Diet and Mind
Dec. 1st, 2022 07:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis article talks about food and mental health.
TL;DR: If your mind is malfunctioning, check your diet first, because a poor diet can cause problems which are then fixable simply by improving diet. If your diet is good or improving it doesn't help, then move on to other problem-solving methods. Trying diet first is cheaper and safer than other options for mental care. Getting into details...
Despite the wide body of research focusing on how what we eat — and when — affects our metabolism and mitochondria, relatively few studies have focused on the link between diet and mental health.
1) That's stupid. More scientific studies would help. It's always nice to have details.
2) It's also very modern-Western-centric. Various old cultures have advice on how to use food as medicine for physical and mental health. For some of the more comprehensive surviving examples, see Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine. Some folks have been studying this stuff for thousands of years. So if your system has not studied it much, borrow someone else's!
What most people might not know is that diet also has profound effects on mental health and the brain.
I would bet that almost everyone has figured out how certain foods make them feel better. In some people it is subconscious, in others mindful, but almost everyone does it -- to the point that eating a tub of ice cream after a breakup is a cultural cliche. Why ice cream? Aside from being creamy and sweet and fatty (common traits in comfort food), the cold helps numb the pain, like putting an ice pack on an injury.
However, people usually do not follow that to its logical conclusion, which is that a crappy diet will reliably make you feel like crap. The modern western diet is crap, so unsurprisingly, lots of people feel like crap. Of course, modern western culture is also crappy and that does not help. But you cannot feel healthy and good if your body lacks the raw materials needed to make vital neurochemicals, red blood cells, etc. and many diets are poor in nutrients. There are some people who have figured this out, though. See Hippie Food for an example, and if you can buy yogurt in your local supermarket, thank the hippies!
What might be more surprising is that the neural circuits for loneliness overlap directly with the neural circuits that warn of starvation.
Yyyyyeah. That's part of a complex of stuff designed to discourage our ancestors from running off and maybe getting eaten by saberteeth. Today it doesn't work so well.
On the bright side, food is bonding. Sharing food creates and maintains human ties. One useful application of this is that you can use cooking or eating together as a means of strengthening ties. Another is that if your current comfort foods are junk, you can use this to introduce healthier ones.
There are at least seven different ways that dietary interventions can be helpful in addressing mental symptoms:
Addressing nutritional deficiencies, such as folate, vitamin B12, and thiamine deficiency.
A healthy diet should meet nutritional needs. However, if problems are occurring, sometimes it is helpful to check specific levels of nutrients which if low could cause that sort of problem.
Removing dietary allergens or toxins. For example, some people have an autoimmune disorder called Celiac disease that results in inflammation and other metabolic problems in response to gluten. This can also affect brain function. I’ve described the toxic effects of TFAs. There are many other dietary ingredients that can also impair mitochondrial function.
Let's not forget the thousands of allegedly "safe" chemicals in modern foodlike products -- preservatives, colorings, flavorings, binders, etc. Many of them are not as digestible as claimed, and this can cause problems.
Eating a “healthy diet,” such as the Mediterranean diet, may play a role for some people.
That's a good one. However, the African food pyramid has leafy greens as its bottom layer.
Improving the gut microbiome.
Be a kindly god to your indwelling creatures. They like it when you eat lots of fiber and live cultures. If you frequently murder them with antibiotics, your microbiome will suffer as other less-friendly creatures like yeast flourish. So if you need to use antibiotics, at least send an olive branch: consume high-fiber prebiotics and live culture probiotics to restore your microbiome.
Improving metabolism and mitochondrial function with a dietary intervention. This includes changes in insulin resistance, metabolic rate, the number of mitochondria in cells, the overall health of mitochondria, hormones, inflammation, and many other known regulators of metabolism.
Harder to troubleshoot, but one of them is easier with science. Every sugar has a pattern when it is digested and used. Often that's a narrow spike but some are broader. You have two options here: 1) Avoid foods that cause spikes and prefer foods with a slower release of energy (low-glycemic-index). Some diets aim for this. 2) Combine multiple sugars that peak at different rates to create a more balanced flow of energy and avoid peak-and-crash problems. Many energy bars do this, and a few have published wavemaps of the sugars they use so you can see the digestion curves. It is possible to achieve the same effects at home if you research different sugars that you might wish to combine in energy bars/bites.
Losing weight can help to mitigate the problems associated with obesity.
Gaining weight can be a life-saving intervention for those who are severely underweight.
Well, duh. Removing a condition tends to remove the problems associated with that condition.
The problem is that we don't have effective means of losing weight safely and keeping it off. What actually happens is that about 97% of people who lose weight not only regain it but pack on more. Dieting doesn't make you thinner, it makes you fatter. Even if you can't solve the problem, you can at least avoid actively making it worse.
About the only thing that does make major, lasting change is rebuilding your whole lifestyle. If you switch to a highly active career or a car-free neighborhood that makes you walk a lot, chances are you will lose weight and keep it off. That's not the kind of choice most people are willing or even able to make.
However, there's another option that can be helpful: make slow, small, incremental improvements in diet. Change refined grains to whole grains. Choose grilling instead of frying. Use less sweetener, and prefer natural ones (e.g. honey, bananas) over refined (white sugar) or artificial (e.g. aspartame) ones. This approach tends to have less dramatic effects, but can slow the rate of weight gain, and if nothing else at least you're eating better.
Gaining weight is only slightly easier. See How to Maximize Calories & Nutrition for some ideas.
There is also evidence that fasting, intermittent fasting (IF), and fasting-mimicking diets may play a role in treating mental disorders. They all result in the production of ketone bodies, which are made when fat is being used as an energy source. Fat gets turned into ketones. And, interestingly, this process occurs exclusively in mitochondria, yet another role for these magnificent organelles.
This may work for some people; there are traditions that favor it. The problem is that some other people begin to malfunction quickly and badly after just a few hours without food. Some become angry and violent. Others become confused and lethargic. Some throw up. All of these are counterproductive. Plus of course, fasting can make the body think it's starving and try to pack on more weight, which is also the opposite of helpful.
TL;DR: If your mind is malfunctioning, check your diet first, because a poor diet can cause problems which are then fixable simply by improving diet. If your diet is good or improving it doesn't help, then move on to other problem-solving methods. Trying diet first is cheaper and safer than other options for mental care. Getting into details...
Despite the wide body of research focusing on how what we eat — and when — affects our metabolism and mitochondria, relatively few studies have focused on the link between diet and mental health.
1) That's stupid. More scientific studies would help. It's always nice to have details.
2) It's also very modern-Western-centric. Various old cultures have advice on how to use food as medicine for physical and mental health. For some of the more comprehensive surviving examples, see Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine. Some folks have been studying this stuff for thousands of years. So if your system has not studied it much, borrow someone else's!
What most people might not know is that diet also has profound effects on mental health and the brain.
I would bet that almost everyone has figured out how certain foods make them feel better. In some people it is subconscious, in others mindful, but almost everyone does it -- to the point that eating a tub of ice cream after a breakup is a cultural cliche. Why ice cream? Aside from being creamy and sweet and fatty (common traits in comfort food), the cold helps numb the pain, like putting an ice pack on an injury.
However, people usually do not follow that to its logical conclusion, which is that a crappy diet will reliably make you feel like crap. The modern western diet is crap, so unsurprisingly, lots of people feel like crap. Of course, modern western culture is also crappy and that does not help. But you cannot feel healthy and good if your body lacks the raw materials needed to make vital neurochemicals, red blood cells, etc. and many diets are poor in nutrients. There are some people who have figured this out, though. See Hippie Food for an example, and if you can buy yogurt in your local supermarket, thank the hippies!
What might be more surprising is that the neural circuits for loneliness overlap directly with the neural circuits that warn of starvation.
Yyyyyeah. That's part of a complex of stuff designed to discourage our ancestors from running off and maybe getting eaten by saberteeth. Today it doesn't work so well.
On the bright side, food is bonding. Sharing food creates and maintains human ties. One useful application of this is that you can use cooking or eating together as a means of strengthening ties. Another is that if your current comfort foods are junk, you can use this to introduce healthier ones.
There are at least seven different ways that dietary interventions can be helpful in addressing mental symptoms:
Addressing nutritional deficiencies, such as folate, vitamin B12, and thiamine deficiency.
A healthy diet should meet nutritional needs. However, if problems are occurring, sometimes it is helpful to check specific levels of nutrients which if low could cause that sort of problem.
Removing dietary allergens or toxins. For example, some people have an autoimmune disorder called Celiac disease that results in inflammation and other metabolic problems in response to gluten. This can also affect brain function. I’ve described the toxic effects of TFAs. There are many other dietary ingredients that can also impair mitochondrial function.
Let's not forget the thousands of allegedly "safe" chemicals in modern foodlike products -- preservatives, colorings, flavorings, binders, etc. Many of them are not as digestible as claimed, and this can cause problems.
Eating a “healthy diet,” such as the Mediterranean diet, may play a role for some people.
That's a good one. However, the African food pyramid has leafy greens as its bottom layer.
Improving the gut microbiome.
Be a kindly god to your indwelling creatures. They like it when you eat lots of fiber and live cultures. If you frequently murder them with antibiotics, your microbiome will suffer as other less-friendly creatures like yeast flourish. So if you need to use antibiotics, at least send an olive branch: consume high-fiber prebiotics and live culture probiotics to restore your microbiome.
Improving metabolism and mitochondrial function with a dietary intervention. This includes changes in insulin resistance, metabolic rate, the number of mitochondria in cells, the overall health of mitochondria, hormones, inflammation, and many other known regulators of metabolism.
Harder to troubleshoot, but one of them is easier with science. Every sugar has a pattern when it is digested and used. Often that's a narrow spike but some are broader. You have two options here: 1) Avoid foods that cause spikes and prefer foods with a slower release of energy (low-glycemic-index). Some diets aim for this. 2) Combine multiple sugars that peak at different rates to create a more balanced flow of energy and avoid peak-and-crash problems. Many energy bars do this, and a few have published wavemaps of the sugars they use so you can see the digestion curves. It is possible to achieve the same effects at home if you research different sugars that you might wish to combine in energy bars/bites.
Losing weight can help to mitigate the problems associated with obesity.
Gaining weight can be a life-saving intervention for those who are severely underweight.
Well, duh. Removing a condition tends to remove the problems associated with that condition.
The problem is that we don't have effective means of losing weight safely and keeping it off. What actually happens is that about 97% of people who lose weight not only regain it but pack on more. Dieting doesn't make you thinner, it makes you fatter. Even if you can't solve the problem, you can at least avoid actively making it worse.
About the only thing that does make major, lasting change is rebuilding your whole lifestyle. If you switch to a highly active career or a car-free neighborhood that makes you walk a lot, chances are you will lose weight and keep it off. That's not the kind of choice most people are willing or even able to make.
However, there's another option that can be helpful: make slow, small, incremental improvements in diet. Change refined grains to whole grains. Choose grilling instead of frying. Use less sweetener, and prefer natural ones (e.g. honey, bananas) over refined (white sugar) or artificial (e.g. aspartame) ones. This approach tends to have less dramatic effects, but can slow the rate of weight gain, and if nothing else at least you're eating better.
Gaining weight is only slightly easier. See How to Maximize Calories & Nutrition for some ideas.
There is also evidence that fasting, intermittent fasting (IF), and fasting-mimicking diets may play a role in treating mental disorders. They all result in the production of ketone bodies, which are made when fat is being used as an energy source. Fat gets turned into ketones. And, interestingly, this process occurs exclusively in mitochondria, yet another role for these magnificent organelles.
This may work for some people; there are traditions that favor it. The problem is that some other people begin to malfunction quickly and badly after just a few hours without food. Some become angry and violent. Others become confused and lethargic. Some throw up. All of these are counterproductive. Plus of course, fasting can make the body think it's starving and try to pack on more weight, which is also the opposite of helpful.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2022-12-03 06:13 am (UTC)Do you like oatmeal? It's like that -- most blends contain oats -- but chunkier. Typically it contains a mix of rolled grains, nuts, seeds, and dried fruit. I like Bob's Red Mill so I alternate among different flavors like Old Country, Gluten-Free, or Fruit & Seed.
Both cold and hot muesli versions are available; I currently favor hot.
https://www.cherrypicksreviews.com/breakfast-muesli-cereals
Oh, and if you are often rushed, consider overnight oats or muesli:
https://eatlittlebird.com/bircher-muesli-overnight-oats-recipe/
>> Sorry ahead of time for this boring rambling, but:<<
I don't always have time to answer everything, but I do like talking about food.
>>I did end up choosing a sandwich and yogurt for breakfast, and then having a hummus-and-pretzel pack<<
Go you!
>> and a "healthy" energy drink (it didn't taste very good but it worked well enough) <<
Yyyyyeah, the problem with some "healthy" foods is they don't taste good. Then it's a chore to eat or drink, which is bad, because it's unsustainable -- people wear out after a while and quit doing it. The key to sustainable lifestyle changes is to find things you like. Don't try to force yourself to eat or drink things you dislike. There are many delicious drinks you can find instead. Me, I'm a big fan of smoothies -- tonight's is cashew butter. I've found fairly decent yogurt drinks at the store, and there are other things like vegetable juices or kombucha.
I grew up on hippie food. It got hard to find for a while, then when it came back in the late 1980s-early 1990s most of it was awful. I spent years telling people that no, wholegrain bread wasn't supposed to taste like cardboard, it should be nutty and delicious. >_< Making good health food requires understanding a bit of kitchen chemistry and psychology. You have to know what you like, and how ingredients behave. So for instance, hippie quickbread is made with wholegrain or mixed flours, fruits and/or vegetables (banana, strawberry, zucchini, pumpkin, etc.), oil instead of butter, and applesauce so it only needs a little sugar. My partner and I can kill a whole loaf in less than 2 days. :D
>> I felt better today than I have for a little while.<<
Yay!
>> I think maybe I'll try to switch to tea for the caffeine and quit the energy drinks, <<
Good idea. Even if you add sugar or honey to tea, it's probably nowhere near the sugarbomb that most energy drinks are. When you're trying to stay awake, a sugar crash is not your friend.
https://camillestyles.com/food/best-teas-for-energy/
https://www.thefabulous.co/qa/what-are-the-best-teas-to-drink-in-the-morning-to-replace-coffee/
>> but it's just been hard to adjust to my current work schedule (4:30am-1pm) <<
You have my complete sympathy. I spent 2 years of high school getting up at 5 AM and it sucked, plus college when I got stuck with early classes. With a 2-hour round trip commute. :P
>>but I actually gave in and closed my availability so I won't be scheduled before 6am.<<
Very sensible.
>> I feel bad, like I'm letting them down, but I hope they approve the availability change because I guess it's just too hard on me to manage this schedule and get adequate sleep. I'm sick of relying on an ineffective combination of sleeping pills/NyQuil and energy drinks.<<
You need to protect your health. Those people aren't going to take care of you if you make yourself sick. A lifestyle that needs drugs just to wake up and fall asleep is usually not a healthy one.
>>I didn't go crazy or do much research,<<
That's okay. It's more sustainable to do it a little at a time. Say, look for one new ingredient to try, or foods that do a certain thing.
>> I did some grocery shopping after work and bought stuff for stir-fry and salads. =) I got frozen stir-fry vegetables<<
Go you!
>> and some mushrooms to add because I had read mushrooms were a decent prebiotic with fiber (? I hope I'm not mistaken about that) <<
Yes!
https://www.eatingwell.com/article/9583/5-amazing-health-benefits-of-mushrooms/
One of my favorite mushroom recipes is for taco/tortilla filling, would also work as a topping on baked potatoes, salad, or other things.
2 tablespoons sunflower or olive oil
8 oz. package of mushrooms, diced
1/2 sweet onion, diced
1 pound ground meat (beef or bison work well)
seasoning
Saute onions and mushrooms until they just start to soften. Add ground meat, break it up, and cook. Stir in seasoning. I like sage, juniper berries, and sea salt but you could use taco seasoning or almost any world spice blend. The onions and mushrooms make it so much more juicy and flavorful than plain meat.
>>and I'm going to make it with chicken strips, Korean bbq sauce, kimchi, and rice. I'm trying to help improve our gut health.<<
Also excellent. If you like kimchi, it's fairly easy to ferment at home, there are "instant" versions, and it can be made with many interesting vegetables and spices.
https://kimchimari.com/10-kimchi-recipes-homemade/
>> I got myself some stuff for salads.<<
\o/ Woohoo!
>> Mom has trouble eating them,<<
Because of texture, flavor, ingredients? A huge variety of things are called "salads."
>> so it's mostly for me but I could probably add some of the spring mix to a panini for her.<<
Spring mix is great stuff. Watch for the kind with herbs added.
Another option is sprouts, good both in salads and on sandwiches or paninis. Many varieties beyond alfalfa are now available.
Paninis are good in general, especially if you can find a nice whole wheat, multigrain, or sourdough bread that stands up well to grilling.
https://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/20524/main-dishes/sandwiches/hot/paninis/
>> I bought eggs to boil and some vegan "chicken nuggets" to add a little something extra to my salads.<<
Eggs are great.
Vegan "meat" is iffy. The biggest problem is that it is all ultraprocessed stuff, which is generally bad for people. Think of it as a meat-flavored donut: fine as a treat, but not a staple.
However! There are many delicious meat substitutes among whole foods that you can explore.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140614022510/https://www.onegreenplanet.org/vegan-food/vegetables-that-can-substitute-for-meat/
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321474#15-best-vegan-proteins
Also, if you wish to explore vegan or vegetarian delights, look for recipes from cultures with many vegetarian people. Many Asian cultures are like that, and so is Indian cuisine.
>>We've got some chicken in the freezer that my mom forgot about and we're going to cook that into a big chicken and vegetable soup tomorrow, too, and freeze it in bags and have it there for last-minute meals when we don't feel like cooking (instead of ordering fast food).<<
Excellent choice. :D Many soups are healthy and freeze well. Among my favorite freezer foods are spaghetti sauce and sloppy joe filling. In both cases I chop a bag of produce and put it in a crockpot for hours. The main difference is just how much ground meat I add.
>>Well, I apologize again if that was mind-numbingly boring information. But I wanted to tell you because I appreciate your encouragement in eating healthier. All I needed was the prompt to make better choices here and there.<<
I am so happy to hear that! I love turning people on to new things.
>> It'll probably get easier as I go.<<
It really does, because:
* You learn new foods that you love.
* You figure out where in your area sells healthy ingredients.
* You stock your fridge and pantry with healthier ingredients that make it easy to fix good meals.
* You build up a collection of favorite recipes, cookbooks, etc. that are healthier.
Try new things one or a few at a time. Keep only the foods and recipes that you love and will want to enjoy again. Especially watch for things where one base concept has many variations -- salads, paninis, hummus, grain bowls, there are hundreds of recipes. It's a fun culinary adventure, and the world is full of exciting foods.