The most effective drugs for mental health may be in your storage room
Food directly or indirectly affects your brain. When food is broken down by the microbiota into fermented and digested substances, its components directly affect neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, dopamine and GABA (γ-aminobutyric acid), which enter the brain and change the way you think and feel . When food is broken down, its components can also pass through the intestinal wall into the blood, and certain metabolites can also act on the brain in this way.
The most profound effect of food on the brain is through its effect on intestinal bacteria. Some foods promote the growth of beneficial bacteria, while others inhibit this growth. Because of this influence, food is some of the most effective mental health drugs, and dietary interventions sometimes achieve similar results to specially designed drugs, at a fraction of the price, and almost no side effects.
On the other hand, food can also make you sad-certain food categories and eating patterns can have a negative impact on your gut microbiota and mental health. Eating healthy whole foods ensures that your brain is working at maximum efficiency.
The idea of using food as a mental health drug is at the core of nutritional psychiatry. In my opinion, finding meaningful and lasting solutions to mental health problems through simple and sustainable lifestyle changes is essential.
We have come a long way since severely mentally ill patients were confined to psychiatric hospitals or hospitals without much understanding of their suffering. But mental health is still in crisis. (More than 40 million Americans face mental health problems—more than the populations of New York and Florida combined.) Mental disorders are one of the most common and costly causes of disability. Depression and anxiety are on the rise. No matter what age group, suicide is the main content on the list of leading causes of death. No matter how many people deny this, we are all in a state of mental health. Finding treatments that help people manage their emotions, cognition, and stress levels has always been challenging.
Historically, we have turned to evidence-based medicine and talk therapy for specific conditions. For example, for people who are depressed, we might try selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors like Prozac. For people in panic, we may use cognitive behavioral therapy. These types of treatments are still widely used and may be effective. But for some people, the positive effect only lasts for a short period of time and does not completely eliminate the symptoms. Sometimes patients will stop taking the drug due to side effects. At other times, they are afraid of becoming "dependent" on drugs and demand to stop taking them. Some patients who came to see me did not meet the criteria for diseases such as depression or anxiety. They struggle with symptoms, but not enough to warrant drug intervention.
My own view of where we went wrong is this: psychiatric diagnoses are not statistically valid, and conditions do not have biomarkers for specific diseases. "Diagnosis" is just a list of symptoms. We assume that when a person has psychological symptoms, the problem is only in the brain. Obviously, other organs, such as the intestines, play a role in our thinking and feeling. We need to examine the whole person and their way of life in order to treat them better.
This problem is bigger than psychiatry and extends to medicine as a whole. Despite the large number of diet-related health problems, it may sound far-fetched, but many patients do not listen to the dietary advice of doctors, let alone psychiatrists. The medical school and residency program will not teach students how to talk to patients about dietary choices. Nutritional education for doctors is limited.
Fortunately, we are moving towards a moment in healthcare, when medicine is no longer strictly dependent on prescriptions and monotherapy. Because the public has access to a wealth of medical knowledge, patients are more capable and informed than ever before. It feels as if all my colleagues have experienced similar exercises in their fields of expertise, and patients are eager to explore various ways to make themselves feel better. One of my successful cases in nutritional therapy was the recommendation of a colleague of infectious diseases. On another occasion, a colleague of orthopedics contacted me to ask for more data about turmeric as an anti-inflammatory drug because a patient with severe knee pain wanted to postpone surgery until he tried this nutritional intervention.
In psychiatry, we finally begin to talk about the power of food as a mental health drug. There is more and more research on how the microbiome and food affect mental health. In 2015, Jerome Sarris and his colleagues determined that “nutrition medicine” is becoming the mainstream of psychiatry. The goal of nutritional psychiatry is to provide mental health professionals with the information they need so that they can provide patients with powerful and practical advice on what to eat. This does not obscure the importance of working with your doctor, because medication and appropriate treatment are still part of the journey to improve mental health. A better diet will help, but this is only one aspect of treatment. You can't get rid of depression or anxiety (in fact, trying to do this will make things worse). Food will not relieve severe depression or thoughts of suicide or homicide. If you have thoughts of harming yourself or others, be sure to seek treatment in the emergency room or contact your doctor.
It is very important to take care of your mental health through strategies of mindfulness, meditation, exercise, and proper sleep. There is a lot of literature on these topics, both ancient and modern (sometimes a combination of the two!), and I encourage you to explore them on your own. Having said that, in addition to receiving the guidance of a doctor and encouraging mental health in other ways, you should also support your treatment by paying attention to your diet and food. The relationship between food, emotions and anxiety has received increasing attention.
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