Mind-Body Connection: How Physical Health Affects Addiction Recovery
Many people overlook the connection between your physical well-being and addiction. From prioritizing diet and exercise to getting quality sleep each night, consistently practicing healthy habits doesn’t just improve your overall physical health, but these habits can also improve your success in maintaining your recovery journey long-term. Keep reading to learn more about the mind-body connection, and how physical health affects addiction recovery (for better or for worse).
At Arista Recovery, we are a leading addiction recovery center in the Midwest that’s helped many patients safely and effectively achieve long-term sobriety. We offer a comprehensive range of treatment programs so you can receive tailored care to best support your recovery journey. Ready to start your road to recovery? Contact us today!
What is the Mind-Body Connection?
Before discussing how physical health affects addiction recovery, it’s important to discuss the mind-body connection. The mind-body connection is the link between your physical health and your behavior and thoughts. For example, think about a time when you were anxious about an upcoming event– your heart may have started racing just thinking about the event. While the stress of the event may have initially started your heart racing, your racing heart can further add stress and make your anxiety even worse.
Therefore, it’s important to understand that your physical health can be impacted, positively or negatively, by your thoughts, feelings, and behavior (and vice versa!). This explains why your physical well-being and addiction can be so closely intertwined.
5 Ways Your Physical Health Impacts Your Recovery
Maintaining your physical health can go a long way in supporting your addiction recovery journey. Healthy habits like drinking plenty of water, exercising, and getting quality sleep are ways you can work on your physical wellness. Keep reading to learn how working on your physical health affects addiction and your recovery journey.
- Improved Immune System
When you focus on healthy habits like getting quality sleep, eating a well-balanced diet, and consistently exercising, each of these can help improve your overall immune system. This is important because a strong immune system can help support and speed up your healing recovery process.
- Heightened Energy Levels
Next, practicing healthy routines to support your physical health and well-being can go a long way in boosting your energy levels. Having high energy levels can be great to support your addiction recovery journey as you learn healthy coping strategies to maintain your sobriety.
- Improved Mood
Your mood can impact your addiction recovery journey, for better or for worse. Getting quality sleep, eating right, and practicing other healthy habits can go a long way in improving your mood. And, of course, your mood not only can help support you along your recovery journey, but it can also help improve your overall happiness and quality of life.
- Quickens Your Recovery
Practicing healthy habits and working on your physical health can also speed up your addiction recovery journey. Therefore, the reverse is if you do not maintain your physical health and lack adequate self-care, this can slow down your addiction recovery progress.
- Reduces Your Risk of Relapse
About 10% of US adults have struggled with drug addiction at some point in their lives. And, unfortunately, even if you overcome addiction and achieve sobriety, this doesn’t guarantee you’ll maintain your sobriety long-term. However, maintaining your physical health and practicing healthy habits can help reduce your feelings and urges to fall back into old unhealthy habits to abuse drugs or alcohol.
Plus, healthy habits like exercising can serve as healthy coping strategies you can rely on when you are experiencing old cravings to abuse drugs or alcohol.
Ready to Start Your Road to Recovery
Your physical health affects addiction and can play a significant role in helping (or hurting) your addiction recovery journey. From getting quality sleep each night to eating right, exercising, and more, all these factors can impact your energy levels, mood, and even your ability to reduce your risk of relapse.
Arista Recovery is here to help you every step of the way to break free of addiction once and for all. We offer a wide range of treatment programs so you can receive the exact care you need to take back control of your life. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you break free of addiction for good.
