Food can have an impact on our health, body, and mind.
The key to health lies in balanced and diverse diets. A healthy diet is a diet that ensures optimal energy intake combined with an optimal balance of protein, carbs, fats, vitamins, minerals, and hydration, for the normal physiological functioning of an organism.
Choosing the right foods and ingredients contributes to physiological and psychological balance, and contributes to resistance to stress, inflammation, and illnesses.
The main role of diet therapy:
to achieve and maintain adequate nutritional status without any deficiencies in nutrition
to correct every pathological nutritional state
to achieve and maintain a positive psychological effect
General prerequisites for adequate diet therapy:
securing proper nutrition
securing adequate digestion, resorption of nutritional ingredients, and proper metabolism
securing the adequate psychological effect of therapy
Depression
“Let Food Be Thy Medicine and Medicine Be Thy Food.”
People have become obsessed with drugs, pills, and supplements as the only cure for their illnesses. Melancholia is a term for depression, the best description of it is loss of interest in all the important aspects of life.
It can happen to all of us. Some bounce back and others go through this state for a longer period. If it lasts longer than a few weeks it is termed as a clinical depression, and it can last for years.
Depression is common in every country. Around half of the cases are associated with anxiety, and some cases can have the same symptoms as anxiety, leading to wrong treatment.
A study was conducted in which people used a drug called Isoniazid that improved mood and lifted the depression, but it kept killing microbes in their gut. The drug increased chemicals in charge of happiness, serotonin, and dopamine. For some, drugs don’t work, and may suffer from emotional numbness.
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The suggestion that our gut can have a role in depression has been neglected until now. So many different studies have tested different diets and their connection with mood. It was concluded that diets high in plants, seeds, and variety reduced levels of depression compared to diets high in junk food, and low in fiber.
Mediterranean style diet showed that improving and changing the diet can significantly improve the mood. Lower depression rates are found in groups that follow a Mediterranean-style diet with extra vegetables, nuts, and olive oil compared to the Western diet which is lower in fat.
A complex community of microbes in our gut produces thousands of chemicals that are a link between food and mood. Patients who suffer from depression have a less diverse microbiome.
Depression is related to elevated levels of inflammation and our microbes produce chemicals that keep this inflammation low, and our gut healthy. Microbes send signals to the brain to start producing chemicals like serotonin that lift our mood.
This is the same chemical that is increased artificially with antidepressants. When scientists removed gut bacteria from the mice they became depressed.
Some may have the wrong microbes in their gut, and that could be the reason why antidepressants don’t have any effect on them!
Dementia
A common cause of brain loss in its normal function in the older population is caused by dementia. The brain starts to shrink and emotions are affected.
Poor diet is connected as the main risk factor. A detailed study of middle-aged people who followed a Mediterranean-style diet showed on their MRI scans that they had the least loss in size of key parts of the brain.
Food is not just protein, carbs, and fats, it is supposed to be viewed as a mixture of thousands of chemicals that interact with our gut microbiome to modify our brain signals.
A study in 2019 showed that people who had psychotic thoughts had abnormal gut bacteria. When those bacteria were transplanted in mice they started to behave psychotically because it altered their brain chemicals.
The solution
It is beneficial to eat natural probiotics in the form of fermented food like:
cheese
yogurt
kefir
kimchi
kombucha
In depressed subjects, 2 out of 3 studies showed positive benefits over 6 to 8 weeks, with microbes found in the yogurt predominating.
Most mental illnesses can be prevented with a good varied diet early in life. Mothers who eat more junk food during their pregnancy appear to produce children with more behavioral problems. Children who eat poor diets are also at increased risk.
We should be aware that improving the quality, and diversity of our diet can play a big role in our mood, and preventing dementia.
