Feed Your Brain explores the link between diet and mental health, and how food influences brain function. How what you eat — or don’t eat — can change the way you feel, and even affect your ability to learn new things, remember past events and sharpen your focus.
Stress is bad for your mental health. It’s not great for your heart or immune health, either. Furthermore — and just to rub salt into your wounds — it can also make you fat. But the consequences of stress are not inevitable: once you understand what’s going on, you can fight back.
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Around 700 species of bacteria make your mouth their home. Around a dozen or so species are considered “bad”, or pathogenic. These rogues are responsible for more than just gum disease; they are also involved in the development of Alzheimer’s.
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There are many dietary factors that can affect brain function. Here I focus on the five that I encountered most frequently in clinic. The clue to identifying the right one(s) often lies in the accompanying physical symptoms. If you suffer from depression and anxiety, you too might spot the clues. Here’s a guide to nutritional sleuthing for mental well-being.
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Sometimes described as “cellular housekeeping”, autophagy — meaning “self-eating” in Greek – is a process that takes place in all mammalian cells and tissues. It was in the 1960s that researchers first became aware that each cell can destroy its own components. These components include damaged proteins and organelles, considered to be “common features of neurodegenerative diseases”, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease.
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Inflammation is often visible and painful. Red, angry swellings make their presence felt. Yet sometimes inflammation is invisible and painless; you would never know it was there. When inflammation flares in the brain, it does so silently. Chronic, low-grade inflammation in the brain is a factor in the development of many neurodegenerative diseases, including depression and dementia. It is also seen in Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and Huntington’s disease.
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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.
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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.
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High homocysteine (Hcy) is an indication of low vitamin B12 status. It is also a risk factor for other serious diseases too, especially cardiovascular disease and stroke, as it can damage the walls of blood vessels. Hcy can easily be lowered. For some people, awareness of this fact could be life changing.
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If you recently switched to a 100% plant-based diet, you can relax for quite some time. The adult liver can store enough vitamin B12 to last 1–5 years. But after that, and without “careful planning”, your health could suffer serious and irreversible damage.
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Alicia was certainly different, but she was typical in one regard: she had a combination of physical and mental symptoms. And, as it turned out, there was one underlying cause. Alicia’s brain lacked fatty acids, and this deficiency was manifesting in other parts of her body.
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