When it comes to your health, there is one factor that is more important than almost any other ...

If it is missing from your life, it causes or worsens 95 percent of all illness. It has been associated with dramatic reductions in disease and increased longevity.

And it is more important than cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, or any other risk factor in determining whether you will live a long and healthy life. But it doesn’t come in a pill, and it can’t be found in a hospital or in your doctor’s office.

What is this critical factor that determines so much about how healthy or how sick you are?

Your attitude, your social networks, your community, and your spiritual beliefs.

Put another way, the health of your mind and spirit and your sense of connection to your community has an immense impact on the health of your body. In fact, aside from eating breakfast, biggest predictor of longevity is psychological resiliency -- being able to roll with the punches that life throws at us.

We’ve known about this in medicine for a long time. I was recently browsing through my library and found an old book that I read in college called Mind as Healer, Mind as Slayer, written by a friend and leader in the field of mind/body medicine, Kenneth Pelletier. He is a clinical professor of medicine at the medical schools of the University of California, San Francisco and the University of Arizona.

His book was published in 1977. I wish I could say that a lot has changed since that book was published. Sure, we have filled in the gaps and learned more about the mechanisms through which the body affects the mind and the mind affects the body, but the basic truths remain the same.

There is a dramatic and powerful connection between your mind and body, and between your body and your mind. In fact, it really should not be called a connection because it is just ONE bidirectional system.

Unfortunately, few doctors accept or understand this fundamental reality about biology. So, in most doctors’ offices, you aren’t going to learn about the connection between your body and brain or how to use that connection to help you heal.

However, in this blog I am going to give you the tools to do that. I am going to explain how the body and mind are intimately connected and give you 10 tips you can use to calm your mind and heal your body.

Calming your mind is the last of the 7 keys to UltraWellness; today you are going to learn how you can relax your way to vibrant health and optimal weight.

Are your hormones out of balance?

Does your life feel like a song played badly out of tune?

If so, the problem may have to do with imbalances in your hormones, which are wreaking havoc on your body and mind.

There is one hormone in particular I am going to focus on today, and it could be at the root of your problems.

I will share with you 12 tips you can start using immediately to begin rebalancing your hormones and bring your life back into tune.

But first, ask yourself these questions:

• Do your mood and energy swing up and down, making your life crazy?

• Do you crave sugar or salt?

• Are you overweight and putting on more and more belly fat?

• If you are a woman, do you have premenstrual syndrome, painful or heavy periods, and a low sex drive?

• Are you depressed? Do you sleep poorly?

• Do you feel tired but wired?

• Do you need coffee to wake up in the morning and a few glasses of wine to calm down at night?

If you answered "yes," your hormones may be out of balance, and you are not alone ...

In fact, this is how most Americans feel because we are living out of harmony with our natural biological rhythms. This is because small molecules in our bodies that we depend on to keep us in balance are running haywire.

These messenger molecules are involved in almost every function of the body, and they are critical to our well-being.

They are our hormones -- messenger molecules of our endocrine system -- and neurotransmitters -- messenger molecules of our brain and nervous system.

Understand how and why these systems get out of balance and you will go a long way toward understanding why Americans are so tired, depressed, and overweight!

Are you one of the 100 million, or one-in-three, Americans struggling through life with a “broken brain?”

It doesn’t have to be that way. Today, I’m going to share with you the key to good mental and emotional health -- to an “UltraMind” … one that’s calm, confident, and happy.

But first, ask yourself these questions:

• Do you fear losing your job because you’re tired, unfocused, and inattentive, and your memory is failing, so you can’t properly perform your tasks at work?

• Do you feel depressed, hopeless, disconnected, and disengaged from your life?

• Do you see your relationships breaking down because you are mentally and emotionally absent or numb?

• Do you forget to meet friends or go to appointments, and then can’t figure out how in the world you forgot?

If you answered “yes” to any of the questions above, you are not alone.

Right now in America, there is a rising tide of “broken brains.” And conventional medicine cannot cure it.

How many of you are stuck?

Do you feel stuck in depression, sadness, or anxiety? Or are you just a little confused, overburdened, or unhappy?

Maybe you are one of the 25 percent of Americans who experience a major depression in their lifetime.

Or maybe you are taking one of the 189 million prescriptions written for depression, at a cost of $12 billion a year, and wondering if there is another way.

Perhaps, like most people who take antidepressants, you find that they don’t work, lose their effectiveness over time, or give you only slight relief from symptoms.

Or maybe you quit your antidepressant regimen after a few months, like 60 percent of people who take them do, because of side effects such as weight gain, loss of sex drive, or worse.

Are looking for a way to reconnect to your life’s meaning and purpose and emerge from a life that feels half lived? Are you looking for a way to overcome the depression that’s been haunting you?

If you are, I guarantee you are not suffering from a Prozac deficiency. In fact, I want to challenge you to consider that depression, as we understand it, does not really exist.

“Depression is not a disease…” That is how the remarkable new book, by James Gordon, MD, begins. It is called “Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression.”

James Gordon, MD, was recently given an award by the Bravewell Collaborative for being one of the most pioneering medical thinkers of our time.

Ideas that can change a culture come only a few times in a generation. “Unstuck” is such an idea. It provides an answer to the leading cause of disability -- depression -- that until now has had very poor solutions.

Here’s some depressing recent medical news: Antidepressants don’t work.

What’s even more depressing?

The pharmaceutical industry and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have deliberately deceived us into believing that they DO work.

As a physician, this is frightening to me. Depression is among the most common problems seen in primary-care medicine and soon will be the second leading cause of disability in this country.

The study I’m talking about was published in a recent issue of “The New England Journal of Medicine.”

It found that drug companies selectively publish studies on antidepressants. They have published nearly all the studies that show benefit -- but almost none of the studies that show these drugs are ineffective. (1)

That warps our view of antidepressants, leading us to think that they do work. And it has fueled the tremendous growth in the use of psychiatric medications, which are now the second leading class of drugs sold, after cholesterol-lowering drugs.

And it’s even worse than it sounds, because the positive studies hardly showed benefit in the first place.

For example, 40 percent of people taking a placebo (sugar pill) got better, while only 60 percent taking the actual drug had improvement in their symptoms. Looking at it another way, 80 percent of people get better with just a placebo.

That leaves us with a big problem -- millions of depressed people with no effective treatments.

Let’s take a closer look at depression.