One thing that I have been focusing on during this journey of building healthy habits is expanding my culinary skills. Put simply, food is fuel! Our brains are in constant need of fuel because they’re always on! A big part of the efficiency of this brain fuel is what our food is made up of. What you eat affects your mood as well as the structure and function of your brain! Harvard Health’s article Nutritional psychiatry: Your brain on food uses a really great analogy here.
Like an expensive car, your brain functions best when it gets only premium fuel. Eating high-quality foods that contain lots of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants nourishes the brain and protects it from oxidative stress — the “waste” (free radicals) produced when the body uses oxygen, which can damage cells. Unfortunately, just like an expensive car, your brain can be damaged if you ingest anything other than premium fuel. If substances from “low-premium” fuel (such as what you get from processed or refined foods) get to the brain, it has little ability to get rid of them. Diets high in refined sugars, for example, are harmful to the brain. In addition to worsening your body’s regulation of insulin, they also promote inflammation and oxidative stress. Multiple studies have found a correlation between a diet high in refined sugars and impaired brain function — and even a worsening of symptoms of mood disorders, such as depression.
HARVARD HEALTH
So how does food affect how you feel? As explained by Harvard Health “Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that helps regulate sleep and appetite, mediate moods, and inhibit pain.” What’s really cool about this is that 95% of your serotonin is produced in your gastrointestinal tract! Due to this, the GI tract is lined with billions of neurons and bacteria. Thinking about it this way, your digestive system not only digests your food but greatly affects your mood. With this considered, when we are eating foods that upset our stomachs and interrupt the regular workings of the GI tract, it’s no surprise that our mood is affected by that. According to the article Food for your mood: How what you eat affects your mental health “The connection between diet and emotions stems from the close relationship between your brain and your gastrointestinal tract, often called the “second brain.”
Lately, I have been really trying to incorporate whole and unprocessed foods into my diet. Personally, I know that processed and high-sugar foods affect my digestion and overall mood. Narrowing down other parts of my diet that affect my gut has been hard to do. Since I am a university student who is currently unemployed, there’s not a lot of wiggle room with money. Sometimes it’s easy to say “oh I’ll take this’ ‘ while walking down the snack line at the grocery store because you know it’s a quick pick-me-up and is relatively inexpensive. Finding a balance between buying foods that I can save time with at an inexpensive price vs. ones that I know will take time and may be more expensive at times is no easy task (and I know I’m not alone with feeling that way). I find that the easiest way to find this balance (for me) has been meal prepping which is something I’ll go more into in the next blog post! This cycle can be really hard to get out of because sugar causes inflammation in your gut. What’s interesting about this is that while it feeds the ‘bad’ bacteria in your gut, it temporarily spikes the ‘feel good’ transmitters (ex. dopamine) at the same time! Eating sugary foods causes a really hard cycle to get out of because it can be quite addicting and causes ‘crashes’ that are not great to deal with for some people. As Food for your mood: How what you eat affects your mental health explains, “When you stick to a diet of healthy food, you’re setting yourself up for fewer mood fluctuations, an overall happier outlook and an improved ability to focus.”
Sources:
MD, E. S. (2020, March 26). Nutritional psychiatry: Your brain on food. Harvard Health. Retrieved March 2, 2022, from https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/nutritional-psychiatry-your-brain-on-food-201511168626
Food & your mood: How food affects mental health – aetna: Foods that help your brain health. Aetna. (n.d.). Retrieved March 2, 2022, from https://www.aetna.com/health-guide/food-affects-mental-health.html
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Emma Humphrey
I am loving reading your blog! You put so much effort into your write-ups, and I can see how beneficial it is. You can reflect on this in the future and see the progress you have made, as well as find tools that will work for you in the future. Super interesting blog! Great work.