Another important aspect of health is mental nutrition. Being careful of information entering the mind is critical because some information increases psychological stress, which powerfully affects inflammation and different health conditions. As much as it is important to reduce sources of psychological stress, it is also vital to increase sources of happiness and joy, such as good friends, passion projects, and loving relationships. For many people the first step should be to identify sources of stress and reduce exposure.

One stressful information source is social media. Many users of these websites create images of life that do not fully reflect reality. People post images of the best parts of life and rarely post images of the worst. Seeing only the best parts of life can cause other people to feel psychological stress that their lives are not as good in comparison.

Social media also leads to the creation of separate groups that reinforce beliefs and contribute to confirmation bias. Furthermore, social media usage increases the tendency to depend on technology rather than meeting new people in real life. This lack of genuine connection can increase feelings of loneliness, a significant source of psychological stress. Social media can also create a fear of missing out on the fun other people appear to be having.

Research appears to confirm the dangers of using social media. Limiting social media use significantly reduced both loneliness and depression (1). Amazingly, research noted that giving up Facebook™ for five days linked with reduced salivary cortisol, a hormone elevated by stress (2). In contrast, increased Facebook™ use correlated to worse self-reported mental health (3).

Another form of stressful information is news. A study found an association between reading negative news and increased cortisol in women (4). Other researchers looked at the effects of showing 14-minute news bulletins edited to focus on either positive, neutral, or negative material. The groups with the negative bulletins “showed increases in both anxious and sad mood, and also showed a significant increase in the tendency to catastrophize a personal worry (5).” This is important because catastrophizing will intensify psychological stress and inflammation.

One of the most significant sources of mental nutrition is the quality of people in an individual’s environment. As many people already know, some people have a negative attitude and spread negativity to others. Negative people often lack significant accomplishments and struggle with self-doubt. They frequently attempt to use negativity to bring other people down, especially if those people have vision, drive, and success.

People stuck in a victim mentality can also be a source of psychological stress. These people sabotage themselves, waste time, and complain about being a victim. Not being in the company of negative people stuck in self-defeating mentalities may greatly reduce stress and inflammation. Also, beneficial personal traits, such as vision, positivity, productivity, and drive, have a better chance of becoming stronger.

Overall, there are different types of people in the world, some more stressful to associate with than others. This stress can increase inflammation. Meditation and greater awareness can limit this stress, but until this awareness develops further, the best option is to significantly reduce time spent around stressful people. This adjustment may require getting a new friend group or spending less time with family. Limiting stress might also mean getting a new job, even if there is less pay. Personal health is wealth.

Importantly, the most overlooked part of reducing inflammation is the effects of psychological stress. People may eat a great diet and exercise regularly, but if they have hidden psychological stress and emotion suppression, then negative health effects are still a strong possibility.

For example, psychological stress can start “inflammatory activity and affective-cognitive changes that play a critical role in the onset, maintenance, and recurrence of depression (6).” Other researchers note how psychological stress during childhood might have long-term negative health effects (7).

Sadly, a significantly larger inflammatory response to acute psychological stress may occur “among individuals reporting adverse psychosocial states or conditions such as depression, lower self-esteem, or lower self-compassion (8).” These people may have epigenetically upregulated inflammatory responses due to chronic inflammation.

Evolutionarily, the reason stress has a relationship with inflammation is stress often occurred before a physically damaging fight. Our ancestors better-survived pathogen invasion into a wound by preparing the inflammation response better there were injuries from fighting. Even though there is less physical fighting today, this stress reaction still exists.

Importantly, prenatal stress associates with an increased risk of having an ASD child (9). For example, researchers found being in a hurricane in Louisiana increased this risk, especially if the pregnancy is at 5-6 months or 9-10 months (10). Others also found an association between family stress and a higher risk of having an ASD child (11).

Psychological stress increases cortisol levels in the blood. The hormone cortisol may shift the body into a more Th2 state (12) (13). One of the functions of cortisol is to limit the inflammatory response. Researchers found ASD children had higher cortisol levels (14). This is unsurprising, given the higher inflammation often found in ASD people.

Also, there is increasing “evidence for stress and trauma as a risk factor for comorbidity and the worsening of core ASD symptoms (15).” Therefore, reducing psychological stress may significantly improve ASD. This makes sense because of the relationship between psychological stress and inflammation.

Unfortunately, rather than understanding complicated health conditions, many doctors give corticosteroids to simply suppress the symptoms. However, corticosteroids have many negative effects from long-term use (16). Also, to try and find a natural balance, the body responds to these unnatural drugs by reducing receptors for corticosteroids, which increases resistance to these drugs. For example, corticosteroid resistance can happen in people using corticosteroids for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (17).

Chronic stress may also cause glucocorticoid receptor resistance, limiting the ability to limit the inflammatory response (18). Therefore, naturally reducing psychological stress and making multiple lifestyle changes to decrease inflammation may be a better option than using synthetic steroids and taking many medications.

Interestingly, what is often incorrectly labeled as adrenal fatigue is actually glucocorticoid receptor resistance from long-term inflammation. Some adrenal supplements may help by boosting adrenal output and compensating for the resistance. However, the root cause of the inflammation needs to be discovered and fixed. Often, the main causes of inflammation are incorrect nutrition and excess stress.

As discussed in Chapter 7, certain types of data entering the mind may increase psychological stress. One of these data sources is negative people. Therefore, avoiding these types of people may significantly reduce stress. Another stressful data source is the news. No longer watching the news dramatically changes perception of the world and reduces stress.

Another major source of psychological stress for many people is psychological trauma, which can occur when an event overwhelms individual processing capacity. Such traumas tend to happen at a young age when people are less capable of processing the event and feeling powerful. Many people carry psychological trauma in their body for a long time. Trauma can create a story and affect how the world is perceived. This negatively influences life events and can make life more difficult than necessary.

Trauma is a source of psychological stress because the body does not feel safe and therefore may constantly be in an agitated state, which creates chronic psychological stress. The key to processing trauma is to work at the level of energy trapped inside the body. There is more information about this in Appendix C and a few books to reference about the idea of trauma being stored as energy inside the body. In general, healing psychological trauma may greatly help to reduce inflammation.

In addition to limiting sources of psychological stress it is important to add sources of relaxation, such as physical exercise, having a hobby, positive friends, loving a pet, yoga, and meditation. Making such things a priority may reduce inflammation and improve overall health.

Amazingly, psychedelics may also reduce psychological stress. For example, researchers at John Hopkins gave patients that had life-threatening cancer the psychedelic psilocybin and noted the following effects:

“High-dose psilocybin produced large decreases in clinician- and self-rated measures of depressed mood and anxiety, along with increases in quality of life, life meaning, and optimism, and decreases in death anxiety. At a 6-month follow-up, these changes were sustained, with about 80% of participants continuing to show clinically significant decreases in depressed mood and anxiety. Participants attributed improvement in attitudes about life/self, mood, relationships, and spirituality to the high-dose experience, with >80% endorsing moderately or greater increased well-being/life satisfaction. Community observer ratings showed corresponding changes. Mystical-type psilocybin experience on session day mediated the effect of psilocybin dose on therapeutic outcomes (19).”

Studies such as this are the beginning of an amazing major new field of medical research. Since psychedelics can greatly reduce psychological stress, then they may benefit many different health conditions. This is because psychological stress increases inflammation, which is the main cause of multiple health conditions. Hopefully, future studies examine the impact of psychedelics on health conditions through the interaction of psychological stress and long-term inflammation.

As a caution, psychedelic experience can be very intense. Therefore, balancing the mind and body through multiple months of better lifestyle habits is important before using psychedelics. Also, psychedelic purity can be a problem because psychedelics are illegal and not distributed to a regulated way. In general, natural psychedelics found in certain plants have a gentler experience than unnatural psychedelics made in a lab.

A major factor in using psychedelics is the environment. Maintaining a feeling of peace and security when taking psychedelics is important for reducing the risk of a bad experience. A mindset of reverence and sacredness is also critical for psychedelic use because these states of mind increase the likelihood of a positive journey.

Be cautious when using psychedelics, since taking too many can create an experience that is too powerful. Also, some people have mental health issues that psychedelics may destabilize, leading to negative health effects.

Of course, the use of psychedelics is also risky because of the extreme illegality of possessing psychedelics, which can lead to prison. Hopefully, medical care will advance to the point of allowing psychedelics in therapeutic settings to help with many health conditions by reducing stress and the associated inflammation.