HAPPY MEALS
Some of the most powerful tools to help combat depression and anxiety can be found at the end of your fork. Before you succumb to meds, consult the fridge
Some of the best tools for easing anxiety and low moods can be found at the end of your fork. Try our mental-strength menu
In my training as a psychiatrist, I’d never been taught to ask my patients about their eating habits. When I finally started to do this, the results were startling. People who made even a few small dietary tweaks began feeling better and sometimes were able to decrease the dosage of their medication.
The idea that making a couple of dietary adjustments can be an effective intervention for depression may seem too good to be true, but think of it this way: the human brain is an expensive machine to run. Despite weighing less than 1.5kg, it consumes nearly 20% of the calories you ingest each day.
Its optimal functioning depends upon key nutrients that give it the building blocks and molecules required to support its cells, neurotransmitters and insulating white matter. That’s why assessing nutrition and food choices should be an integral part of treating and preventing mental health disorders.
WORDS BY DR DREW RAMSEY
Today, most doctors advocate a more Mediterranean-style diet. We understand that by focusing on fruit, vegetables, fish, wholegrains and healthy fats, it provides the essential nutrients for mental health. But instead of pinpointing a specific diet that helps your brain, I prefer to recommend eating more from certain food categories that contain high levels of brain-healthy nutrients. (See “How to Nourish Your Mental Health”, right.)
The evidence that eating healthy, whole foods is beneficial to your mind is becoming clearer and clearer. More than 60 years ago, studies that looked at the health of those who adopted the Mediterranean way of eating found that it was instrumental in reducing the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Later it was linked to lower rates of dementia and depression.
Studies kept mounting, and plenty of data showed that diet matters when it comes to depression and anxiety.
But it was hard to definitively argue that psychiatrists should be prescribing dietary changes, because there was no “gold-standard” trial (a randomised, controlled clinical trial) to indicate that. In 2017, scientists from Australia’s Food & Mood Centre at the Deakin University School of Medicine published the first.
This research, conducted by two leaders in nutritional psychiatry, Felice Jacka and Michael Berk, looked at what
“Depression completely resolved in a third of those who received nutrition coaching”