Feeling Down? Here are 6 Things You Can Do to Brighten Up Your Mood

Mood is a fickle thing. It can be easily ruined by heavy traffic, late delivery of your lunch, or a small argument with someone at the office. While you can’t control external circumstances, you can definitely control factors that affect your mood. Here are some of them.

Sleep tight

If you change only one thing in your daily routine, add more hours to your bedtime. Modern lifestyles don’t lend well to sleeping 8 or more hours a night, let alone 8 hours of restorative sleep. This is the time when your body carries out vital repairs, when your brain consolidates memories, and when your immune system strengthens itself (which is why shift workers are often prone to developing a cold or bacterial infections aside from crankiness).

When you are sleep deprived, you have fewer growth hormones (which are produced during the deepest part of your sleep), a lower number of T-cells (lymphocytes actively participating in the immune response), and fewer chances for REM sleep (dream phase) that provides energy to the mind and body. Specific to mood, lack of sleep increases amygdala activity, that part of the brain structure that plays a key role in the processing of anger and rage. When you’re sleep deprived, you’ll most likely experience a disconnect between your amygdala and another part of the brain that regulates amygdala’s function. The result: bad mood.

Get enough sunshine

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is not an imagined malady: SAD is linked to shorter daylight hours. Consider it the emotional counterpart of physical hibernation. When you don’t get plenty of sunlight, your body assumes it’s the start of winter, and correspondingly sends signals to your body and brain to conserve energy, which means you end up lethargic and depressed. Go outdoors and walk before the sun gets too hot so you get both the benefit of exercise and sunshine in one go.

Pamper your face

A rejuvenated face does more than just give you a youthful glow. Getting a facial is not just all about looking good – it can be very relaxing too, reminding you to slow down and take care of your most important asset: yourself. If deep lines bother you, you have several options for no surgery wrinkle treatment that could temporarily take a few years off your face: Botulinum Toxin (or more commonly known as Botox) for crows’ feet and forehead wrinkles treatment, cheek fillers for sunken cheeks, and smoker line treatment for those vertical lines around the lips.

More recent evidence suggests that Botox can in fact be used to alleviate depression as fine lines treatment through a mechanism called facial feedback. Researchers hypothesize that there’s a connection between our facial expressions and emotions: Our face doesn’t just mirror what we feel; we can alter what we feel by changing our facial expressions. This means we can minimize worry by erasing a few lines off our foreheads in the same way that we can make ourselves happier by forcing a smile.

Similarly, if clenching your jaw unconsciously makes you more upset, you can get Botox to relax the masseter muscles responsible for moving the jaws. In Botox clinic in Singapore, patients get Botox shots to stop their unconscious grinding of the teeth, which for some eventually leads to slimmer jaws.

Eat the right kind of fat

The food-mood connection is strong. The human brain is made up of about 60% fat and utilizes 20% of our body’s metabolic energy, so it’s little wonder why it needs essential fatty acids to be in top shape. For good mood, load up on omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. That means more flaxseeds, walnuts, soybeans, salmon, sardines, and shrimp, to name but a few, in your diet.

Make friends and keep them

Humans are social animals: It follows that we have to live in groups in order of survive. Medically speaking, making new friends or strengthening our bonds with them releases oxytocin in the body, the same hormone that allows mother and child to bond through breastfeeding.

Adopt an active lifestyle

Runner’s high is not a myth. Exercise releases endorphins, the feel-good hormones. If it helps you lose weight, even better. A 2010 study in the Archives of General Psychiatry cites that there’s a strong correlation between obesity and depression. This works both ways: depressed people are likely to be obese (thanks to comfort foods), and obese people are likely to get depressed (because abdominal fat converts inactive cortisone to active cortisol, the stress hormone).

For pockets of fat that don’t respond to regular exercise and sensible diet, banish them for good using a safe, non-invasive fat freezing procedure called CoolSculpting. CoolSculpting in Singapore uses controlled cooling to damage fat cells (which are sensitive to very low temperatures compared to the surrounding tissue) so the body can flush them out naturally. This fat removal treatment is performed in an aesthetic laser clinic and does not require social downtime. It is ideal to use on double chins, flabby arms, armpit fat from bra bulge, back fat, muffin tops, upper and lower abdomen, inner and outer thighs, knee fat, and ‘banana rolls’ under the buttocks. The results are long-term: You can keep the slimmer figure by maintaining an active lifestyle and making healthy food choices.