Mental Health Matters 🧠 - Nutrition and Mental Health

What's up folks? Welcome back to another episode of mental health matters. I'm Evan, your resident mental health and addiction therapist. This is a live stream. We're going to be talking about issues surrounding mental health addiction. I'll answer any questions you have this week. I'm bringing a topic every other week. I do an Ask Me Anything episode where I answer questions that people send me through email, through social media, but also anytime, anywhere, you can ask me a question when you pop in the live stream.

I'll do my best to answer it. Also, you can put things in the community feed. You could ask a question there, so feel free to do that. But today, I'm going to bring a topic and that is how nutrition can have an impact on mental health. So I'm going to dive a little bit more into that. And the reason I wanted to look into this is I've always kind of been a skeptic on nutrition and mental health and nutrition in general because of just how much conflicting information is out there. There's so much whether it's like influ encers, but even professionals, doctors, nutritionists that give you this really disparate information.

For example, a more vegetarian diet versus people who swear by the carnivore diet or the ket o diet and all these other things. And as a therapist, it's not like, we don't like learn that much about this. And it's not my area of focus. So I really wanted to know, well, how much of a benefit does nutrition actually have? What's up, jewels, car jazz? What's going on? You know, I'd love to hear your experience on this as well. Do you notice when you have a different type of diet that you overall feel better?

So I'll share with you what I learned on my deep dive into this with some of the research is showing and how making certain tweaks in our diet can really be beneficial. So here are the reasons number one, certain types of diets that are higher in omega three fatty acids, also certain types of amino acids really boost your brain functioning in general, your overall brain health and release of neurotransmitters. And that's the key here, because things like antidepressants, but also natural things like exercise boost those neurotransmitters, things like serotonin or dopamine, certain types of endorphins.

So like serotonin is like the happy chemicals feeling content. Dopamine is feeling a sense of pleasure. Endorphins are also contentment, but like relief of pain, kind of that like runner's high people talk about. So there's actually a tangible benefit of omega threes and those amino acids now omega threes, you could find in things like fish, certain like fish fats, but amino acids, you could find in, you know, meat, certain types of protein, you could also get these in supplements as well, fish oils and that type of thing.

Also flax seeds are pretty good for both and we'll talk about the benefits of those too. But yeah, let's hear for those coming in check in. How's it going? What's going on in your life? Let's chat. Do I have some coffee a little bit? Coffee could be beneficial too. So that's one benefit, the next benefit we find. What was number two? Number two? Well, let's go ahead and talk about. Okay, so there's that inflammation. Now, we've heard more and more about inflammation in the body. Now inflammation is a natural response that we need to have for healing injuries, for fighting certain types of disease that puts the focus on certain areas of our body and they become inflamed.

So now this is not necessarily a bad thing. However, when you have more chronic inflammation, that could have a negative impact on just about anything. Again, I'm not a nutritionist here or a doctor, but this is just general information that you could look up that I find to be more reliable for more reliable sources and whatnot. But that 's pretty well known chronic inflammation can have a negative impact. So there are certain foods that lower inflammation and really here it's kind of more foods you want to avoid.

So here we have a positive and negative action. The negative action is removing certain foods and the positive action is increasing them. So these go hand in hand, if you eat less of these, you're probably need more of these. This is pretty basic stuff. I mean, pretty much intuitively, people know what's going to be a little bit better than not. There are some controversies there, for example, like meat intake and it's a better fate, grass-fed beef or is that going to make a difference or is milk really that bad or dairy products that bad?

So there's a lot of conflicting info. But in general, we know that for chronic inflammation, they're a big issue is those simple carbohydrates, highly refined foods, highly processed foods that have higher levels of fat, saturated fat, sugar, those things could definitely lead to more inflammation in the body. And then some of the health, and so we'll talk about some of those foods that are generally deemed to be healthier for the body and for the mind. So there's really a deep connection there.

So I'll end with that in a minute. What's up, Nick? How you doing? Nick hit a pie. So the other benefit that were the other nutritional variable that is good to put some attention and focus on is our gut microbiome. We have trillions of bacteria in our gut, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but having a healthy balance of what they call the good bacteria, feeding that is a huge, huge, has a huge connection to call it like the brain gut access. There's more, apparently more serotonin produced in the gut than even in your brain.

So when we look at certain foods that are rich in probiotics, certain types of yogurt, another one I know of is fermented foods, things like kimchi, or some other fermented foods, maybe certain types of vinegars, but like pick led, there's certain pickled foods that could be high in probiotics. But again, you have supplements for all these. Jewels says, I find when I eat more balanced diet, my stomach intestines feel better, which makes me feel better overall. When I eat greasy, sugary foods, I feel blah, and so does my body.

Yeah, I feel the same way. And I think sometimes maybe like I don't notice like, you know, I don't necessarily equate the two, but it does have an impact of like, I'm feeling well done, but I don't think of it being nutrition where it very well could be and is sometimes. So that is another benefit. Let's see, there was one more, but yeah, again, all these really do improve mood, so depression and anxiety. So that is something worth focusing on . And the last one is just how your physical health impacts your mental health.

So we can't, I've always known we can't separate these two things. When we are overall physically healthier, we are overall mentally healthier. Now, some examples is chronic pain, chronic illness. You know, when we are overall healthier, it's likely that we're going to have less of these. And you can see why being chronically, you know, you know, how you feel like when you're sick, you're never that happy, you know, you're sitting at home at bed, kind of sad, and you're limited in what you can do.

Well, imagine feeling that all the time, you know, chronic illness, chronic pain, like 30% of people struggle with it to a certain degree. And it's something we don't talk about nearly enough. You know, I have a whole series on here. You could take a look, try to dig back and find it on managing chronic pain and chronic illness. So you could check that out. So a couple of diets that I've found that are pretty well known to be, to lead to better health outcomes are like the Mediterranean diet, the Dash diet.

So these are ones that are, you know, higher in things like fish, you know, versus more saturated fats in, you know, meats like beef, chicken, etc. So usually saturated fats or something that are like solid at room temperature versus certain types of fats that are liquid. So for example, olive oil. So foods, you know, recipes rich in olive oil versus in, you know, things like butter, certain types of dairy. You know, so those are really, you know, beneficial for your overall health for longevity.

And then just like fruit, the more fruits, the more vegetables you can get. Leafy greens, certain types of potatoes, you know, that are really rich in nutrients. I mean, the more of those you eat the better. Now the takeaway, we all have our guilty pleasures. That's okay. But we just want to limit that as much as possible. Don't make that like a regular staple. You know, getting diet and then I really much an exercise and there's nutrition. But you know, I have videos here on the benefits of exercise.

I'm going to do a video on this really kind of going deeper into it. So that should be out in a few months. Anyway, folks, it's been real. If anyone has any last comments, let me know. But remember, I got a ton of videos on here and a ton of different topics. Go ahead , watch those comments, like ask me questions, put questions in the community feed. And next week we'll be doing an AMA episode. So thanks for those who participated. It was good to see you, good to check in. And I will see you next week.

All right.