You’ve probably heard the phrase, “You are what you eat.” In many ways that’s true. The food you consume can affect your cognitive functioning and mental health. The food you eat not only feeds your body and brain, but it also feeds the microbes in your gut that affect your mental health. There’s a branch of psychiatric medicine that deals with it called nutritional psychiatry. When you consider that medicine can change the biochemical structure of the brain, it makes sense that dietary changes can also affect it. It can create a positive or negative difference.
What’s the brain-gut connection?
It all starts with the gut microbiome. The microbiome consists of bacteria, fungi, viruses, and parasites. They help break down food and create enzymes that aid the body in other functions by sending messages to the brain. New studies using fecal transplants found it helped several mental disorders by changing the microbiome. Anxiety, bipolar disorders, and depression are three of those. Your diet determines the number of each. Some foods, such as those high in fiber, encourage beneficial microbes, while others encourage harmful ones. Your diet determines which species will survive and thrive. Those species affect your mental health.
Studies show that the balance of omega-3 and omega-6 affects your mental health.
Omega-3 fatty acids and omega-6 fatty acids are essential for good health. However, there needs to be a balance between them. The balance of the two should be somewhere between 1 to 4 and 4 to 1. Today, for every one unit of omega-3, the average person eats 16 units of omega-6. One study found that switching the diet in a violent prison to a diet closer to 2 omega-6 to 1 omega-3, reduced the violence dramatically. Other stories show increasing omega-3 helped relieve postpartum depression and may help improve bipolar disorder, depression, and other psychiatric conditions like personality disorder, schizophrenia, OCD, and ADD. Foods high in omega-3 include walnuts and salmon.
Sugar increases energy that drops as suddenly as it rises.
That swing of energy can also cause mood swings. Sugar also increases the population of harmful microbes and reduces the population of healthy ones. That can cause a lack of serotonin primarily created in the gut. Serotonin can affect mood swings and pain sensitivity. It can cause overeating and sleep deprivation. Sugar also causes inflammation that affects the brain and affects your mood.
- Eating food and drink with antioxidants can protect the brain. Green tea contains L-theanine, which can cross the blood-brain barrier. It increases the neurotransmitter GABA, which helps you relax.
- Eating blueberries, broccoli, or oranges can protect you from mental decline. It contains vitamin C. It prevents oxidative stress and inflammation that affects cognitive functioning and memory.
- Having a hard-boiled egg for a snack can protect the brain. Eggs contain choline, B6, and B12—folate. B6 helps make neurotransmitters. B12 aids in preventing dementia. Choline improves memory.
- Indulge yourself with a strawberry dipped in dark chocolate. Dark chocolate with 70% or more cacao has antioxidants to protect the brain. It contains caffeine that can improve your mood and reduce the risk of brain disease that affects cognitive functioning.
For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors Personal Training