The Food-Mood Connection: Let us not dismiss the potential effect our diet has on our mental state.
This past Monday September 10th was “World Suicide Awareness Day,” and I am honored that I had the opportunity to share some information (at a Waterloo regional event), about the correlation that exists between what we eat and how we feel / behave.
Here are a few of the FACTS I shared with the event's attendees:
• In the book entitled, "FOOD ALLERGY", Doctors Rinkel, Randolph and Zeller described how depression, feeling drugged, hallucinations and insomnia, could all be caused and influenced by food.
• Many studies have shown that specific foods have the potential to not only produce physical symptoms (negative or positive), but mental and emotional ones as well.
• Studies have also shown that diets consisting mainly of highly- processed foods have an increased likelihood of enabling depression in those that partake. Conversely, healthy diets, rich in whole and fresh foods, may decrease that risk.
• Dr Randolph, as mentioned above, went as far as to say that 60-70% of psychosomatic symptoms are in fact undiagnosed reactions to food, inhalants and chemicals.
• The Standard American Diet has thus been coined the SAD diet, and with good reason!
• To prevent and potentially help treat depression and mental illness, avoid refined and processed foods as much as possible, especially sugar and caffeine (which tend to imbalance blood sugar and thus set you up for highs/lows), and alcohol (which is a depressant, slows the brain, and which can create anxiety, sadness and aggression, especially in people with depressive tendencies).
Instead, emphasize a truly supportive and nutritionally dense diet that is rich in fruits, vegetables / complex carbohydrates (which boost seratonin levels), Omega-3 fatty acids (which nourish the brain), and, consider taking a good (whole-food based) vitamin B supplement (The B vitamins are aka the “happy vitamins”)
Take care of your body, but also your brain. Everything we eat contributes to who are are becoming, and every time we eat, we have an opportunity to nourish and support ourselves.