How Food Can Affect Your Mood

As more and more research on depression and anxiety comes to the forefront it’s interesting how much we can help ourselves with improving our wellbeing. Case in point, I came across an interesting article by Dr. Eva Selhub posted on the Harvard Health Blog by Harvard Medical School entitled Nutritional Psychiatry: Your brain on food. In it, Dr. Selhub starts by stating the mechanics of ingesting a poor diet replete with processed and refined foods worsening our body’s regulation of insulin and also promoting inflammation and oxidative stress.

Subsequently, these reactions will potentially cause mood disorders.

Multiple studies have found a correlation between a diet high in refined sugars and impaired brain function — and even a worsening of symptoms of mood disorders, such as depression.

Eva Selhub, M.D.

The article went on to delve into how gut health is connected with mood and in particular how much serotonin plays a role in regulating sleep and appetite, mediating moods, and inhibiting pain. She goes on to say, “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.”

That is something I’ve never considered before. It’s easy to believe the inner workings of how nutrition affects the brain, but gut health is still such an interesting mystery to me. It makes sense, however, that if our guts our lined with bad bacteria from highly processed foods and loads of added sugar we would most assuredly suffer from mood disruption.

Inversely, if we cultivate good bacteria in our digestive system then we reap the rewards of less inflammation and fewer toxins allowing our healthy food to properly digest. In all, this has been shown to help elevate mood and potentially affect depression and other mood disorders in positive ways.

So what type of diets are best to ward off these toxins and promote a healthy gut environment?

Again, Dr. Selhub:

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.

Traditional diets here refer to eating foods high in vegetables, fruits, unprocessed grains, and fish and seafood. Lean meats and dairy are kept at modest levels with the absence of processed and refined foods and added sugars (Western diets).

Of course, much more research is needed, but I for one am excited to see more studies done on mood and food. Not only is it that you are what you eat, but apparently you also feel what you eat, too!