Fueling the Engine of Your Brain
Think about it – your brain is always on. It takes care of your thoughts and movements, your breathing and heartbeat, your senses – it works hard 24/7, even while you’re asleep. This means your brain requires a constant supply of fuel. And that fuel comes from the foods you eat – what’s in that fuel makes all the difference.
Put simply, what you eat directly affects the structure and function of your brain and ultimately your mood. Like an expensive car, your brain functions best when it gets only premium fuel. Eating high-quality foods that contain lots of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants nourishes the brain and protects it from oxidative stress – the waste free radicals produced when the body uses oxygen, which can damage cells.
Unfortunately, just like an expensive car, your brain can be damaged if you ingest anything other than premium fuel. If substances from low-premium fuel, such as what you get from processed or refined foods, get to the brain, it has little ability to get rid of them. Diets high in refined sugars, for example, are harmful to the brain. In addition to worsening your body’s regulation of insulin, they also promote inflammation and oxidative stress.
The Gut-Brain Connection
For many years, the medical field did not fully acknowledge the connection between mood and food. Today, however, the burgeoning field of nutritional psychiatry is finding there are many consequences and correlations between not only what you eat, how you feel, and how you ultimately behave, but also the kinds of bacteria that live in your gut.
Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that helps regulate sleep and appetite, mediate moods, and inhibit pain. Since about 95% of your serotonin is produced in your gastrointestinal tract, and your gastrointestinal tract is lined with a hundred million nerve cells or neurons, it makes sense that the inner workings of your digestive system don’t just help you digest food, but also guide your emotions.
What’s more, the function of these neurons – and the production of neurotransmitters like serotonin – is highly influenced by the billions of good bacteria that make up your intestinal microbiome. These bacteria play an essential role in your health. They protect the lining of your intestines and ensure they provide a strong barrier against toxins and bad bacteria, they limit inflammation, they improve how well you absorb nutrients from your food, and they activate neural pathways that travel directly between the gut and the brain.
Traditional Diets and Depression Risk
Studies have compared traditional diets like the Mediterranean diet and the traditional Japanese diet to a typical Western diet and have shown that the risk of depression is 25 to 35% lower in those who eat a traditional diet. Scientists account for this difference because these traditional diets tend to be high in vegetables, fruits, unprocessed grains, and fish and seafood, and to contain only modest amounts of lean meats and dairy. They are also void of processed and refined foods and sugars, which are staples of the Western dietary pattern.
In addition, many of these unprocessed foods are fermented and therefore act as natural probiotics. This may sound implausible, but the notion that good bacteria not only influence what your gut digests and absorbs, but that they also affect the degree of inflammation throughout your body as well as your mood and energy level, is gaining traction among researchers.
Experiment with Your Diet
Start paying attention to how eating different foods makes you feel – not just in the moment, but the next day. Try eating a clean diet for two to three weeks – that means cutting out all processed foods and sugar. See how you feel. Then slowly introduce foods back into your diet one by one and see how you feel.
When some people go clean, they cannot believe how much better they feel both physically and emotionally, and how much worse they then feel when they reintroduce the foods that are known to enhance inflammation. This is a testament to the power of the gut-brain connection and the importance of nourishing your body and mind with the right fuel.
The Evolving Science of Nutritional Psychiatry
The field of nutritional psychiatry is still relatively new, and there is much more to be learned about the intricate relationship between our diets, our gut microbiome, and our mental health. Ongoing research is exploring the potential of specific nutrients, probiotics, and dietary patterns to prevent and even treat conditions like depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline.
Some experts also believe that a holistic, food-based approach to mental health may be a powerful complement to traditional therapies and medications. As the field of nutritional psychiatry continues to evolve, we can likely expect more insights and practical applications for nourishing our bodies and minds.
In the meantime, the evidence we have so far suggests that paying close attention to what we eat, and making conscious choices to fuel our brains with high-quality, nutrient-dense foods, may be one of the most impactful things we can do for our overall well-being. It’s an empowering realization – that the path to a healthier, happier mind may start with what we choose to put on our plates.
