Boost Your Mood with the Right Foods

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Learn about the strong connection between food and mental health, and discover simple ways to make positive changes in your diet to improve your mood. This podcast episode explores the impact of nutrition on mental wellbeing, sharing personal experiences and scientific evidence.

From adding more fruits and vegetables to your meals to staying hydrated and avoiding skipping meals, small dietary adjustments can have a significant impact on your mental health. Discover the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin-rich foods, and anti-inflammatory diets in promoting positive mental health.

Whether you're struggling with depression or just looking to boost your mood, this podcast offers valuable insights and practical tips to help you harness the power of food for mental wellbeing.

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Transcript:

Lisa/host: Have you ever wondered about how food affects our mood? We're going to be talking about some of the simple ways that we can make positive changes in our diet so that it affects our mental health in a positive way as well. I'm Lisa and this is rising Strong mental health and resilience. I became a health coach in 2012 because I knew how power the right food could be, whether people were struggling or not. Then I used these same strategies to help myself with grief and depression. And I can't wait to share this information with you, too. Now, let's get started.

The evidence is growing. The food that we choose every day is strongly linked to our mental health. Did you know that over 2000 years ago, hippocrates said, let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food.

So I want to tell you my story about food and mood if we go back about 23 years. I was suffering with postpartum depression, and I think a lot of it was due to the lack of sleep, of having a newborn, and just the lifestyle of being a new mom. But I was depressed. I had thoughts of getting in my car and driving away and never coming home. And I would feel angry towards my children. I never did anything, but I felt anger towards them. And the depression made that worse. And I felt like a horrible mother. I went to the doctor and I was prescribed different antidepressants and I was open to taking them. I wanted to feel better. However, I am one of those weirdos that seems to have adverse reactions to any kind of oral medication. And the first two didn't work at all. The third, well, it was even worse. I had an adverse reaction that caused me to pass out while I was nursing my little boy, my little baby, in the middle of the night. And thank goodness my husband heard me shout out in the night, came in, retrieved the baby, put him in the crib, but I had started to fold over onto my son. My husband had just taken his CPR recertification, laid me on the floor, and I don't know how long I was unconscious. It wasn't terribly long. It was long enough that I remember waking up to hearing him say, do you want me to call an ambulance? To which I said, no.

The next day I called my family doctor and I said, you know, I'm just not so sure about this drug. And he said, well, that's okay. But he said, you need to do something about your depression, so what's it going to be? And I said, just give me a little bit of time to think about it. And being a science girl, a researcher, a data driven person, I did exactly that. I started to do some research and I did find studies that indicated that our diet is directly related to our mood, and exercise as well had a positive impact on our mood. So I called him back and I said, okay, this is what my plan is. And he said, all right, I'll let you try that for a little bit, but please get back to me next week and let me know how it's going.

So I started going to my local community center and all I was doing was walking on the treadmill for about 20 minutes a day. And I made really, really small tweaks to my diet. I had studied nutrition in university and I've always been interested. Not to say that I'm a qualified dietitian, but I felt fairly knowledgeable. So I started making healthy swaps. I started adding more vegetables to my diet. I drank a lot more water, which as a nursing mother, this is really important, but when your mental health is at stake, even extra important, so it's drinking more water, adding more fruits and vegetables. I don't know about you, but when I add things to my diet, other things just fall away. So I just wasn't craving the sugar as much, I wasn't drinking as much coffee because the exercise was helping me sleep better at night. So it just all really came together in a positive way.

A week later I called my physician and of course he wanted to know how it was going and I said, really good, I think it's going really well. And he said, okay. And he was so awesome. He just said, let's just touch base every couple of weeks. I'm not sure if he didn't believe me that it was going as well as it was, but I was really excited for this positive change I was experiencing. It didn't take away all of my symptoms, but if you've ever been depressed, any slight improvement is encouraging. So shifting your diet is not only a means to promote health, but it's also a way to promote mental health.

When I was writing my book journey to healing, I did a lot of research in the exercise and healthy diet chapter that I wrote because it had been such a big part of my journey forward. And I found that vitamin deficiencies like b twelve, b nine, zinc deficiencies in those vitamins exasperated symptoms of depression and dementia. So they contributed to low mood, fatigue, cognitive decline, irritability. Food insecurity is now being associated to mood and anxiety disorders. Doesn't that make a lot of sense? If you don't know where your next meal is coming from. Of course you're going to be anxious. I

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Whole food diets, or diets like the mediterranean diet, have been found to protect against depression and other mental illnesses. In fact, one study showed a 42% decrease in risk of developing depression. As you know, the brain is an organ, and it has high metabolic and nutrient demands, and it can burn up to 400 calories a day.

So when you think about your body and your brain as something that requires fuel, I always reflect back to, like, a high performance race car. You wouldn't put junk fuel in that. You would treat that baby with all kinds of tender, loving care. You would put the best gasoline in it. You would take awesome care of it. Right? And the same goes for our bodies and brains. How can they properly function or function efficiently when we're putting junk into them?

So our brain needs good nutrition to function well. Studies show that increased omega three fatty acids are effective in helping adjuvant treatment for ADHD, depression, bipolar disorder, and PTSD. So you might be scratching your head thinking, all right, remind me what omega three foods and vitamin rich beef foods are like. What are those? What do those look like? Well, those are your greens. Those are your kale, your spinach, beans, legumes, fish, seafood.

So you may have also heard of antiinflammatory diets. Now, inflammation can cause symptoms like joint pain, and it can cause all kinds of physical problems. But did you know that inflammation can also happen in our brain tissue? So maybe if we take on an antiinflammatory diet, which is just lower sugar, less refined grains, more veggies, moderate wine, moderate coffee, extra virgin olive oil, all of that kind of thing. That has also been shown to improve mental health and wellness.

So if you're getting really overwhelmed at this point and thinking, oh, my gosh, these are a lot of changes, I don't know, here's some advice. When I was going through depression and then later anxiety and then later grief, I found that adding healthy things into my diet didn't seem so daunting. It didn't seem like I was depriving myself. And I found that the more I added the healthy things in, the less I really wanted the unhealthy things. So for myself, some examples were adding more water into my day. That's where I started. More water. Again, I found when I was writing my book and the research that I found that even if we are slightly dehydrated, we have a much greater increased chance of falling towards depression. That's how delicate that balance is in our brain.

So try adding more water into your day. Have a large glass by the sink every time you walk past the sink, have a glassful. Or make sure to have a large glass of water with every meal. If you don't have a fancy water bottle yet, go get one, the biggest one you can find, and keep it at your desk, at work or whatever you're doing at home. Keep it in arm's reach and reach for it often, because at the end of the day, you're going to find that you have put a good considerable amount of water into your body. Adding fruits and vegetables to your meals. It's pretty easy to do a handful of berries at breakfast, maybe some carrot sticks with your lunch, and maybe a side salad with supper. Right there, you're adding three extra servings of fruits and vegetables into your day. Sounds pretty easy, doesn't it?

Another big reminder, try not to skip meals. I know a lot of people like to skip breakfast because they think they're saving calories or that they're doing some kind of fancy new fasting. It doesn't really help you. I don't know about you, but if my brain is hungry, I can't think straight. In fact, I get hangry. And that's just an indication that your brain needs some attention. It needs some TLC, it needs fuel. So don't skip meals. In fact, if I can make even another suggestion, try adding one snack in a day. Now, I'm not talking donuts, but I'm talking something that's going to boost your energy. You could have some greek yogurt with some berries and a glass of water. And look at right there. You're adding fuel to your body and your brain.

In order to promote mental health and wellbeing, we should consider our diets. The mediterranean diet is one that I love and try to follow, but it's just one example. If you are curious about changing your diet and this all seems overwhelming, don't let it be. Seek out help from a dietitian or have a chat with your general practitioner.

Thank you so much for tuning in today. Stay well and be resilient and we'll catch you next time.