The standard American diet is loaded with too much fat, added sugar and salt. It’s also laden with heavily processed grains. Junk food outlets litter the dietary landscape and inexpensive but unhealthy ready-made foods are on all the shelves. America has a food problem, with around 40 percent of Americans meeting the criteria for obesity1. But can a person’s diet affect their mental health, and if so, how does that happen.
There are two ways diet impacts mental health. Chronic diseases like obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes cause plenty of worries, restrict a person’s activities and can lead to lots of physical aches and pains. Surgical interventions may be necessary with these disorders, all of which can contribute to depression.
However, a poor diet itself may contribute directly to depression by making inflammation in the body worse. For reasons that are not completely clear yet, the body produces an inflammatory response when high levels of simple carbohydrates and refined sugar is consumed. In major depression and schizophrenia, a chronically high level of bodily inflammation has been shown to go along with a worsening of symptoms2.
The suspected reason has to do with a class of chemicals, the cytokines, that accompany an inflammatory reaction in the body3. Cytokines are important for the nervous system and signal brain tissues that they need to switch into a kind of “low energy mode” because the body is fighting an infection. It stands to reason that if junk food filled with refined sugar and simple carbohydrates causes an unusually powerful immune response and an overproduction of cytokines, the brain’s tissues would stay in a chronic lethargic state, producing fewer neurotransmitters and functioning sluggishly.
Depression is a whole-body condition. There’s not an aspect of life that depression doesn’t harm. It stands to reason that managing one’s depression can be helped by a healthy diet. Note that while no diet or dietary supplement can prevent or cure depression, there are some vital nutrients that have some solid research science behind them. A few of these include:
- Omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 fatty acids from cold-water sea fish like tuna, mackerel and cod have been shown to fight excessive inflammation and reduce some symptoms of depression.4
- Legumes, like beans, have also been shown to have a modest positive effect on mood.
- Foods rich in the B vitamins, especially B1, B6 and B12, are well-known to be essential to the good health of brain tissues and the proper working of nerves.
Reducing one’s intake of sugars, carbohydrates and excess fat won’t cure or prevent depression, but research indicates that such reductions, along with a healthy diet, will increase a person’s overall health and potentially reduce the severity of depressive symptoms.
Damaris Aragon, ARNP, BC provides a full spectrum of mental health care to people in Spokane, Washington, and surrounding areas. She focuses on providing personalized, compassionate care that adheres to current evidence-based standards. Reach out to Damaris through her contact page or calling 509-342-6592.
1 https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2018/rising-obesity-united-states-public-health-crisis
2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6529779/
3 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3741070/
4 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5481805/
