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Diet and Mental Health

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Roland

MyPTSD Pro
Hey, so I've seen a few posts about Keto and it's affect on mood. I wanted to recommend a book. It's called "This is Your Brain on Food - an Indispensible Guide to the Food that Fight Depression, Anxiety, PTSD, OCD, ADHD, and More" by Uma Naidoo. It goes through several disorders and suggests a diet for it, at the end lists recipes. It's loosely based on scientific studies. The writer is a psychiatrist, cook, and has studied nutritional psychiatry. Here's the goodreads link so you can read more about it if you're interested This Is Your Brain on Food: An Indispensable Guide to t…

But anyways, for PTSD, some of the studies said yogurt lowers cortisol, which is something I've heard before. Another was blueberries (anti-inflammatory for hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex), and omega-3 fatty acids (salmon, tuna, sardines, etc) reduce PTSD symptoms. Vitamin E can help prevent further brain damage (sunflower seeds, peanuts, almonds, spinach, broccoli, etc).

It also was repetitively said fast carbs, sugar, too much caffeine/alcohol, msg, are bad. Obviously, we already knew that unhealthy foods were unhealthy, but the book hit home the moderation in all things. A lot of us get stressed out so we eat out or turn to comfort foods, we could be seriously aiding our brain's restoration process through our diets.

But anyways, has anyone else found this to be true? What else has worked for you, or how do you use diet to help yourself? Have you heard the information I listed? Have you heard other things?
 
Tryptophan is the building block for serotonin so a good balanced diet does have a favorable impact on mood. It doesn't fix everything by a long shot, but it certainly doesn't hurt.
 
Tryptophan is the building block for serotonin so a good balanced diet does have a favorable impact on mood. It doesn't fix everything by a long shot, but it certainly doesn't hurt.
Oh yeah, I forgot that disclaimer xD a lot of reviews on the book definitely were bothered by the author's attitude of "Your mental disorder will magically be cured if you eat like this".
 
My perspective is that the very idea of diet is harmful to the body-mind as it sets the stage for restrictive eating which often initiates binge eating and other disordered eating patterns. I subscribe to the idea of intuitive eating and anti-diet culture. It turns out that when you tell your self that you can’t eat a certain food your brain becomes fixated on that item. Here is an episode from a podcast called Food Psych all about sugar that I found helpful in putting the issue in perspective.


My understanding is that while food may have slight impacts on your mood, the greater influence is from overall stress and finding ways to cope with or reduce stress will have a more meaningful effect on your mental health. And if you are susceptible to internal messages about body image, calorie counting, or weight loss then using diet to change your mood could just trigger episodes of disordered eating adding to your stress rather than reducing it.
 
My perspective is that the very idea of diet is harmful to the body-mind as it sets the stage for restrictive eating which often initiates binge eating and other disordered eating patterns. I subscribe to the idea of intuitive eating and anti-diet culture. It turns out that when you tell your self that you can’t eat a certain food your brain becomes fixated on that item. Here is an episode from a podcast called Food Psych all about sugar that I found helpful in putting the issue in perspective.


My understanding is that while food may have slight impacts on your mood, the greater influence is from overall stress and finding ways to cope with or reduce stress will have a more meaningful effect on your mental health. And if you are susceptible to internal messages about body image, calorie counting, or weight loss then using diet to change your mood could just trigger episodes of disordered eating adding to your stress rather than reducing it.
I started to put a disclaimer about eating disorders but couldn't figure out how to phrase it. You're absolutely right though, it's about balance, not about don't eat this, do eat this, but like balance this to this, but even that can be fuel in an eating-disordered mind. So it's tricky. I've never had an eating disorder, but my psychologist said I was 'high risk' for one. She suggested that I keep an eye on that. I like intuitive eating.
 
My understanding is that while food may have slight impacts on your mood, the greater influence is from overall stress and finding ways to cope with or reduce stress
Possibly for PTSD.

However there’s a lot of emerging evidence that for at least some conditions, like Depression, manipulating what’s going on in the gut through food choice (or even poo transplants) could be even more important for recovery than altering what’s going on in our brain.

It’s a fascinating area (if you can handle reading about poo a lot!), and when you start delving into the literature, it becomes clear that while we’ve established that our gut is exercising important in determining our mental health, we have way more questions than answers at this point.
 
The tricky thing with food and Depression is whether it’s caused by the excessive (starches, fats, preservatives, fill-in-the-blank) or if people who have Depression are drawn to eating those foods for reasons of comfort or convenience due to having little money/time or access to foods which might be more supportive.
 
I have been on every diet due to healing an incurable bladder disease called interstitial cystitis. I’ve found paleo with higher carb is best for my mental health, but not a cure. Refined sugar triggers me a few days after eating it- my depression gets very bad. Gluten does the same - I think both gluten and sugar do something to my brain chemicals similar to alcohol. I feel good in the moment but days later I crash and depression is bad. Anxiety is worse with caffeine and I can’t sleep, even one cup of caffeine in the morning causes me insomnia. One glass of wine also triggers my insomnia. This has all gotten more severe the older I am, I’m 43 now. Keto makes my depression and anxiety SEVERE. I have tried over 10 times over years and followed all the advice with electrolytes salt ect and just cannot get past a month due to the severe depression on keto. I have figured out it’s because some of us need resistant starch to make seraronin, so this diet did not provide what my body needed to make serotonin. I have friends that the keto diet helped them a lot with mental health - so it’s truly based on what your particular mental illness is caused by on how you will respond.
 
I have been on every diet due to healing an incurable bladder disease called interstitial cystitis. I’ve found paleo with higher carb is best for my mental health, but not a cure. Refined sugar triggers me a few days after eating it- my depression gets very bad. Gluten does the same - I think both gluten and sugar do something to my brain chemicals similar to alcohol. I feel good in the moment but days later I crash and depression is bad. Anxiety is worse with caffeine and I can’t sleep, even one cup of caffeine in the morning causes me insomnia. One glass of wine also triggers my insomnia. This has all gotten more severe the older I am, I’m 43 now. Keto makes my depression and anxiety SEVERE. I have tried over 10 times over years and followed all the advice with electrolytes salt ect and just cannot get past a month due to the severe depression on keto. I have figured out it’s because some of us need resistant starch to make seraronin, so this diet did not provide what my body needed to make serotonin. I have friends that the keto diet helped them a lot with mental health - so it’s truly based on what your particular mental illness is caused by on how you will respond.
That’s amazing. Yeah everybody and every body is different. It’s important to recognize that. Thank you for sharing your experience with it
 
I was tortured and starved, and brought back to health in a German hospital (no one, but no one, on the planet… is better equipped to deal with victims of starvation than the Deutsche.). So my metabolism? Is a little bit f*cked. 20 years later, those of us who survived fit 2 profiles; scarecrows & “can metabolisms be so low they’re read in negative numbers???” Shrug. I can, and often do, gain weight on 400kcal per day + 15 hours of heavy exercise. I understand that’s really tiny / and kinda huge for most people. For me? It’s a good day. I keep those calories dense as f*ck

- In order to LOSE weight? I reeeeally have to be in training… exercising at least 10-20 hours a day, & eating around 20,000 kCal per day. Nope. Not a typo. Winter ration MREs are 6,ooo kcal or more. Hand over fist.

- In order to maintain weight? Things have to be very balanced.

- to feel good based on diet alone? About 70% sushi, 10% steak, 20% BBQ & salad.
 
been exposed to two religions that teach diet change=mind change and it is hard to deny the evidence even though mind change is at best anecdotal data, and the acceptance of the new diet and new religion at the same time casts a huge shadow on anything like actual data to support the premise.
BUT, one group is well known for longevity, a city in california where they congregate is actually considered to be a “blue zone” on a world level with other well known centers of longevity like Japan and some areas in the mediterranean. And the other group is primarily made up of a nationality that is accepted as being long lived.
In traditional households within that community children are taught the value if cooking with spices in a holistic approach from an early age.
No doubt, eat better, live longer. And I want to believe that be happier=live longer, but how can you know?
So, eat better=live longer, and be happier= live longer, does it follow that therefor eat better= be happier?
I want to believe it does but this is not the logic that proves it, it is a falacious argument.
No better than eating badly=high rates of diabetes, groups with high rates of diabetes report higher rates of depression, therefore diabetes=depression.

Even though I want to believe it and i am definitely trying it, I am a long way from preaching it or even offering up any opinions on it other than saying it cant really be proven that eating good food has any affect on mental processes. If it was easily proven, Mcdonalds would sell more apples than burgers, right? Well, a higher percentage of healthy food would pass through grocery stores maybe? It all gets so murky when you have to accept subjective evidence to make a point valid. But, it doesnt have to be valid for me to at least try it and see. So far, it isnt killing me to eat better. Thats a fact I can state assuredly, I aint dead yet.
 
I was tortured and starved, and brought back to health in a German hospital (no one, but no one, on the planet… is better equipped to deal with victims of starvation than the Deutsche.). So my metabolism? Is a little bit f*cked. 20 years later, those of us who survived fit 2 profiles; scarecrows & “can metabolisms be so low they’re read in negative numbers???” Shrug. I can, and often do, gain weight on 400kcal per day + 15 hours of heavy exercise. I understand that’s really tiny / and kinda huge for most people. For me? It’s a good day. I keep those calories dense as f*ck

- In order to LOSE weight? I reeeeally have to be in training… exercising at least 10-20 hours a day, & eating around 20,000 kCal per day. Nope. Not a typo. Winter ration MREs are 6,ooo kcal or more. Hand over fist.

- In order to maintain weight? Things have to be very balanced.

- to feel good based on diet alone? About 70% sushi, 10% steak, 20% BBQ & salad.
That’s wild, it’s amazing how much of a long lasting affect it’s had on your body and just how much a person can survive.
 
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