Nutritional Psychiatry: Your Brain on Food

Nutritional Psychiatry: Your Brain on Food - Think of. Your brain is always "on". Watch your thoughts and movements, breathing and heartbeat, his senses - he works hard 24/7, even while you sleep.  

This means that your brain needs a constant supply of fuel. The "fuel" comes from the food you eat - and what is the fuel that makes all the difference. In short, what you eat directly affects the structure and function of the brain and ultimately your mood.
 
As a luxury car, your brain works better when the Premium fuel is achieved only. The consumption of high quality foods that contain lots of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants nourishes and protects the brain against oxidative stress - the "waste" (free radicals) occurs when the body uses oxygen, which can damage cells.

Unfortunately, as a luxury car, the brain can be damaged in case of ingestion of premium fuel than anything. If fuel substances "low premium" (obtained from processed or refined foods) reach the brain, has little ability to get rid of them.  

Diets high in refined sugars, for example, are harmful to the brain. In addition to worsening insulin regulator 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 worsening disorder mood symptoms such as depression.

That makes sense. If your brain is deprived of the quality of nutrition, or free radicals or harmful inflammatory cells circulating in the closed area of the brain, contributing to brain tissue damage, the consequences are to be expected. What is interesting is that, for many years, the medical field is not fully recognized the relationship between mood and food.

Today, fortunately, the growing field of nutritional psychiatry is to find that there are many consequences and correlations of not only what you eat, how you feel and how they behave in the end, but also the types of bacteria that live in your gut.

How the food you eat affects how you feel 

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that helps regulate sleep and appetite, moods mediation, and inhibit pain. For about 95% of serotonin is produced in the gastrointestinal tract and the gastrointestinal tract is filled with a hundred billion nerve cells, or neurons, it is logical that the workings of your digestive system not only help digest food, but also guide their emotions. 

In addition, the function of these neurons - and the production of neurotransmitters such as serotonin - is strongly influenced by the billions of "good" bacteria that make up your gut microbiome. These bacteria play an essential role in your health.  

They protect the lining of the intestine and to ensure they provide a strong barrier against toxins and "bad" bacteria; the limited inflammation; improve the way you absorb nutrients from food; and activate the nerve paths traveling directly between the gut and brain.

Studies have shown that when people take supplements containing probiotics (good bacteria), their levels of anxiety, perceived stress, and improve mental outlook, compared to people not taking probiotics. 

Other studies have compared the "traditional" diets such as the Mediterranean diet and the traditional Japanese diet, a typical diet "Western" and showed that the risk of depression is 25% to 35% lower in those who eat a traditional diet. Scientists explain this difference because these traditional diets tend to be rich in vegetables, fruits, unprocessed grains and seafood, and contain only small amounts of lean meats and dairy products.  

They are also vacuum processed and refined foods and sugars, which are diet staples style "Western". In addition, many of these unprocessed food ferment, and thus act as natural probiotics. Fermentation using yeasts and bacteria to convert sugar in foodstuffs to carbon dioxide, lactic acid and alcohol. It is used to protect food from spoiling and can add a nice flavor and texture. 

This may seem unlikely, but the idea that the good bacteria not only influence what their intestinal digestion and absorbs, but also on the degree of inflammation throughout the body as well as their level of mood and energy, it gaining ground among scholars. The results so far have been pretty amazing.

What does this mean for you? 

Start paying attention to how you eat different foods makes you feel - not just in the moment, but the next day. Try eating a "clean" diet for two to three weeks - which means cutting out all processed foods and sugar.  

Add fermented foods like kimchi, miso, sauerkraut, pickles, food or Kombucha. You can also try going without milk - and some people even believe they feel better when their diets are not the point. See how it feels. Then slowly introduce foods into your diet, one by one, and see how it feels.When my patients "own will", who can not believe how good they feel both physically and emotionally, and how much worse then they feel when they enter the foods known to increase inflammation. Give it a try! 
By: Eva Selhub MD