April – Food for Thought: Mental Health & Nutrition
There is no doubt that eating a balanced and nutritious diet can provide many physical benefits, but the emerging field of “Nutritional Psychiatry” hopes to address the impact of diet and nutrition on mental health. To complement psychiatric treatment or to help reduce risks for mental illness, diet may be employed to help affect your mood!
How Can Diet Affect Mood?
Your food intake can influence your energy levels and your energy levels can affect how you feel! If you undereat, you may feel exhausted, but if you overeat, you may feel sluggish, and this effect may intensify stress, depression, and anxiety. So, eating an adequate amount of food is necessary to provide your body with just the right amount of energy to power your day.
Inflammation in the body and brain is important to consider as well. Inflammatory foods are usually high in refined carbohydrates, saturated fats, added sugars, and added sodium and they can also contribute to mood disorders.
Your brain and your gut communicate with each other. The good bacteria in your gut not only aid in the digestion and production of some important nutrients, but they also produce a variety of neurochemicals that can influence emotional behavior. For example, the good bacteria in your gut produce nearly 95% of the body’s serotonin, a depression and anxiety-reducing neurochemical that can help stabilize mood. So, any diet-related disruptions with your gut microbiome may have direct effects on your mental health!
Using Diet and Nutrition to Your Advantage
Correcting dietary imbalance can positively influence your mood and mental health. In short, imbalanced diets composed of processed foods that lack vitamins, minerals, and fiber, but are high in sodium, added sugar, and saturated fat, can adversely impact your energy levels, increase inflammation, and disrupt microbial compositions in the gut. Here are few tips on how to use diet and nutrition to your advantage:
- Practice Intuitive Eating – Eating intuitively means eating when you feel hungry and eating until you’re full and satisfied. Listening to your body’s hunger and satiety signals can help ensure that you are providing yourself with enough food to keep yourself adequately energized. Check out the 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating.
- Eat More Whole Foods – Aim to include more whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetables into your daily meal rotations and reduce your intake of processed foods that may be hiding a lot of added salt, sugar, and saturated fat. This will not only help encourage the growth of good bacteria in your gut, but it will decrease overall inflammation in the body.
- Try Prebiotics and Probiotics – Include a combination of both into your diet! Prebiotics, like onions, leeks, asparagus, bananas, artichokes, and garlic, can help feed and maintain good gut bacteria, while probiotics, like yogurt, kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha, miso, and other fermented foods, can help supply good bacteria to the gut.
As diet factors alone will likely not transform mental health, it is still important to consult with a medical professional to ensure that you receive the support you need to be the best you can be!
More Resources for You
- SAMHSA Treatment Referral Helpline - If you would like assistance getting connected with mental health and treatment services in your area, call +1 (877)-726-4727 Monday through Friday from 8 am to 8 pm EST.
- American Mental Wellness Website – More information about mental wellness, prevention, and intervention!
Sources:
1) https://nutrition.org/food-and-mood-what-is-nutritional-psychiatry/
2) https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/nutritional-psychiatry-gut-brain-connection
3) https://www.sutterhealth.org/health/nutrition/eating-well-for-mental-health
4) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924977X19317237
5) https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/foods-that-fight-inflammation
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