Your Diet, Your Health.
It is a curious fact that antidepressants are a common treatment for irritable bowel syndrome. But why give Prozac to someone with abdominal pain? Antidepressants work because the gut and brain are inextricably linked. What happens in the gut does not stay in the gut — it travels to the brain. More than half of all patients with IBS are affected by a mood disorder.
Read more
Exercise, as you know, has many positive benefits. Aside from raising your buff rating, it improves all aspects of health, from pulmonary and musculoskeletal fitness, from immunity to metabolism. It is celebrated for its heart health benefits, and because cardiovascular fitness is considered a predictor of long-term health exercise can extend your life expectancy.
However, there’s another area of exercise research that is proving to be just as positive, and that’s brain health. It’s becoming clear that the right kind of exercise can help prevent the onset of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.
Read more
It takes a natural disaster to realize that food does not actually come from shops, that borders are figments of our imaginations, and that everything that we construct to shield ourselves from the natural world is an illusion that can be swept away in seconds by a flood, an earthquake, a hurricane, a wildfire. A virus.
Read more
For those of us who are residents of the Northern Hemisphere, now’s the time to go outside and make some much-needed vitamin D. Except, of course, we can’t. Most of us are in lockdown, and that leaves a big, vitamin D-shaped hole in our lives. Liver stores of this hormone-like vitamin ran out long ago — we can only make vitamin D in spring and summer. Fortunately, backup is available.
Read more
Feed Your Brain is a Medium publication, exclusively about food and how it influences your mental health. Could you contribute? Medium writers can earn money for their articles.
If you can write, and have experience – either personal or professional – in the field of diet and mental health, find out more.
