7 ways that diet can improve your mental health

What, when and how much you eat directly affects your metabolism and your mitochondria. We all know that diet plays a role in obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. What most people may not know is that diet also has a huge impact on mental health and the brain.

This field is huge. Tens of thousands of research papers and countless textbooks have investigated the effects of diet on metabolism and mitochondria. Most of this research has focused on obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, aging and longevity However, these researchers typically do not understand the link to mental health.

Connection goes far beyond correlation. They overlap at the level of neural circuits in the brain and, of course, throughout the metabolic and mitochondrial networks of the human body. are also directly involved. That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to most people. What’s even more surprising is that the neural circuitry that senses loneliness overlaps directly with the circuitry that warns of hunger. This research Natureshowed that chronic social isolation in Drosophila leads to increased feeding When Decreased sleep. “Social” problems led to changes in appetite and sleep. When researchers artificially stimulated neural circuits for social isolation, the flies ate more and slept less. Another study identified specific her GABA and serotonin neural circuits directly involved in obesity. When Anxiety and depression. One neural circuit influences body weight When how you feel

Some people call this field nutritional psychiatry, It considers the role of diet in mental health. Personally, I feel this is too narrow. But that’s not the only effect diet has on brain function. It also mentions how your mental state affects your metabolism, affects your appetite and eating behavior, and affects your overall health. Metabolism affects mind, and mind affects metabolism.

There are at least seven different ways in which dietary interventions can help address psychiatric symptoms.

1. Address nutritional deficiencies such as folic acid, vitamin B12, and thiamine deficiency.
2. Removal of food allergens or toxins. For example, some people have an autoimmune disease called celiac disease, which reacts to gluten and causes inflammation and other metabolic problems. The toxic effects of TFA have been described. There are many other dietary components that can impair mitochondrial function.
3. Eating a “healthy diet” such as the Mediterranean diet may play a role for some people.
4. Improvement of intestinal flora.
5. Improving metabolism and mitochondrial function through dietary intervention. This includes changes in insulin resistance, metabolic rate, number of mitochondria in cells, overall mitochondrial health, hormones, inflammation, and many other known metabolic regulators.
6. Losing weight can help reduce obesity-related problems.
7. For people with severe underweight, gaining weight can be a life-saving intervention.

There is also evidence that fasting, intermittent fasting (IF), and diets that mimic fasting may play a role in the treatment of psychiatric disorders. results in the production of ketone bodies, which are converted into ketones. And interestingly, this process occurs exclusively in mitochondria, another role for these wonderful organelles.

There is evidence that IF improves mood, cognition and protects neurons from damage in animal models of epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease. One research group set out to understand how and why. You have no idea what they found — mitochondria! The researchers put mice through an IF routine. They found that the hippocampus, a brain region often implicated in depression, anxiety, and memory impairment, was primarily driven by IF improvement. This was thought to be due to the high level of The researchers then went further to understand what was causing this change in GABA activity. They removed Sirtuin 3 from mice in two different ways. This protein is exclusive and essential for mitochondrial health. All advantages were lost when they did this. This clearly shows that mitochondria are directly involved in the benefits of IF for brain health.