When it comes to staying fit and healthy, there are a few established practices: a good night’s sleep, moderate exercise, and healthy eating. Poor eating habits, too many sugar and salt-laden junk snacks, and a diet rich in processed foods can be detrimental to our physical well-being.
But a poor diet is not only bad for our body, it’s bad for our brain. Researchers and studies have shown for some time that poor nutrition can play a role in worsening mood disorders such as anxiety and depression.
And mental health disorders are on the rise, not just in the US, but around the world, with anxiety and depression leading that trend.
So could poor nutrition be contributing to the epidemic of mental illness? Does a lack of nutrients put us at greater risk of developing mental illness?
“The Better Brain: Overcome Anxiety, Combat Depression, and Reduce ADHD and Stress with Nutrition” talks about how a nutrient-rich diet can help treat and combat some mental health disorders.
Julia Rucklidge, professor of clinical psychology at university of canterbury in New Zealand, argues that it is time to get serious about nutrition and its impact on our mental health.
“If you have a disorder like ADHD or depression,” Rucklidge says, “then your metabolic needs may be higher and your vitamin and mineral needs may be higher than the average individual who is healthy.”
Rucklidge is co-author with research psychologist Bonnie Kaplan of “A Better Brain: Overcome Anxiety, Fight Depression, and Reduce ADHD and Stress with Nutrition”, which makes the case that optimizing nutrition may be the most effective way to prevent and treat mental illness.
“Not only did we see improvements in his ADHD symptoms, we also heard improvements in his mood. They were less volatile, they were less irritable, they told us they were sleeping better, they were calmer, less anxious,” says Rucklidge. “Hearing about those other changes that were happening for them so quickly was really remarkable, because I’ve never seen that in psychotherapy, and even in medication, because we know that medication can actually increase irritability in some people rather than improve it”.
