What you eat impacts your physical health, so it makes sense that it would also impact your mental health. At Palms Behavioral Health in Harlingen, Texas, we believe in taking a whole-person approach to mental health treatment, and nutrition is one of the ways people with mental health diagnoses can improve their emotional well-being.
Food as Fuel
Although your brain is far more complex than a car, it still requires fuel to operate, in the same way that a vehicle needs gas to run. The fuel you put into your brain changes how it operates. If you eat a lot of fresh, healthy foods, your brain is going to work far better than when it receives foods that are processed and full of empty calories, with no real nutritional value. When you have mental health conditions, your diet can impact how well you are able to manage those diagnoses:
- Caffeine can make anxiety symptoms worse.
- Consuming a “Mediterranean diet” or traditional Japanese diet, both of which contain high levels of fruits, vegetables, fish, and whole grains, was found to reduce the risk of depression by 25-35 percent.
- A healthy, well-balanced diet can impact a person’s gut bacteria, which affects how well they absorb nutrients and how well their body handles natural “feel good” chemicals like serotonin. This means that regardless of whether your body is making all of its own neurotransmitters or it needs medications to help your mental health, it can absorb those mood-affecting chemicals better if your diet is well-balanced.
- What a person eats can impact how much inflammation their body experiences, resulting in more or less pain and discomfort, which is also strongly connected to mood.
- When people don’t consume enough B vitamins or zinc, it increases their risk of depression and dementia and can cause them to be more moody, tired, and irritable, and to exhibit cognitive decline.
Foods to Avoid
You have probably been told since you were a child which foods you should avoid or consume in only small amounts. We are often told that these foods contribute to obesity and other physical health problems. As it turns out, many of these same foods can also make mental health worse when consumed in excess:
- Sugary and diet drinks, including carbonated soft drinks, sugary coffee drinks, energy drinks, and fruit drinks that aren’t actually juice
- Refined grains that might be found in some bread, buns, and pasta
- Red meat
- Margarine and cream cheese
- Alcohol
- Highly processed foods that have had a lot of salt, sugar, fats, or preservatives added to them, such as:
- Sweetened breakfast cereals
- Packaged snacks like chips and cookies
- Meat products like hot dogs and fish sticks
- Frozen meals like pizza and TV dinners
- Candy
- Canned and powdered soups
- Ice cream and sweetened yogurt
Look at the Label
One way to make healthier dietary choices is to focus on the perimeter of the grocery store, where you will likely find more fresh produce, seafood and meat. Some people don’t have this option, due to financial concerns or limited ability to access the grocery store frequently to replenish fresh foods.
Just because something is in a box or a can does not mean it is unhealthy, and just because the label contains healthy-sounding words does not mean that it is truly nutritious. When you’re trying to identify potentially unhealthy foods, the ingredients and nutrition information can provide helpful clues. The food is probably not especially nutritious if it does not give you a lot of fiber, vitamins, or minerals or if you see a lot of sweeteners (sugar, maltodextrin, high fructose corn syrup), sodium, preservatives, or saturated fats.
Eating for Brain Health
If you want to improve your mental health, you don’t drastically change your diet overnight. In fact, it is usually easier to stick with changes if they are made incrementally, over time. You don’t have to stop enjoying all of your favorite foods, but it is a good idea to reduce how much you eat foods that are processed, loaded with sugar, and low in vitamins and minerals. You may also choose to focus on adding more nutrient-dense foods to your diet, including:
- Fish (like trout, salmon, and tuna) and seafood
- Fruits and vegetables, especially leafy greens – regardless of whether these are fresh, frozen, or dried
- Nuts and seeds
- Legumes – beans and lentils
- Whole grains – brown rice, quinoa, and buckwheat
- Oils that are derived from olives and avocados
At Palms Behavioral Health, we help adolescents, adults and seniors who have mental health conditions. We believe in giving our patients as many tools as possible to recover from mental illness and build lives that they find meaningful and worth living.
