Carol Dweck is probably the most famous psychologist to have worked on mindset as a concept. She divided mindset into two types: “fixed” and “growth”. If you have a fixed mindset, you believe your traits and abilities are set in stone and there’s nothing you can do to change them. A growth mindset is always open to the possibility of improvement.

This idea has broad implications. People with a fixed mindset may place artificial limits on themselves based on what they think they can do, without making realistic efforts to try to better themselves. If they attempt something new and find it difficult, they may give up immediately because they decide it’s impossible. A fixed mindset means less motivation to try.

In contrast, a growth mindset takes every challenge as an opportunity. The fact that something seems difficult isn’t enough to deter the attempt, and early failures are seen more as a chance to learn than a guarantee of hopelessness. Even if they’re not passionate about a task, people with growth mindsets can still find ways to engage with it and are more likely to find it rewarding in the long term.

So, how do you ensure you have a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset? Well, much of the time, people’s attitudes are based on their childhood experiences. The kind of praise (or not) you receive can affect your mindset growing up. People who are commended based on their results or for being smart, strong or similar may internalize the idea that they’re good or bad based on inherent traits. If they’re praised for making an effort, regardless of results, that encourages a growth mindset.

Of course, once you reach adulthood, you’re not as malleable to new ideas as you were when you were a child. Changing your mindset becomes harder, but it’s not impossible. It requires you to actively watch what you say and even how you think to try to avoid fixed attitudes, and to regularly challenge yourself to try to pursue growth. Hopefully, you can learn to love the journey.

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Instructions might start out in the brain, but they still need to get around the rest of the body so all of your cells know what’s going on. Humans have two types of internal messaging. Messages can go through the nervous system or the endocrine system. In other words, they can be transported via neurotransmitters or via hormones.

Neurotransmitters are the quicker type of messenger, sending their electrical signals almost instantaneously. Sensory nerves specifically deal with sensory input. When you see, hear or smell something, they’re what take that information from the eyes and ears and nose to the brain. Motor neurons are then how the brain tells muscles that they need to move, like dodging out of the way if someone throws something at you. Mixed nerves combine sensory and motor roles and can be found in the spine.

Hormones can be contrasted to nerves, although they may seem to have a similar role. They’re chemical rather than electrical impulses. They are part of the endocrine system rather than the nervous system. They act much more slowly than nerve impulses, but the effects they have tend to be longer-lasting.

Long-term impacts of hormones can include everything from the physical size and appearance of your body to how your brain works. We don’t have any personal control over when our glands do or don’t release hormones, or how much of each hormone is produced, although hormone replacement therapy can be used to treat deficiencies. It’s mostly an automatic process. Neurotransmitters control automatic reflexes as well as voluntary movement.

Messages travel from the brain to the glands and back to tell the body when certain hormones need to be increased or decreased. The hormone will then tell a specific organ how to behave. You generally don’t need much of a hormone to have a big impact. Hormones travel through the bloodstream rather than through nerves. You need both hormones and neurotransmitters for the body to work properly.

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2. This doesn’t just mean drinking water. Tea, coffee, milk, and fruit juice are all ways to top up your fluid levels. You even get some hydration from food, including fresh fruit, soup and other dishes high in liquid.

3. The big exception to drinking to increase fluid levels is alcohol. Alcohol has a dehydrating effect and should be avoided. Sea water is also bad for dehydration as the kidneys will have to work overtime to remove the excess salt.

4. You also need to balance your choice of hydration with other considerations. Fruit juice has more vitamins than water, but it is also high in sugar, which can damage your teeth. Using a straw can help negate some of this, but you should still limit your overall intake.

5. You also need to be aware of when you’re at higher risk of dehydration. That includes on hot days, when you’ve been working out and sweating, or when you’re ill. These are times when you need to take extra care to drink regularly.

6. There are also particular symptoms of dehydration to look out for. A key sign is when your urine is a particularly dark color. It may also smell. Other symptoms, other than the obvious thirstiness, include headaches, dizziness, tiredness and trouble focusing.

7. These are just the early warning signs. More severe symptoms may indicate you are approaching a medical emergency. When the lethargy and confusion are particularly bad, if your pulse is affected, or if you start having seizures, that’s the time to seek immediate medical attention.

8. Dizziness and confusion can cause falls, leading to head injuries and other serious damage. You may develop an infection. Dehydration can cause a variety of problems, and it’s not all about the obvious side effects.

9. It doesn’t take much to cause the milder symptoms of dehydration, like headaches. It’s best to keep a bottle of water nearby when you can.

10. Don’t overdo it. Too much water can lead to water intoxication, which can cause seizures and comas and can even be fatal.

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That’s why you need to do lots of research. First you have to decide whether you need a supplement, and then you need to determine which of the million options is best for your specific circumstances.

There are two main reasons to take a supplement. They can be corrective or preventative. In other words, they can be used to try to fix an existing problem, or they can be used to try to prevent a problem in the future.

Most people get the nutrients they need from their diet. If you’re eating a balance of meat, fish, dairy, fruit and vegetables, you should be receiving enough vitamins and minerals. In that case, you don’t need to take supplements. In fact, taking them to excess could cause you more health problems.

There are, however, people who don’t get adequate nutrition from their diet. This could be because they have a health condition that prevents their body from properly processing certain nutrients. They may live in a remote, deprived area where there’s very little access to fresh food. If you’re one of these people, supplements may be the best way to correct the problem and stay healthy.

You may also be facing a specific situation that requires an adjustment to your usual nutritional requirements. Perhaps you’re training for a grueling sporting event or you’re going on a trek in the wilderness where there’s a bigger physical toll on your body and it’s harder to access the right kinds of food in the right amounts. Perhaps you’re pregnant, with all the extra strain that puts on you as well as the extra needs of the baby. These are all cases where you may want to prevent future issues.

The best way to find out if you might need a supplement is to ask an expert, like your doctor. They’ll be able to tell you if you’re receiving enough nutrients already, if you’re particularly at risk of deficiencies, or if supplements might interfere with any other medication you may be taking. Everybody’s different, so any plan has to be tailored to your specific circumstances.

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2. Plants take in minerals from the soil. Humans eat the plants, or animals eat the plants and we eat the animals. A diet rich in all necessary minerals will contain fruits, vegetables, meat, fish and dairy products. Some minerals are found in water.

3. There are five major minerals that are particularly important and that you need in large quantities. These are calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium and magnesium. Deficiencies in any of these minerals can cause significant problems.

4. This doesn’t mean that other minerals aren’t important. They’re known as trace elements and they’re only present in small amounts, but each has a very specific role to play. These minerals include iron, sulfur, chlorine, copper, cobalt, zinc, manganese, iodine, molybdenum and selenium.

5. Minerals have roles to play in everything from heart health, bone growth and keeping the digestive system working to activating other enzymes in the body and boosting your metabolism. You can’t miss any of them.

6. Of course, you also shouldn’t overdo it. Excess amounts of certain minerals can also cause health problems. You need to check your recommended range with your doctor (it may vary depending on factors like age or other medical conditions) and stick to that.

7. You may see other minerals like silicon and boron described as “essential”. They may have an important role to play in the body, but that doesn’t make them “essential” in the nutritional sense. Essential nutrients are those that the body can function without but that it also can’t produce, so we need external sources.

8. Minerals are essential nutrients. The other essential nutrients are vitamins, amino acids and fatty acids. All are required by the body and need to be absorbed from elsewhere. As with all nutrients, minerals are just one part of a balanced diet.

9. Oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen are the most prevalent elements in the body, but as far as humans are concerned, they’re not nutrient minerals. We don’t need to get them exclusively from food.

10. You can measure the mineral quantity in your bloodstream through a simple blood test.

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Vitamin D affects how our body absorbs minerals like calcium, phosphate and magnesium. You probably know we need calcium for healthy teeth and bones. This means vitamin D has a big impact on bone strength. A lack of vitamin D can lead to children developing rickets or adults developing osteomalacia.

Rickets can stop children’s bones from growing properly. They become soft and painful and may become deformed. Osteomalacia is a similar condition in adults. It used to be common, but governments started to fortify dietary staples like cereal and butter with vitamin D to make up for the fact that some people just weren’t getting enough from other sources.

That’s because the main way humans take in vitamin D is by absorbing it directly from sunlight on bare skin. If you spend a lot of time indoors or you live in a place with lots of cloudy weather, you may not get enough exposure. People with darker skin find it harder to absorb enough sunlight, while certain medications or being born premature can also increase the risk of vitamin D deficiency.

There are some foods that naturally have a lot of vitamin D – most notably oily fish like mackerel and sardines, as well as eggs and some red meat. Still, sunlight is the best source, and you can’t always be in the sun.

It’s not just because of weather or an office job that we don’t expose ourselves to enough sunlight. Spending too much time in direct sun causes its own problems. Sunburn can be painful in its own right, but it’s also one of the biggest risk factors for developing skin cancer. That means there’s a delicate balancing act to perform. You definitely can’t forego sunscreen.

Some people may be recommended vitamin D supplements to make up for the lack of vitamin D in their daily lives. This could include particularly high-risk individuals like the very young, people with disabilities that limit their access to the outdoors, or people who need to cover their skin, but anyone with a shortage of vitamin D may benefit.

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What’s known as “the recovery model” has become a dominant force in mental health care, but what does it mean? Not everyone has the same definition. For some people, it means their symptoms are gone, or at least greatly reduced. For others, it means being able to live their life how they want to achieve personal satisfaction.

Generally, the recovery model concentrates on a broader, more holistic approach to mental health care. Rather than doctors dictating to patients, it allows patients to direct their own treatment based on their wants and needs. The attitude is that recovery is possible, but it may look different for everyone.

You may not be able to cure something like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, but the recovery model states that you can still have a good quality of life. You can still be part of society, and you don’t have to be shut away in an institution. In addition to treating the illness, there’s a focus on things like stable housing; strong and supportive relationships with family, friends and the community; and discovering a meaningful purpose in life.

The recovery model is often held up in contrast to “the medical model”, which focuses on the idea of mental health conditions being illnesses with definitive physiological causes that you can then treat with medication. These two approaches don’t have to be in conflict. Taking aspects from both can provide more comprehensive and effective support for those with mental illness.

Trying to improve the quality of care for people with mental illnesses is an ongoing challenge. Psychologists, psychiatrists, social services, governments, and charities are all constantly working on new ways to help achieve recovery. There’s probably never going to be one absolute solution that works for all people, but that doesn’t mean we can’t continue to make things better.

What is certain is that recovery doesn’t have to be an elusive dream. With the right approach and support and everyone involved working together, mental illness doesn’t have to stop you from living your life.

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2. One potential problem is when you don’t produce enough of a certain hormone. This is known as adrenal insufficiency. You may need to take additional hormones to counteract it.

3. Symptoms of adrenal insufficiency to look out for include weakness, dizziness, loss of appetite, changes in skin color, muscle aches, nausea, irregular periods, low blood sugar and low blood pressure. If untreated, the pain and weakness can become worse and you may experience shock or kidney failure. It can be fatal.

4. Diagnosis is impossible without a doctor. Many of these symptoms can be associated with other conditions. Generally, you will need a blood or urine test to measure your hormone levels. An ACTH stimulation test specifically measures the stress response of the adrenal gland. Scans like CTs and MRIs can be used to check for physical abnormalities causing the glands to malfunction.

5. There are multiple conditions that can cause adrenal insufficiency, including Addison’s disease and congenital adrenal hyperplasia. You may need to take medication for life to replace the missing hormones.

6. Problems also occur when your adrenal hormones are too high. Nodules (benign or malignant) can cause the adrenal glands to become overactive and may require surgery to remove.

7. Conditions associated with excess hormone production include Cushing syndrome for excess cortisol, hyperaldosteronism or Conn syndrome for excess aldosterone, and pheochromocytoma for excess adrenaline. Each has different symptoms and treatment.

8. Cushing syndrome causes weight gain but thin arms and legs. You may have fat lumps at the back of the neck. Other symptoms include weakness, fatigue, stretch marks, excess hair growth and easy bruising that is slow to heal. It can be caused by medication for inflammatory or autoimmune conditions, so that medication may need adjusting.

9. Hyperaldosteronism causes low potassium levels, which can cause weakness, muscle aches and spasms. It can also cause high blood pressure. Treatment may depend on the cause, but you could need a high-potassium diet.

10. Pheochromocytoma is a type of tumor that causes sweating, high blood pressure and an increased heartrate. Depending on the tumor, it may require surgery, radiation or chemotherapy.

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2. To find out if your blood pressure is low, you need to have it properly measured. That’s because it doesn’t always show symptoms, and when it does, those symptoms could be caused by a range of conditions. You can’t tell without checking. Visit a doctor or nurse, or buy a machine to use at home.

3. When low blood pressure does show symptoms, they can include dizziness, lightheadedness, blurred vision, nausea, confusion, a general feeling of weakness, and in the worst cases, fainting. If you experience any of these regularly, you may need to talk to your doctor.

4. Orthostatic or postural hypotension is when these symptoms are specifically caused by you sitting or standing up too abruptly. It’s more common when in the elderly, but it can occur through dehydration.

5. You rarely control low blood pressure with medication, unless the hypotension is caused by medication that needs adjusting. Some people wear support stockings to improve their circulation.

6. Lifestyle changes to control low blood pressure include drinking lots of water, eating smaller meals more frequently, being extra careful when standing, and possibly even propping up the head of your bed. More salt in your diet can help, but it must be monitored because it can cause other problems.

7. There are also things to avoid, such as alcohol and caffeine, especially when it’s late in the evening. Try not to stay in one position for too long or move too quickly.

8. Causes of low blood pressure can vary. It can change depending on age, pregnancy or even time of day. Physically fit people who exercise regularly often have lower blood pressure, and that’s natural and healthy.

9. It can also come about as a side effect of something else, such as other medications or diabetes. Identifying the cause can help determine the best type of management.

10. Often, it doesn’t actually need management. Unless there are symptoms that are interfering with your life, most of the time, hypotension isn’t something you need to worry about.

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First you need a starting point. We know people have been using willow bark for pain relief since at least the Ancient Greeks. It then took a lot of investigation by scientists to find what part of the bark was therapeutic. It turns out it was salicylic acid. Then it took even longer to figure out how to extract the acid and make it more effective by turning it into aspirin.

Today we have access to laboratories and technology that can make things easier than they were for our ancestors. For example, we can make virtual models of how a drug might work before we ever have to test it on a living being. New drugs will also be applied to human cells that are grown in the lab. If the cells are damaged, the drug needs a rethink.

The next stage is often the controversial area of animal testing. It’s generally considered more ethical than testing on humans and may identify potential areas of concern. Of course, just because something is safe for a rat or a dog or a chimp, it doesn’t mean you can guarantee its safety for humans. Plus, humans are capable of volunteering for trials with informed consent, which animals can’t give.

Eventually, there will have to be human clinical trials, and you need to take all kinds of safety precautions. You’ll test on healthy people before you try it on people who are already sick, as people who are already sick will be more vulnerable to side effects. Some people will be given what are known as placebos, or inert drugs. This is done to make sure that any effects are caused by the drug and not the participant thinking that they’re taking a drug.

There can still be lots of other problems with methodology. Drugs tested almost entirely on young and healthy men aren’t always good for women or older people. Pregnant women can be particularly vulnerable. There’s even more to think about before any drug can enter general use.

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Lifestyle changes are always the first step to managing cholesterol, but it can be hard. Cholesterol itself isn’t likely to cause you any major symptoms until it contributes to a major event, like a heart attack or stroke. If you can’t feel something’s wrong, it can be hard to motivate yourself to change your life and the things you enjoy.

The key thing to remember is that you do want to be healthy. This isn’t nothing. High cholesterol levels can cause serious health problems in the long term. If you want to stick around for a while to enjoy your time with friends and family and to make the most of your life, this is something that deserves your attention.

Also, a lifestyle designed to lower cholesterol doesn’t have to be all about deprivation. In fact, it’s better if it isn’t. Yes, some types of cholesterol are bad for you (LDL), but don’t forget there’s good cholesterol (HDL), too. The best diet is the one that increases your HDL while lowering your LDL.

So, you may need to cut back a bit on the cheese and the butter, but you’re not necessarily going to have to give them up completely. As with many aspects of diet, sometimes the overall amount isn’t as important as the balance. You still need all the nutrients essential to your survival, which means eating a wide range of foods.

Start small. If you’re lucky, you’ll only need tiny lifestyle changes to bring your cholesterol under control. If that doesn’t work, maybe you’ll need to get stricter, but it’s still not time to despair. And if the lifestyle changes aren’t enough on their own and you end up needing medication, well, you’re not the only one. It’s not a sign of failure. Everyone’s different when it comes to what works or doesn’t work.

Motivation to tackle your cholesterol isn’t that different from motivating yourself for other tasks. Set yourself achievable goals, go one step at a time, make sure there are people supporting you, and reward yourself for doing well. You can do it!

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If that’s the case, all you need to do is establish a healthy mindset and everything else will follow. Better grades. Better job. Better relationships. If only it was that easy! Instead, achieving a positive mindset tends to require a lot of work – work that’s particularly difficult when your mental health is already poor.

Mindset has everything to do with the way you think. It’s about attitudes, ideas and opinions as well as how you interact with other people and the rest of the world. Much of it can be established in early life based on our childhood experiences and relationships, which can make it very difficult to dig your way out of those old ways of thinking to establish something new.

It can be done, however. At its best, you can develop what’s known as a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset. A growth mindset takes the attitude that there’s always room to grow and improve. Whatever challenges you face in life, you can learn new ways to deal with them. It’s like training in the gym to build muscles, but the muscle in question is your brain.

A growth mindset may help you develop the skills you need to deal with problems, both external ones and internal ones. You can let go of negative emotions and influences like the fear of failure, which can be paralyzing and exacerbate other low feelings. Other people become an opportunity to build new relationships and receive useful feedback, reducing isolation.

None of these things are easy. It involves a lot of introspection and self-awareness. You need to watch every thought; if it’s not helpful, redirect it. Sometimes you might need some kind of therapist to guide your process. If you have a diagnosable illness, you may also need medication to manage the symptoms before you can even start to work on long-term solutions like a broader mindset change.

You can’t always control how you feel, but you can control how you react. No one can feel good all the time, but working on your mindset allows you to deal with negative emotions when they happen.

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Well, sometimes it turns out there is a scientific explanation – it’s just one that you can’t easily see. If your hormones are out of balance, either too high or too low, that can do strange things to your mood. That includes increasing the likelihood that you will experience anxiety. There may not be an outside cause; it may be internal.

Hormones are chemical messengers that tell your body how to react. They serve a variety of roles, and different hormones can impact anxiety in different ways. That includes thyroid hormones, sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone, and stress hormones like adrenaline/epinephrine and cortisol.

The thyroid is a gland in the neck that releases three different types of hormones: triiodothyronine, thyroxine and calcitonin. When it becomes overactive and starts producing too much of these hormones, it’s called hyperthyroidism. Symptoms include heart palpitations, sleep disruption, sweatiness and shaking hands. All of these things are associated with anxiety.

Anyone who has been through puberty knows that sex hormones are tricky things. When they start to fluctuate, as they do naturally during adolescence or as part of the menstrual cycle, it has a big influence on your mood. That’s why anxiety can seem to increase or decrease suddenly. Testosterone levels also have an impact on cortisol levels, and vice versa, so sex hormones and stress hormones can be related.

Stress hormones are the ones that are released when you perceive a threat. They allow you to enter the “fight or flight” response when things like your heart and breathing change to get ready for potential conflict. When these hormones are released and there isn’t a threat, or if you remain in that heightened state for an extended period of time, you could find yourself trying to manage ongoing anxiety symptoms.

Luckily, hormones can also regulate and lower anxiety. That doesn’t just mean changing your levels of estrogen and testosterone, although that can help. Hormones like vasopressin and oxytocin can help relieve anxiety. You can also influence your hormone levels through diet, exercise and other lifestyle changes. Therapy may also assist in learning how to manage symptoms.

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There’s a substantive body of evidence to suggest that our fluid intake has a profound effect on our mood and cognition. People who drink more water are less likely to experience depression and anxiety (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6147771/). People who don’t drink enough water may be fatigued, unable to think clearly, and more at risk of low moods.

This seems to be true even if the dehydration is mild. If you wait until you’re thirsty to have a drink of water, you’re already starting to feel the effects of dehydration. You should be thinking ahead, pouring yourself a glass regularly regardless of your thirst level, just so you can stay at your best.

It’s not just about how it directly affects your mood. If you’re tired and finding it difficult to concentrate, which are other symptoms of dehydration, it’s going to be harder to focus on the tasks you need to complete. That’s likely to aggravate any depressive symptoms, which in turn can make it even harder to do the things you need to do.

Once your motivation slips, it becomes harder and harder to get it back. It’s a self-fulfilling cycle, where lower mood leads to less achievement, which leads to even lower mood. Other vital activities, such as exercise or preparing healthy and balanced meals, can also fall by the wayside because of the combination of dehydration and depression. That will make your health even worse.

Attention to fluid intake becomes even more important with high-risk groups, like the elderly or the very young. They’re more susceptible to dehydration and less likely to remember to drink regularly. Anyone can underestimate their water needs, however, so everyone needs to pay attention to how much they drink.

Getting enough water isn’t just about your physical health. It has a vital impact on your mental wellbeing, including cognition and mood. It’s not only on hot days or after exercise that you need to think about this; every day, you need to be stopping to make sure you’re drinking enough to stay sharp.

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When you have a condition like diabetes, however, you need to be extra careful about what you put in your body in case it interferes with your blood sugar. You definitely need to supplement your insulin if your pancreas isn’t producing it or is not working properly. But just as diabetics have to watch what they eat, they also have to be cautious about supplements.

However, there may be supplements that can reduce the risks of developing diabetes or mitigating its effects. You can’t cure diabetes, so be skeptical of any miraculous-sounding claims, but there’s been lots of research into whether certain herbs, spices and other plant-based additions can help diabetes.

The evidence is mixed (https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/diabetes-and-dietary-supplements). Popular herbal supplements for diabetes include cinnamon, ginger, aloe vera, bitter melon, ginseng and fenugreek. There are some studies that suggest they have a slight benefit on blood sugar levels and others that say they have no effect at all. You do need to be careful if you’re taking other medications or have other medical conditions in case they interact.

One mineral that definitely has a relationship with blood sugar is chromium. A chromium deficiency in your diet can stop your body from properly controlling its glucose levels. People with a chromium deficiency can take chromium supplements. There is some evidence that these supplements may also help diabetics, although the research is limited.

Another potential substance that is being researched with some positive signs is alpha-lipoic acid, which may lower the risk of diabetic neuropathy. Magnesium may make you less likely to develop diabetes in the first place. Other vitamins and probiotics are also being researched. The evidence pool is only growing.

The key things to remember when it comes to supplements, whether you’re diabetic or not, is that they’re no substitute for a healthy diet, and they should only ever be taken in moderation. Always talk to your doctor about your specific situation before embarking on any course of supplements.

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