based on that facial configuration,

Your previous experience,

And what your culture tells you that facial configuration means.

Right,

Right.

And that then overlies with the information coming from your body.

So the example that I give,

Because it does start to feel very complicated.

And I think there are two ways that make this feel a bit more accessible for people.

So the first one is that,

You know,

You're standing on the edge of a cliff,

Right?

The wind is rushing past your face.

How are you feeling?

And I think a lot of people would assume I'm afraid.

You know,

I'm on the edge of a cliff,

I'm pretty frightened.

And that expectation,

That prediction of a fear response,

And it's,

You know,

It's associated with a stomach that's kind of,

There's butterflies and your heart is pounding.

And when you tell people that edge of a cliff,

Butterflies,

Heart pounding,

People say,

Oh,

Fear,

For sure.

And then I say,

OK,

But you have a parasail on.

You've been paragliding for 10 years.

You're with 15 of your best friends on a beautiful sunrise morning.

Now,

How do you feel?

Same sensations,

Same butterflies in your stomach,

Same heart palpitations.

And then they say,

Oh,

Exhilarated,

Excited,

Ready to go.

And so that's just a very kind of crude example that the same sensations,

Once you have different contextual information,

Shifts the meaning of the emotion.

So it's not that butterflies in your stomach always mean that you're afraid.

Butterflies can mean whatever you think it means,

Depending on your contextual information.

And that context can be where you are,

Who you're with or your previous history.

So there's that part.

So that and that's the part that brings in what we call valence,

Which is the information coming from your body becomes interpreted by your brain.

But also that sense of pleasantness or unpleasantness is happening on an unconscious level for most people most of the time.

So when it's conscious,

Like,

You know,

You can be walking down the road.

It's quite a nice sunny day today,

Right?

And you're walking down the road.

Maybe you had a lovely yoga session.

You've had a beautiful meditation morning.

Everything's feeling great.

But you've got new shoes on.

And they're just a little bit pinchy and a little bit sore.

Yeah.

And a bit unpleasant down there.

It's a little bit unpleasant.

You've got a stone in your shoe and that can just irritate you.

It can make you a bit grisly,

A bit grumpy.

Nothing else is objectively wrong with what's happening in your life.

But this state of physical discomfort is experienced and interpreted as an instance of bad mood.

So I think most people get that.

And then what I say is you can be having an instance of discomfort that is below your level of conscious awareness.

It can be a virus or infection.

So often people's mood will drop when they're coming down with the flu as a pre-symptom before their noses get stuffy.

Especially when they're seven and nine year old girls.

I can attest to that.

And so you can see,

You're like,

Oh,

Something's going on with me.

Yeah,

Something's up,

Yeah.

It can be inadequate nutrition,

Nutritional deficiencies.

It could be inflammation.

So a longstanding injury that hasn't been dealt with.

It could be something you've eaten that just isn't,

You know,

Sitting right with you.

It could be blood sugar.

It could be all sorts of things that your brain is receiving a message from your body saying something's not right.

Something's not right.

Something's not right.

Something's not right.

But because it's below that level of conscious awareness,

Your brain will be like,

Something feels really bad.

What is it?

What is it?

My relationship?

Am I satisfied with what?

Maybe,

Right?

Because your brain will look for something to hang that feeling of discomfort on.

And that's why whenever I'm working with someone,

We deal with those physical foundations first.

Let's not assume that this maybe poor mood that you're presenting with is some sign of some terrible thing that's happened to you.

Let's deal with the things that we can tick off first.

Make sure you're slept well,

Making sure you're well nourished,

Making sure that you're getting physical activity,

Morning sunlight.

And if then this persists to the same degree,

Then we can start doing some more exploratory work.

But let's not ignore the influence of the body on how you're experiencing your psychological symptoms.

I've been talking for ages.

No,

It's fascinating.

And it really just ties back into the mindfulness piece because that valence,

What we sometimes call feeling tone,

Every single sensory impression we have,

Whether consciously or unconsciously,

Is registered as pleasant,

Unpleasant,

Or neutral,

Right?

When it's unpleasant,

We have that aversive kind of reaction and it may be beneath the surface and it may cause us to act,

Speak,

Think in a way that we're not sure where that came from.

And anything that's pleasant,

We kind of want to cling on to it.

Then we get gripped with fear that it's going to end and that sensation is going to dissipate.

But if you're not attuned,

And I think this comes back to whole body mental health,

If you're not attuned to your body,

If you're not embodied at any given time,

You may not be even aware that that stone is in the shoe,

That there's inflammation in the gut,

That you're not getting enough of a certain vitamin or mineral.

So I can totally relate to that.

So,

I mean,

How does that translate over then into.

.

.

So you wrote a book on this as well.

This is the latest book.

We've got to do another shout out for that.

Unprocessed.

Correct?

Yeah.

I've got the full,

How the food we eat is fueling our mental health crisis.

I think that's what you've given.

You've given one example of how not getting the right nutrition may be causing discomfort in the body,

Which then manifests in the mind and in the heart in terms of emotions.

What are some of the other ways that nutrition impacts the brain and then goes on to impact mental health?