Nutrition and Your Brain: Part 1 - Diet and Mental Health

Could what you eat be messing with your mind?
In this episode, Aimee dives deep into how nutrition affects mental well-being, revealing the hidden connections between what’s on your plate and what’s on your mind. She highlights how hydration, blood sugar balance, and anti-inflammatory foods play critical roles in brain health. Aimee also discusses research pointing to the pitfalls of ultra-processed foods and artificial sweeteners and breaks down why a Mediterranean-style diet packed with veggies, fruits, fish and quality proteins can boost your mood and mental clarity. Get ready for some eye-opening insights and practical, bite-sized tips!

Key Takeaways:

• Hydration and Brain Function: Staying hydrated is crucial as the brain consists of 75% water, which is vital for optimal cognitive functioning.
• Blood Sugar Balance: Managing metabolic health can prevent extreme fluctuations in blood sugar, which are linked to mood swings, brain fog, and anxiety.
• Impact of Ultra-Processed Foods: Diets high in ultra-processed foods are associated with higher incidences of depression and anxiety, while nutrient-rich diets reduce these risks.
• Artificial Sweeteners: Research indicates a potential link between artificial sweeteners, especially aspartame, and aggravated depressive symptoms.
• Mediterranean Diet Benefits: Consuming a diet rich in produce, berries, fish, and whole grains can significantly reduce depressive symptoms and support overall mental health.

Resources:

Episode 31: Can You Stress Your Way Into Diabetes?
Episode 33: How Dehydration Hacks Your Health

Economist Article that inspired this episode

Find Research Citations and Transcript at Blasphemous Nutrition on Substack

Work with Aimee

Photography by: Dai Ross Photography

Podcast Cover Art: Lilly Kate Creative

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Transcript

MacBook Air Microphone: 0:00

There's been a lot of important discussion about brain health and for good reason. Worldwide one in eight people struggle with mental illness. And the United States, this is one in five adults. Less than half of these individuals receive treatments. And up to a third will end up developing a substance abuse disorder and their attempt to simply cope with life. Our traditional means of receiving therapy and medication. It's reported to be less than 50% effective. So additional support for this population is sorely needed. In today's episode, I'm going to share with you the profound impact our nutrition choices have on our mental health and give you actionable tips that you can begin to implement. As soon as your next meal, this will not just support your physical health. But your mental health as well. You won't want to miss this. Welcome back to blasphemous nutrition, everyone. I'm your host. Aimee and someone wants told me I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. It was actually a really shiny spatula. Still it tracks well, with my perspective on breakfast. Mental health challenges have reached crisis levels in a number of nations. And with the current standard of care, being really difficult to access for some and ineffective for others. I maintain, we need radical shifts in a multitude of different areas of modern life to sufficiently address this crisis. What we eat is one such facet that can make a profound impact. I am, of course not stating that food is the sole answer. But I strongly believe it can have positive impacts on existing standard of care from improved absorption of medications to increased emotional resiliency that is needed to make changes in one's life. Our mental health issues, stem from a mix of genetic and environmental factors. Nutrition is among those modifiable environmental factors. Our brain uses up a massive amount of the required energy that we need each day. And the nutrients that we consume influence both the structure of our brain as well as how well it functions. A couple of weeks ago in my stress and diabetes episode I discussed the impact of blood sugar on mood and brain fog. And I also drew the same correlation in last week's hydration episode. If you haven't yet listened to those, make sure you do. I've linked to them in the show notes below. These are just some examples of how, what we consume can directly impact our mood. Now, when it comes to nourishing the brain, the great news is that what is good for your heart what is good for your bones, what's good for your hormones and all the other organs in your body is also good for your brain. So we don't need to do anything crazy, fancy just for the brain and what you may be doing to address other health concerns already. I may have the unintended consequence of also supporting a healthy brain today and as you age. Now the big rocks that I think are the most prevalent, right. I have a significant impact and our most common are hydration and blood sugar balance. Our brain is 75% water and all metabolic processes in the body require water. So we don't want to downregulate your mood or your cognitive sharpness because your body has other more important things to do with that water. Staying hydrated is crucial for all the processes in the body to function at optimal levels. Now, when it comes to managing your metabolic health, I think this is where most of us are faltering. 49% of Americans. Yes. Nearly half are walking around with chronically elevated blood sugar that puts them at risk for diabetes and 11.6% of that population. As of 2021 has already been diagnosed as diabetic. Now I can tell you from where I sat during the pandemic, that diabetes diagnoses exploded over the last four years. So our most recent data will be significantly under reported for what is actually true today. It is an excess of energy, usually in the form of carbohydrate. That is at the root of the majority of metabolic health disorders. Just like people from the TV show, hoarders are living in homes, which are dangerously overstuffed. So too, are our cells struggling to cope with life under the burden of what some people call energy toxicity. Some obvious symptoms of energy toxicity is chronic inflammation, fatty liver disease, chronically elevated fasting glucose levels, fatigue. Unexplained weight gain, resistance to weight loss, atherosclerosis. These are literally the body accumulating plaques, fats, and sugars that it cannot get rid of. And while the bulk of people who struggle with these conditions are probably consuming more processed foods than their bodies can handle. I do also see this happen when people consume an excess of energy from healthy sources as well. Or sometimes people will transition from. Kind of like a standard American diet to a much healthier diet, but they don't see results. And this is because the overall ratio of macros hasn't changed enough to allow the body to rid of that excess accumulation. Their diet quality is higher overall. But. They may still be consuming more carbohydrate, even from healthy sources than what their struggling system can tolerate. When your body doesn't function well with the amount of carbohydrate it's receiving, your mood can take a direct hit. Extreme fluctuations in blood sugar can cause brain fog, drowsiness, mood swings, and anxiety. There are also signs in the research connecting inflammation from other diseases such as auto-immune disease or type two diabetes that leads to an increase in mental health struggles as the brain becomes burdened with this inflammation process, these inflammatory cytokines that can directly lead to mood change. On a more extreme end. We see ketogenic diets having a long successful history in treating seizures. Now, this was the only treatment available prior to seizure medication. And it is still used for some people who do not respond well to seizure medications. The field of nutritional psychiatry is also seeing positive outcomes with low carbohydrate or ketogenic diets in some cases of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. This is a really, really new area of exploration and admittedly one, I have not taken a deep dive into. But I do know there's a lot that we don't yet understand about why this works so well, nor does it reliably work in everybody who tries it. But it does reinforce the impact that our glucose levels have on the brain and a brain health. And it offers additional options for some people who may be struggling with those health challenges? Now another area of impact on the brain is the gut. Most of our mood chemicals called neurotransmitters are actually made in our digestive tract. We have gut feelings for a very real reason. And now it's backed by science. Anything which disrupts the health of our gut has the potential to impact your mood. There is scads of research showing the connection between gut disorders and mood disorders. And I'm totally happy to expound upon that in a future episode, if you'd like, just send me a message and let me know. A diet that's lacking in a lot of fiber and phytonutrients from vegetables and fruit. Doesn't support a healthy gut microbiome. And over time, this can lead to alterations in the overall environment of the gut that increases inflammation and can impact our mood. And some foods, whether they be additives or maybe some foods that we have an intolerance to can agitate the lining of the gut and trigger the immune system to respond, sending a cascade of inflammation throughout the body, perpetuating gut disruptions and sending those inflammatory cytokines all the way to the brain. And that can have a major impact on our mood. Now I first experienced this fresh out of undergrad. When I started practicing as a nutrition coach, one of my very first clients who I'll call Debbie, told me that wheat made her depressed and she avoided it for this reason. Now, this was about five years before going gluten-free was on anybody's radar. It was a while ago. I'd never heard of this. Nobody in my undergrad program had ever discussed this. And you know, I was 24 years old and knew I was inexperienced enough to know that I didn't know a lot. So I never questioned this, even though it sounded really wild to me. I simply accepted it as true for her. Later on. I discovered I also had a gluten intolerance. I was taking a gluten-free cooking class to kind of learn how to cope with all that. And I heard other people who had gluten intolerance or celiac disease talking about how something like eating a piece of toast or having a serving of pasta would make them totally unable to recall the second language that they knew fluently or render them incapable of doing simple math problems. And they talked about how much better their brain worked when they avoided gluten altogether. That was wild. Like that seemed totally unfathomable to me, but it confirmed what that client, debbie, had told me earlier on. Gluten and other food intolerances can impact our brain. Then just a couple of years after this. I had an experience at a beer festival that drove the point home in such a personal way. I knew I was intolerant to wheat, but I was struggling to avoid it a hundred percent. And I'm sure you can totally understand that. Right. When I ate wheat, it made me bloated and constipated and you know, that was uncomfortable, but there were some situations that I deemed as being justifiable for having it, regardless of the outcome. I had a friend visiting and we went to a beer festival. I'm not a beer drinker. I've never really cared for beer. There were a couple I discovered in adulthood that didn't taste so bad, but it was never something I gravitated to. So I didn't have a lot of experience with beer. Right. And I had several samples of craft beer on what was probably an empty stomach, now that I think back to that day. So my absorption of the alcohol would have been pretty rapid. A couple hours after we went to the beer festival. I had a completely uninstigated severe crash and emotions that left me paranoid weepy and extremely confused because I had no idea what the hell was going on. And this came way out of left field. This had never happened to me before drinking alcohol on an empty stomach. And my friend who was still with me told me it was probably the beer, but I didn't believe him. I was like, whatever. I don't know. That's not a thing. I don't think so. So he called his friend who is a researcher, and she confirmed what he said and explained to me that the inflammation that my body was having from the gluten in the beer had crossed the blood brain barrier and led to a significant drop in neuro-transmitters. And this is what I was experiencing. Coming from her. I totally accepted it as truth. And she explained it in a way that I understood because she had that science background. And I understood enough about the gut and the body. Too. See how this could be what was going on. And when I recovered from this episode, I went to the research myself. And learned what I did not have the curiosity to explore eight years earlier. That food intolerances can have massive impacts on our mental wellbeing. If you have a risk of personal experience with depression. Avoiding ultra processed foods is going to be an important step. There was a Brazilian study during the COVID pandemic that looked at depression and anxiety scores and noted that they were higher among people who consumed ultra processed foods versus people who consumed minimally processed foods. I appreciate this study that much more because it comes from Brazil where access to adequate and nourishing food is actually written into their constitutional law. Some food banks in Brazil actually reject foods that contain an excess of sugar, salt, or fat. So this means we can't say that this population is subjected to the same economic situation in the United States, where those who are economically disadvantaged and are more likely to experience depression and anxiety also live in a country where processed food is cheaper than fresh food and therefore easier for them to access This isn't the case in Brazil. So this confounding variables, not one that we need to consider muddying the water, the way that we may have had the study been conducted in the United States. Now, this said most research that is done in this area takes things like socioeconomic status and education on mood and other health outcomes and kind of teases it out of the data before they draw any conclusions. At least research that's done with any kind of integrity knows that this needs to be done before reaching a conclusion. Additionally, there are larger Norwegian population studies that show higher amounts of self-reported anxiety and people who consume more processed foods. And people who consume a healthier, more nutrient dense diet, which was defined as including more whole grains like rye and barley and oats, berries, root vegetables, fatty fish, cabbage, and beans. They reported less depression. Then individuals who did not consume these foods. So in looking at the impact of diet on mood. There are also interventional studies that show. What we eat impacts how we feel. Collective findings from various studies suggest a strong link between our diet quality and depression. Most research looks at something resembling the Mediterranean diet, which in population studies is associated with reduced depression. And in intervention studies. A Mediterranean diet can significantly reduce depressive symptoms and improve overall mental health. Now, these studies are often pretty small in number, and they're not as statistically powerful as observation studies. But they are a direct intervention with an outcome and they hold a signal that suggests something real. Is there. In 2017, there was a trial called the smiles trial that was published and it got a lot of attention. In this study, people in the middle of a major depressive episode, met with either a dietician for dietary support. Or they received social support by having a trained personnel from the research team, engage with them for the same amount of time. As, those who were receiving dietary support and basically had, um, you know, neutral conversations that were of interest to the research participant, or if they weren't much of a talker, they would play board games or card games with them. The objective here was to provide the same amount of time and schedule of social interaction that the dietary cohort was receiving. And allowing these participants to have an engaging and overall positive experience to negate the impact of, you know, basically talking to people and seeing people has on depression itself. So the social support group was effectively acting as a control group in this situation. Those in the dietary support group who were supported in transitioning to a more Mediterranean style diet showed a decrease in symptoms with remission of their depressive episode. Being achieved in 32% of the dietary support group versus 8% of the control group receiving social support. I mean, that's pretty damn significant. Another study of 101 young adults, which they defined as age 17 to 35. Who had depressive symptoms showed a reduction in depression after just three weeks of dietary change. In this study, the dietary intervention cohort watched a short nutrition video that they had access to for the duration of the study. And they were given instructions on how to alter their diet, to include five servings of vegetables, two to three fruits, a day, three whole grain servings, a day, three daily protein servings from lean meat or plant sources, including fish three times a week. Three servings of unsweetened dairy daily and three tablespoons of nuts and seeds per day, as well as two tablespoons of olive oil each day and a teaspoon of anti-inflammatory spices, specifically turmeric and cinnamon on most days of the week. They were also instructed to reduce consumption of refined carbohydrates, sugar, soft drinks, and fatty or processed meats. A sample diet plan was given to sort of give them an idea of what this would look like. Right. And some sample packs of nut butter or spices and olive oil were given to the dietary cohort to increase adherence. Now adherence was ascertained at three weeks using a questionnaire about what their diet looked like currently, but then backed up by spectrum photometry, which uses light to measure carotinoids levels in the skin and therefore confirm or refute their self reported changes in produce intake. In just three weeks participants in the diet group reported significant dietary changes, which was confirmed by the spectrophotometer. And that was not reported or seen in the control group. They also reported significantly lower depression scores than they had had three weeks earlier. And this is the super cool thing. Those results were still maintained at a three month follow-up phone call. There's a great deal of research out there on this. And when dialing down to key nutrients that are helpful anti-oxidants and vegetables appear to play a pretty significant role as do fish oils. Uh, Turkish study of inpatients in a mental health center reported low dietary intake. Uh, vitamins, a B6 B12 C folate, and minerals such as magnesium and zinc. Blood work taken on this research group also showed lower levels of folate and B12 in the depressed individuals. Then the baseline control group that they were compared against. The depressed cohort also reported low intake of both fish and produce. So looking a little closer at some of these nutrients, we can see the role that they play in brain health. Produce and fish oils are very anti-inflammatory and can reduce the inflammatory compounds in the body that disrupt our neuro-transmitters in the brain. These neuro-transmitters are like dopamine serotonin, GABA, right? Those may sound familiar to you. All B vitamins also play a role in either creating neuro-transmitters or balancing or neuro transmitters. Magnesium plays a role in neurological health and magnesium deficiency can lead to depression due to insufficient availability of magnesium for neurons because your body is going to preferentially. Put that magnesium towards. The relaxation of muscles after a contraction over protecting your brain. There are case studies in the literature of depression being alleviated with magnesium. Or a fish oil or folate supplementation alone. But because our causes of depression and the amount of nutrients that are impactful in brain health are so numerous. I wouldn't necessarily advocate for trying to supplement your way out of this. As a primary course of action. Iron deficiency also has an impact on mood. And it is essential for the production of dopamine, serotonin as well as nor epinephrin and iron delivers oxygen to our brain. It also is needed to myelinate our neurons. And along with magnesium deficiency, our neurons in our brains struggle when we have iron deficiency. Now at the very least it would really be who've health practitioners to test for these nutrient deficiencies. When working with patients, struggling with depression. Especially when B vitamin and iron intake is lacking in so much of the population. Now, I don't want to spend this entire episode sharing research papers with you. So if you're one of those people who likes to go spelunking and pub med, make sure to head over to my sub stack and you can take a look at all of the research that I looked at when I put this episode together. oh, wait. So, before I move on, there's also, there's this crazy ass piece of research that I had to share. Um, I want to highlight a study on one specific aspect of processed foods that has an impact on mood that isn't often looked at or considered. And that's artificial sweeteners. I think this is especially important because of the link between metabolic health and mood disorders and that a lot of people with insulin resistance or pre-diabetes or diabetes. Are going to be making a shift to diet soft drinks or sugar-free foods as they attempt to control their blood sugar. But if those individuals struggle with mental health issues, knowing the impact that artificial sweeteners has on your mood is going to be extremely important. There is some research suggesting the artificial sweeteners impact our mood and aggravate depressive symptoms in humans, as well as rodents. So it's something to consider, particularly if you consume a great deal of sugar-free products or you struggle with low mood or depressive symptoms. Now, this has mostly been studied with aspartame, which is known as equal or NutraSweet in the marketplace. But if you're looking at an ingredient label, it will be listed as aspartame. Now one study I found from 1993. Kind of blindsided me, um, which is why I have to leave you with this piece of research before I totally move on. It's really hard to be surprised by research nowadays, but this double blind study from 1993 intended to look at 40 individuals, but the international review board had to hold the study. After 13 people completed it. Because the severity of their depressive responses in those with a history of depression was so severe. In this double-blind study, people were given 30 milligrams of aspartame per kilogram of body weight. I crunched the numbers on this for a reference and this equates to 1800 milligrams for 130 pound or 60 kilogram person. Or 2,700 milligrams for a 90 kilogram or 200 pound person. Now a can of diet soda, according to the internet contains about 200 milligrams of aspartame. So we're looking at the risk of severe depressive symptoms being more prevalent in heavy diet soda drinkers who consume eight cans a day or more, or in children who are physically much smaller than most adults. Now what the study cannot ascertain and what will probably never be ascertained due to ethical concerns going forward is whether or not smaller, more typically consumed doses of aspartame impact those who have a predisposition to depression but perhaps to a lesser degree that is easier to overlook but still significant enough to impact their quality of life. I'll also suggest that we be. Extra conservative about giving our kids artificial sweeteners in an attempt to reduce their sugar intake, because this might be trading one problem for another. Aspartame or NutraSweet is also implicated in research to induce seizure activity in children who have epilepsy as well as an animal models. That said there's also research showing this correlation doesn't exist. So we definitely can't say it's a thing. But I have had clients, uh, who have worked in neurology or worked with neurological physicians who have said that. Equal and other artificial sweeteners are banned from the practice. Like they're not allowed to be in the office because of the signals that are being shown in research, that it can have an impact on the brain. This is one area where each person needs to take their own health history and their health goals into consideration to make the best decision for themselves when it comes to artificial sweeteners and their brain. Now I also want to point out that it's strictly aspartame as the culprit in the research that I looked at. I didn't look at other common non-caloric sweeteners out there. Most of the research that has been done was in aspartame. More recent research, however, on ultra processed foods as a food group, and then on the risk of depression that was from 2023. Still suggest that artificially sweetened beverages by themselves lead to more significant depressive symptoms. So newer brands may not be better than, uh, what was the most popular in the nineties and early two thousands. So now we've taken a look at the impact of ultra processed foods, as well as nutrient depletion on the brain. The more, we rely on processed foods, the less nutrients that we get to support our brain health. And we increased consumption of compounds that might directly aggravate inflammation through gut changes or additives that can impact our mood. Now it's not realistic for most of us to go fully on an unprocessed diet. But focusing on making more changes that support brain health will crowd out problematic foods and have the bonus of putting a positive framework around the whole project. Moving forward, you are eating to support your brain. You're not avoiding things which are bad for your brain. A diet that is made up mostly of foods that you're pre world war II ancestors would have recognized, comes with vitamins and minerals that keep the brain healthy. And they often have a lower glycemic load, so that crazy spike and crash in glucose, that impacts mood is less likely to be a problem. Additionally, the antioxidants and fiber in these foods are going to have a very positive impact on the gut microbiome. And these foods, lack stabilizers, gums, and additives, which can irritate the gut lining leading to chronic inflammation and microbiome dysfunction via gut irritation so to make it easier to choose these better foods for your brain. I want you to ask yourself if you're a depression era, grandmother, however many greats back, she would have been. Would have chosen that food. Or would've had access to that food to prepare for her family. If it's something that she wouldn't have recognized or something that wasn't around when she was cooking meals. Strive to make it a rarely to sometimes food rather than a common food in your cupboard. Now, there are some things that are going to be tricky like bread. If bread was a part of your family culture, your ancestors probably made it by hand using water, yeast and flour. So it isn't going to be a plastic wrap store, bought bread with stabilizers. This is where kind of We have to put our thinking cap on, right. And think like our ancestors and not just put all bread in the same category because not all bread is the same. Also. Get in touch with your body and see how it feels about your food choices. Are there foods that make you feel sluggish or meals that give you brain fog? You may want to start staying away from them. Practicing mindfulness and body awareness during your meals can help you notice when your body is full, as well as when it's hungry and that can help you to avoid over consumption of even healthy foods. When you are choosing foods that come in a box or foods that are shelf stable. Go for the ones that contain fewer ingredients and ingredients, you recognize. Some degree of processing is largely unavoidable in the modern world, so when it comes in a box, Just kind of give it a glance over and make sure you recognize the things that are in there. Now there are going to be some ingredients that are commonly used in packaged foods, which are harmless. Uh, for instance, if you look at a box of cereal, that's fortified with vitamins. they won't say like vitamin E they'll say, um, like D alpha tocopherol or something like that, which most people would not recognize as vitamin E. So this isn't like a a hundred percent foolproof system, but. It does simplify it and generally puts you in the right direction. And I will say this time and time again, when you are sourcing your meals, you want to ask yourself those two questions. Where is my produce. And where is my protein? These two questions will allow you to find foods that support stable blood sugar, and offer the most nutrients per bite. To support neuro-transmitter and gut health. Additionally be sure to stay hydrated. This is easy. This is cheap. Get numerous water bottles and put them in all the places you tend to hang out. If you forget to drink water. You can also drink herbal teas, which is often more appealing in the winter time. Or other hydrating fluids, but drink liquids until your urine is a pale yellow. If you hate the taste of water, you can try adding some frozen berries or slices of your favorite. Citrus fruit with maybe some herbs like mint or Rosemary or even basil and make your own spa water. It adds a level of Schuzh and fun to what could otherwise seem like another boring ass task to put on your to-do list because it's good for you. I want to conclude this episode by thanking listener, Katie white, for sharing the original economist article that inspired this podcast episode. That article is found in the show notes. If you're wanting to take a look at that. And remember to head on over to sub stack. If you want to look at all of the research that went into this episode. I do hope that today's episode has not been just informative for you, but has also empowered you to invest in your brain health. If you struggle implementing some of the strategies that I've discussed that you know are necessary to feed your brain. Well, click on the link that says work with Aimee in the show notes and schedule a free call to discuss your concerns. Together, we can create a truly customized plan to support your health goals that you can sustain for the long haul. Until next time Blaphemous buddies.

35:18

Any and all information shared here is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is not to be misconstrued as offering medical advice. Listening to this podcast does not constitute a provider client relationship. Note, I'm not a doctor nor a nurse, and it is imperative that you utilize your brain and your medical team to make the best decisions for your own health. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked to this podcast are at the user's own risk. No information nor resources provided are intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Be a smart human and do not disregard or postpone obtaining medical advice for any medical condition you may have. Seek the assistance of your healthcare team for any such conditions and always do so before making any changes to your medical, nutrition, or health plan.