Hello CheaB, & welcome.
I,too, feel my mental health declines wien I've been physically ill, or have an injury. Then, getting help for that, getting treated & moving into recovery, I feel my mental health improves.
Howvever, I don't know exactly what state my physical health was in when my mental health was at it's worst, because I simply didn't care about it. I had cared nothing for my physical health then, not eating right, not exercising, smoking & later, getting into alcohol, doing other risky thngs, I cared nothing about myself at all.
But it was my mental health declining like it had which 'woke me up'. Still, it was a long time before I cared enough about me to try to look after myself.
But I had to have cancer to get me to be really serious about looking after the body.
Now I am, I feel that is helping my mental health. I am feeling better about myself, less anxious, less of the old depression symptoms, less of the PTSD symptoms - but not perfect. Something going wrong can still have me feeling all the old symptoms all over again.
When our mental health is good, we can care for ourselves, deal with stress & change more easily, problem solve & make better decisions, & are more resillient when faced with difficulties.
When our bodies are as healthy as can be, we are better able to recover from illness & disease, our immune system works better, too. We also have less of the 'stress hormones' floating around in our brains & more of the 'feel good' hormones too.
So, I don't think having one over the other is how it really works. There is a constant interaction going on all the time.
All the best,
mmMekitty
