Men’s Health Week, 10th – 16th June 2024

Happiness is all over the place.

Happiness is inside and outside of us, all the time.

The 2024 World Happiness Report, when reviewing happiness at a global scale, has identified significant increases in our post-COVID world in our benevolence. Benevolence is the quality of being well meaning or doing nice and kind things for one another. This big report also highlighted that men seem to have less negative emotion than women, across most age groups.

Is it a coincidence then, that this week the two collaborative powerhouses behind Men’s Health Week – The Australian Men’s Health Forum and The Centre for Men’s Health at The University of Sydney - are looking for Good Health Heros? Nice, kind, and well-meaning men, taking action not just for their own good health, but being there and helping others along their way too?

We think this is all lining up quite happily…

…and we thought, maybe, some Good Health Heros might find a bit of a road map to happiness helpful, as they go about ‘stacking healthy habits’ and understanding more about their own wellbeing along the way.

So, we ask…

Where is happiness?

*Photo by* *Daniil Silantev* on *Unsplash*

Happiness is in our guts…

How the complex interactions between our guts and our emotions, or our insides and our minds, have been described over time has and will continue to evolve. As humans we have always felt the connection, now science is allowing us to see and understand the phenomenal nature of this relationship.

There is a vital miniscule garden growing inside you and it is changing all the time. It responds to where you live, the air you breathe, the things you eat, how you cook your food, where you play, the other people you play with, how much you exercise, and even the work that you do. It’s your microbiome. It’s a whole world. It’s impact on your mood is worth exploring. Now, more than ever, there are Integrative GP’s, Functional Medicine Doctors and Naturopaths helping individuals understand and restore their gut health.

There are many interesting studies investigating the role of certain brain communication chemicals (neurotransmitters) that you need a healthy gut and diverse microbiome to produce, because many of them are made from the things you eat, and even produced by your guts and not entirely by your brain. The food you eat every day is important for your happiness. The positive impact diet can have on depression has been the subject of reviews of research in the last year. A particular research study from 2022 completed with young men with moderate to severe depression that followed the Mediterranean Diet for 12 weeks showed decreased depression scores and increased quality of life scores.

BIOFEEDBACK

There is a brain body connection that wanders all the way through you. Vagus, in Latin means ‘wandering’. The vagus nerve is the longest and most complex cranial nerve. It runs from your brain stem, down past your heart, through an opening in your diaphragm, roves around your gut, then down to your intestines. It is a bridge connecting your brain, heart, and body.

HRV Biofeedback has been emotively coined ‘the hearts eye to the vagus’ in an article from 2022 in the Journal of Clinical Medicine. Biofeedback training teaches you how to rebalance your body and brain by showing you how your own nervous system is working. Biofeedback technology has been developed over more than 60 years. Over this time research has been done into polyvagal theories and happiness, with new insights suggesting increased vagal influence on the heart may support our positive pro-social behaviours, and HRV Biofeedback can even enhance our recall of positive memories.

Happiness is in our brains…

Happiness is in many different parts of our brains, in part because there are many different types of happiness for humans. There is happiness related to different types of pleasure, motivation, and learning. We are still just a short way on our long journey to really understanding the neuroanatomy of happiness.

But already what we have found on our way is exciting…

Gratitude

In a scientific report in leading multidisciplinary science journal - Nature - gratitude practices and gratitude meditation are discussed. This report reveals gratitude may positively change functional connectivity in the brain and connections between the brain and heart.

At The Greater Good Science Centre they have produced a White Paper that explores everything from the cultural origins of gratitude, the science of it, and practical ways to make it a regular part of your happy rituals. In studies they explore that investigate gratitude and the brain, it is suggested that practicing gratitude may change our brains in a way that shifts us to feeling more pleased when other people benefit, not just ourselves. The Greater Good Science Centre even provide quick tips on how to keep an easy and effective gratitude journal. Gratitude could be that micro-habit that leads to big smiles.

tDCS

The Black Dog Institute is involved both with extensive research and direct delivery of effective tDCS treatments for depression, including treatment resistant depression. tDCS is a non-invasive brain-based treatment that delivers a very weak current to the brain. tDCS increases the excitability, plasticity and potential for positive change in the regions of the brain for regulating mood. Individuals are expected to do nothing but relax during these sessions. After tDCS individuals may engage in specific activities or purposeful exercises, when their brains are experiencing an increased potential for change, to drive this brain change in the most positive direction possible.

Learning

The science of happiness and wellbeing are the pursuit of entire departments at leading institutes of learning, the lofty likes of Berkeley, Oxford and Yale. They are exploring many amazing things, including the true power that can be found in positive psychology and neuroscience.

You can explore your sense of self, your motivations, how you derive happiness, and even your purpose on this planet, with lifelong learning. The universities listed previously offer well developed Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC’s for short), most are free, and some of them cover the science of a great life, things like:

Wellbeing: The Science of Well-Being | Yale Online

Happiness: The Science of Happiness | Greater Good Science Center (berkeley.edu)

Fulfillment: https://www.coursera.org/learn/happiness

Purpose: https://www.coursera.org/learn/finding-purpose-and-meaning-in-life

QEEG directed NEUROFEEDBACK

How your brain behaves when it comes to our feelings of happiness and our mood is not stuck or fixed, it is plastic - which means it works by changing. Your brain, at any age, is changing all the time. It is changing with everything you think, feel, and do, every moment of every day.

Neurofeedback Therapy, also known as EEG Biofeedback, is a brain-based treatment that uses a sophisticated brain-computer interface to ‘strengthen’ or ‘rewire’ the brain, by training and changing brainwaves, the tiny electrical signals produced by the brain. Targeted, specific, and personalised Neurofeedback Therapy is guided by special brain scans known as QEEG (Quantitative Electro-Encephalogram). QEEG directed Neurofeedback is a personalised and drug-free therapy for depression and anxiety.

Happiness is on your face…

Even if you fake it, some positive changes will make it.

Brain chemistry responds quickly and remarkably to our facial expressions and visual input. A smile itself triggers the release of tiny neuropeptides that help decrease stress. Looking at yourself smile in the mirror or in a photograph compounds the positive effects by lighting up positively associated areas in your visual cortex, sensory processing (parietal) regions, and your reminiscent memory.

Just try it and see if you can deny it.

Happiness is in our natural world…

The term ‘biophilia’ captures our innate love of life and the natural world. Recently acclaimed books like ‘The Nature Fix’ and ‘The Biophilia Effect’ explain the science of revisiting the healing bond between the human mind, body, and the natural world we are a part of. Even Jung believed last century that we have ‘lost emotional participation in natural events, that we have lost our bush-soul’ and that we suffer psychologically as a result. The Department of Psychology at Carleton University in Canada analysed 30 papers and from this determined that people who are more connected to nature tend to experience more positivity, vitality, and life satisfaction than those less connected to nature, and confirming connectedness to nature and feeling happy are connected.

Sunshine/Lux exposure

When we watch Dr Stephen Ilardi illuminate the 6 things we can do to cure depression without drugs, we realise half of them can and probably should be done outside. Light exposure is particularly important. We can’t live without lux. Our eyes and brains are designed to work outside, where natural light is over 100 times brighter than a brightly lit room indoors. It takes the types of light only found outside to trigger important responses in our brains that control our body clocks and our mood. Studies investigating photoreceptors, serotonin, vitamin D, melatonin and their involvement in human wellbeing all come back to the light.

*Photo by* *Sherise Van Dyk* on *Unsplash*

Happiness is in our bodies…

There was an article a few years ago in Scientific American called ‘HEADSTRONG: Why Exercise May Be the Best Fix for Depression’ and it got a lot of attention. Writer, Ferris Jabr, brought to the public research proving that exercise can rival medication when it comes to treating mild to moderate depression. Exercise is never just for physical health, exercise is also an effective treatment for anxiety, can combat stress and many chronic diseases.

You may read Jabr’s work, and then the knowing web shuttles you to articles with grabbing titles, like ‘The Science of Wheeeee!’, ‘Great Minds Run Alike’ and ‘Faster and Fitter at 50’, and these breakdown some of the complex science into these pro-exercise facts:

Increased dopamine tightens focus and speeds up muscle reaction times.
Increased endorphins work as natural pain killers.
Increased BDNF improves the brains ability to change in positive ways (neuroplasticity).
Norepinephrine acts as a stimulant calling the brain to attention and action.
Increased oxytocin helps us feel more connected.
Anandamide decreases brain inflammation and gives a blissful feeling.
Brain activity changes in the executive network making it easier to think about complex things differently when we exercise.
Increased alpha brainwave production helps you feel ‘relaxed and ready’.

These brain-body mechanics work together to put you in a state of optimal experience, peak performance, and natural flow. As highlighted in Headstrong, exercise just might be the strongest, quickest, cheapest, safest, doable, and even enjoyable way to improve your mood.

In this last year The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry brought together an International Federation for Psychiatry and an Australasian taskforce to outline clear evidence-based clinical guidelines specific to the vitally important lifestyle factors that can improve depression. Physical activity and exercise were at the top of the list.

These guidelines support a combination of: aerobic exercise; strength based exercise; as well as Yoga, tai chi, Pilates or qi gong practices that include - breathwork, mindfulness, and inclusive spiritual components.

When we are talking numbers, the clinical guidelines above suggest that we work toward a target of:

150-300 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity per week.

-OR-

75 – 150 minutes of vigorous intensity physical activity per week.

The combination of things you do to meet this target will be as unique as you are.

The Black Dog Institute outlines an easy-to-understand way to think about building an exercise timetable that might work for you here:

Exercise-and-depression.pdf (blackdoginstitute.org.au)

*Photo by* *Ambreen Hasan* on *Unsplash*

All of this knowledge, and a great deal more, has helped to build a range of practical treatments to boost happiness by working with your brain. The skilled Clinicians at Perth Brain Centre are equipped to teach you how these brain exercises work and how to incorporate them into your daily life.

There are three easy steps to help get you started today.

About the author - Ms. Emily Goss (Occupational Therapist, Senior Clinician, The Perth Brain Centre).

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When I was talking about what I was writing about to my boys, my Son Hunter showed me that he knew how to make these emoji’s in a word doc.

As an end note, I thought I’d just leave this little man’s knowing’s here.

Showed me happiness can just be in a hold and two keystrokes, and a clever kids smile.

Where is Happiness?