Have you ever struggled with depression, anxiety, stress, exhaustion, or illness?

If you happen to be a living, breathing human being, there’s a very good chance that you answered “yeah, all of the above”. After all, as the Buddhists are quick to point out, life is suffering. We are all subject to turbulence, limitation, and impermanence in all spheres of life, including emotional, mental, spiritual, and mortal. And while it’s good to learn to accept the reality of our condition—yes, we all suffer—there are some astonishingly simple ways to help manage and reduce the pain of samsara, while dramatically increasing the overall joy and fulfillment we can experience in our lives.

Dr. Roger Walsh’s groundbreaking article “Lifestyle and Mental Health” will soon be published by the prestigious and highly-influential academic journal American Psychologist. In the article, Roger explores the power of “therapeutic lifestyle changes” (or TLC’s) to significantly improve our overall mental health and happiness, offering a simple but comprehensive overview that could potentially transform the entire field of medicine and healthcare.

To Roger and Ken’s surprise, this lifestyle-based approach has been largely unacknowledged and underplayed by most health professionals—which is even more astonishing when we look at the research and see how effective this approach proves to be across many key health indicators, including depression, prevention of illness, quality of life, and extended lifespan.

Listen as Roger and Ken discuss the eight most important things you can do to transform your daily lifestyle, all of which will make a tremendous and immediate difference in your life, your relationships, and your ongoing sense of well-being.

“The central thesis is very simple: Health professionals have significantly underestimated the importance of lifestyle for mental health. More specifically, mental health professionals have underestimated the importance of unhealthy lifestyle factors in contributing to multiple psychopathologies, as well as the importance of healthy lifestyles for treating multiple psychopathologies, for fostering psychological and social well-being, and for preserving and optimizing cognitive capacities and neural functions.

Greater awareness of lifestyle factors offers major advantages, yet few health professionals are likely to master the multiple burgeoning literatures. This article therefore reviews research on the effects and effectiveness of eight major therapeutic lifestyle changes (TLCs); the principles, advantages, and challenges involved in implementing them; the factors hindering their use; and the many implications of contemporary lifestyles for both individuals and society.

TLCs can be potent. They can ameliorate prostate cancer, reverse coronary arteriosclerosis, and be as effective as psychotherapy or medication for treating some depressive disorders. Consequently, there is growing awareness that contemporary medicine needs to focus on lifestyle changes for primary prevention, for secondary intervention, and to empower patients’ self-management of their own health.”

-Dr. Roger Walsh