Fibre, vegetable-rich diet relieves depression
Your diet is linked to your mental health, but how exactly? Now new study has found adding more vegetables to your diet can significantly boost your mood, especially for women.
Dr. Joseph Firth, an Honorary Research fellow at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, led scientists who set out to investigate.
So, to establish definitively whether a better diet can improve mood disorders, the scientists examined data on nearly 46,000 people and published their results in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.
The researchers examined the information available from major electronic databases, searching for “all randomized controlled trials” that studied the effects of dietary interventions on symptoms of depression and anxiety.
The scientists narrowed down their search to 16 eligible randomized, controlled trials that summed up information from 45,826 participants.
The analysis revealed that every kind of dietary improvement “significantly reduced depressive symptoms.” However, the dietary changes did not affect anxiety.
The dietary interventions that eased depression included weightloss diets, fat-reducing diets, and nutrient-rich diets. “This is actually good news,” comments Dr. Firth.
“The similar effects from any type of dietary improvement suggests that highly-specific or specialized diets are unnecessary for the average individual. Instead, just making simple changes is equally beneficial for mental health.”
“In particular, eating more nutrient-dense meals which are high in fiber and vegetables, while cutting back on fast foods and refined sugars appears to be sufficient for avoiding the potentially negative psychological effects of a ‘junk food’ diet.”
Study co-author Brendon Stubbs, a clinical lecturer at the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre and King’s College London, also reports on the findings and stresses the importance of exercise.
“[O]ur results within this study found that when dietary interventions were combined with exercise, a greater improvement in depressive symptoms was experienced by people.”
“Taken together, our data really highlight the central role of eating a healthier diet and taking regular exercise to act as a viable treatment to help people with low mood,” adds Stubbs.