The new star principles that we follow in the outpatient program that we can go very deep and all of them but they're based on an acronym called new star in the w, s, t, n e w s t, a r. t. And let me just briefly go through those from a mental health perspective, nutrition. Does nutrition have anything to do with your mental health? Certainly it does. What you eat can affect your brain in many different ways. We'll just talk about one. Let's say you eat high foods that are high in fat and sugar.

What's going to happen is that the sugar is going to go up in your bloodstream, the fat is going to block the ability of the the sugar to get out and so you're gonna have an increased blood sugar. If your blood sugar goes up too high, you're not able to think that clearly. If it goes too low. You're not able To think that clearly so you can understand that nutrition has something to do with how your mind is functioning. Now, of course, exercise exercise is increases blood flow everywhere in the body and to the frontal lobe. But what they've discovered is that within 15 minutes of exercise, you also have an increased in self control.

And this is a very positive thing for people that are dealing with dark thoughts or depressive or anxious thought, you want to be able to control those thoughts using your frontal lobe. So exercise is key with increasing blood flow, and can also increase your self control. What about water, as I mentioned, or as I need to mention, if you drink water, just like an eight or 16 ounce bottle of water, it will increase your reaction time by upwards to 15%. So you can actually react sooner and more effectively that stresses that come What about Sunday? Light sunlight also impacts mental health. It actually helps to change foods that you've that you've eaten into chemicals and things that can help your brain for instance, if you eat foods that are high end trip to fan, and trip to fan, like perhaps the highest meat source would be Turkey, and the highest plant source would be tofu is changed into hydroxy tryptophan in the presence of sunlight then changed into Sarah Rose tonin.

Serotonin is kind of a chemical that we even sometimes prescribe not me I'm not a doctor, I'm a nurse and a counselor but we describe we prescribe called serotonin reuptake inhibitors, but you can actually make that serotonin or your body can if you have that tryptophan rich foods that are in the presence of sunlight and green leafy vegetables or full light that can be changed into serotonin which makes you feel happy, and then that serotonin is changed if it's in complete darkness, and if there's no insulin into melatonin Have you ever heard of melatonin Melatonin is that something that will rebuild your brain and rejuvenate your brain take out the trash and make you have asleep more effectively. So serotonin can be made into melatonin if there's no insulin, which means you don't want to eat too late at night, maybe four to five hours before you go to bed the last meal, then there's no serotonin there and you are in complete darkness.

If you're in complete darkness, then the serotonin is made into melatonin. So you can see that sunlight is also important and then T the T stands for temperance, that just means the total absence of that which is bad for you, and the moderate use of that which is good. So something that's you know, is definitely bad for you. You don't use it ever. Like Like for instance maybe cigarette smoking the number one preventable cause of death. In America, and you don't want to do that at all.

And then the moderate use of that which is good, even water if you drink too much can overwhelm your system. So you have to understand what the proper level of that substances are, whatever you're doing is needed. Of course, air, air is essential. So you can have all the increased blood flow you want, but if you don't have any air, then you're not going to get oxygenation to your frontal lobe. So fresh air, also being out in the fresh air gives you negative ions, which is positive for your brain. So that can happen where you're out in a forest we have greens, or pine trees or can happen when you're by the ocean where there's a surf or the sea there, it increases the negative ions which are positive for you, and then are in the New START acronym rest.

You need a rest every day and so we talked about circadian rhythms where it's best for you to go to bed before Midnight the more hours before midnight the more melatonin which we talked about early is produced, and your brain is rejuvenated, you actually need less sleep if you go to bed earlier than if you go to bed after midnight, so rest for every day. And then of course, rest in terms of our nutrition. That's why we call the morning meal break fast, so it's a rest. And then of course, there's a weekly rest that can also be helpful, so called circus septum rhythms one day and seven will be taken off our body is healthier, and there's many studies that we'll talk about later in our series. And then finally, trust in Divine power, or what we were talking about today, or we'll talk about one of our programs and that being trust and hope or optimism