6 simple ways to boost your mood

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Today's topic

Hello, and welcome to my weekly video blog. And today on A.Vogel Talks Menopause, I'm going to tell you about six simple things that you can do to boost your mood.

How does menopause affect you emotionally?

Now, we know that low mood and mood swings are one of the most common menopause symptoms. They can hit anytime. You can get up in the morning, feel absolutely fine, 20 minutes later you can just feel your mood spiralling. Other times you can be perfectly okay, and your mood can go up and down like a yo-yo.

It's all to do with your oestrogen dipping, and sometimes, if your oestrogen dips really quickly, that will then have an almost immediate effect on your mood as well. But there are other things that you may or may not be doing that can also affect your mood.

6 things you can do to give your mood a boost

So I'm going to go through these six things that you can do to help yourself and hopefully, that will make a big difference.

1. Exercise regularly

The really important thing here is to do regular exercise. Now, I know this is difficult for those of you that are suffering from fatigue. If you've got a lot of joint pain, if your motivation has totally got up and gone, it can be very difficult to exercise, but it's really important for several reasons. One is that exercising releases things called endorphins which are your feel-good hormones.

So exercising itself can help to release hormones that are going to boost your mood. Exercising also improves your circulation, and the better your circulation is, the more the hormones that you have can circulate in a more balanced way.

So you can see you're actually getting two benefits as well as maybe helping to stabilise your weight as well when you do regular exercise. For those of you that can't do it for any of the reasons that I mentioned before, then at least just try and keep active. If you can't do sort of bursts of exercise, then even getting a 10-minute walk in on a daily basis can be really beneficial and if you're sitting at a desk, try and get up and walk about during the day, so that at least you're getting a little bit of exercise even if it's quite a relaxed one.

2. Eat happy

Second one is to eat well. We know that a poor diet can affect the mood, and unfortunately, in the menopause, your nutritional needs go sky-high. There's so much energy being used in trying to keep your body balanced because of the loss of hormones that you need just about more of everything to keep you stable.

And we know for a fact that low B vitamins, low magnesium, and low vitamin D as well can all contribute to low mood and mood swings. So the important things here, have a good varied diet, for those of you that are not quite sure what the best foods are, there's a link here for the best diet for the menopause.

Don't skip meals. Make sure that you keep your blood sugar levels stable. They go haywire in the menopause anyway, and the minute your blood sugars dip, that will affect your mood as well. So remember, three good meals a day and also have some little healthy snacks in between meals, and again, there are videos that I've done on what kind of snacks contribute to healthy ones, so you can have a look at those ones as well.

3. Sleep better

We know that poor sleep can affect our mood. If you're not sleeping because of hot flushes or night sweats, if you're not sleeping because you just don't sleep well because of the menopause, then that is going to affect your mood the next day, so trying to get a good night's sleep is a really important one here, too. I've just recently posted a video blog on sleep, so again, for those of you that maybe need a little refresher, or you need some tips on how to get a good night's sleep, please check that one out, too.

4. Drink up

Number four is water, again and again, and again. Dehydration will affect your mood. If you get dehydrated, that will affect your nervous system, and very often, it will go into panic mode, it will trigger adrenaline, and from that you can get your mood going up and down, you can get the irritability, you can get the anger, and it can also cause things like flushes and palpitations as well.

So water is a standard medicine, if you like, for the menopause, so don't forget that one every single day. And it needs to be over and above your other drinks, that's really important, too.

5. Talk about it

Number five, talk about how you feel. It's really important and I think sometimes us women when we're going through the menopause, it can be very difficult to communicate how we feel because we don't understand it ourselves.

You know, how can you explain to somebody that your mood is going up and down and round the building three or four times a day, when you don't know why this is happening yourself? But if you can, if you can talk to someone else that you know may be going through the menopause, or if you can talk to maybe another family member or some of your friends.

Don't bottle it up because this will make it worse, and it will make you feel more isolated, and that will make your low mood or your mood swings worse as well. So it is really important to talk about this at the end of the day.

6. Mood helpers

Now, number six is that there are mood enhancing supplements and herbs that you can take to help balance your mood and make you just feel better generally.

We've got magnesium, really important for absolutely everything. If you're getting really quite sort of severe mood swings, if they're happening really frequently, then look at maybe 200 milligrams of magnesium twice a day, with food, or go with the skin spray, or go with the powdered magnesium that you can dissolve into water.

I would add in a vitamin B complex, 50 milligram. It's a lovely one for feeding your nervous system, and it's good for brain function as well, so it's a handy one to take. A good female multivit can be a real good godsend, especially if you feel that your diet's maybe not up to scratch. Your local health food shop will be able to recommend a good one for you.

Herbs like Hypericum, if you feel that you're getting low mood as opposed to mood swings, then Hypericum can help to lift your mood and stabilise it. It's a lovely one for menopausal women, and it's one I recommend a lot. Just watch though because we don't advise it if you're on any other prescribed medication from the doctor.

If that's the case, then we've got Mood Essence which is a lovely Flower Essence. Just a little bottle, you could carry that in your bag with you, and anytime you feel your mood dipping, you can just put two or three drops straight on to the tongue. So it's a handy one to have with you wherever you go and when you're out and about.

When to talk to the doctor about your moods

If your mood is low the whole time, if you feel that your mood is deepening, if you feel, you know, some women say they almost feel as if they're in a pit and that they can't get out.

If your low mood is feeling like that, if nothing you do makes it any better, or if you feel that you are depressed, or you're slipping into depression, and it's affecting your daily life, if it's affecting your job, if it's affecting your work and your relationships, then that's the point that you go and talk to your doctor about it because you may need something stronger than the remedies that I've been recommending here.

So hopefully, that will give you some nice tips to get going with if you have mood swings and low mood. Let me know how you get on if they help. If any of you out there have any other tips that can help you, that you find really beneficial for yourself, please share them with us. We would love to hear about them. And until then I will see you next week for another edition of A.Vogel Talks Menopause