Think about it. Your brain is constantly “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 implies your brain requires a continuing supply of fuel. That “fuel” comes from the food you eat — and what’s in this fuel makes all the difference. Put simply, what you eat directly affects the structure and performance of your brain and, ultimately, your mood.
Like a fashionable car, your brain functions best when it gets only premium fuel. Consuming quality and healthy food defends our brain from oxidative stress.
Diets high in refined sugars, as an example, are harmful to the brain. additionally, to worsening your body’s regulation of insulin, they also promote inflammation and oxidative stress. Surveys and researches have found a relationship between impaired brain function and consumption of excess refined sugars.
If your brain does not get good-quality nutrition, or if free radicals or damaging inflammatory cells are circulating within the brain, further contributing to brain tissue injury, consequences are to be expected. What’s interesting is that for several years, the medical field didn’t fully acknowledge the connection between mood and food.
Today, fortunately, the burgeoning field of nutritional psychiatry is finding there are many consequences and correlations between not only what you eat, how you feel, and the way you ultimately behave, but also the forms of bacteria that sleep in your gut.
How the foods you eat affect your mood
Serotonin may be a neurotransmitter that helps regulate sleep and appetite, mediate moods, and inhibit pain. Since about 95% of your serotonin is produced in your alimentary canal, and your alimentary canal is lined with 100 million nerve cells or neurons, it is sensible that the inner workings of your system don’t just facilitate your digest food, but also guide your emotions. What’s more, the function of those neurons — and also the production of neurotransmitters like serotonin — is very influenced by the billions of “good” bacteria that form up your intestinal microbiome. These bacteria play a vital role in your health. They protect the liner of your intestines and ensure they supply a robust barrier against toxins and “bad” bacteria; they limit inflammation; they improve how well you absorb nutrients from your food; and that they activate neural pathways that travel directly between the gut and also the brain.
Studies have compared “traditional” diets, just like the Mediterranean diet and the traditional Japanese diet, to a typical “Western” diet and have shown that the chance of depression is about one-third less in those that 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 also do not contain processed and refined foods and sugars, which are staples of the “Western” dietary pattern. Additionally, many of those unprocessed foods are fermented and thus act as natural probiotics.
This may sound implausible to you, 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.
Nutritional psychiatry: What does it mean for you?
Start being attentive to how eating different foods make you feel. Try eating a “clean” diet. See how you’re feeling. Then slowly introduce foods into your diet, one by one, and see how you are feeling.
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