May is Colorado’s mental health month and there is no better way to bring value to such an important issue than by supporting your local farmers market. As the produce season rolls into Nederland, there is a smell and vibe in the air that cannot be denied with this mountain community. The Nederland Farmers Market is celebrating seven years of many awesome vendors, live music, and a mission committed to keeping fresh nutrient-rich food accessible.

It’s no wonder that a healthy community interaction has been top priority for the mountain locals. Recent data reveals at Colorado. gov that over 1.5 million people in Colorado are knowingly dealing with mental health issues. This statistic does not even scratch the surface when it comes to hard-working folks living at high elevation lacking proper nutrition and positive community support.

With such a short growing season in the mountains, it almost seems impossible to eat food with the required micronutrients needed. It is not new that these special micro entities are extremely important in all stages of life and science suggests how easily they get depleted. This affects how someone is able to think and feel.

Tackling the daily chores involved with mountain living and high altitude can be a burden both physically and mentally. The average brain uses 20% of its energy needs, but when work or play push folks past the tipping point, the body tends to triage vital nutrients for physical processing more importantly than for mental functioning. This can lead someone quickly into the red zone when it comes to mood, memory, and mental clarity. Once in the red zone, neurotransmitters in the brain are not able to fire properly, and this causes something similar to a hard drive overload when it comes to mental applications. This is commonly known as brain fog.

On a global level, continued trends suggest how the lack of nutrients in certain regions of the world as well as poor access with healthy foods can be one of the main causation factors with most mental health disorders and diseases. There have been high rates of depression, suicide and chronic diseases in this country. It’s not new to see the rates continue to increase every day. Along with the rise of diseases in the world being linked to the poorer neighborhoods with no access to healthy nutrient dense food, there is a lot of work to do in order to lower this uphill battle and the answer starts with local availability.

Altering these trends with the bottom-up approaches commonly seen in farmers markets may be able to continue to offer an upward movement towards solving this mental health epidemic. So, as you go down that checklist of self-care needs, why not put aside some time for that bi-weekly dose of locally supported, community driven medicine for both your heart and head.

The Nederland Farmer’s Market is locatedat80E2ndStreet,Nederland.Find out more, including dates of upcoming markets, on their website at https://www.nederlandfarmersmarket.org/ or their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/NederlandFarmersMarket.