I was listening to the radio this morning and there was a brief article claiming that scientists have decided that further investigation into the area of diet and depression would be a good idea (https://www.bbc.com/news/health-45641628).

That got me thinking about the role of evidence in medicine and health professions, and more importantly how that evidence is communicated to the general population. There is often a disconnect between science, research and practical advise. This is largely because what they are looking at is often complicated and multifactorial. The other problem is that they have to wait to see the results of eating a bad diet over many years to calculate the impact.

The gist of the radio article was that those eating a Mediterranean diet suffer less depression. A Mediterranean diet is one high in plant-based foods, such as fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes and nuts. Replacing butter with healthy fats such as olive oil and using herbs and spices instead of salt to flavor foods & limiting red meat to no more than a few times a month.

Mental health is not the only health condition that may be affected by diet – there are the obvious ones such as diabetes, all chronic inflammatory conditions, autoimmune conditions & heart disease. Diet is also part of the reason why people end up seeing me for musculoskeletal issues and functional medicine.

We all intuitively know that eating well is good for us and eating junk food and excess sugar is not good for us. If you don’t believe me watch the 2004 documentary ‘Super Size Me’ were you can see the drastic impact eating only McDonald’s for 30 days had on Morgan Spurlock's physical and psychological well-being.

The enteric nervous system is a mesh-like network of neurons that lines the entire digestive track. Scientists are referring to the gut as the second brain as up to 90% of the cells of the enteric nervous system carry information to the brain rather than receiving messages from it. Biochemistry understands that 95% of our nutrients are absorbed in the gut, 70% of your bodies immune response is in your gut and 80% of blood cells involved in immune response (mainly IgA) are also in your gut (Vighi G et al, 2008). These are only some of the facts that reasonably suggest that what you eat matters.

Eating healthily can be easy. A healthy diet should be high in vegetables and good essential fats and low in processed carbohydrates. Your first choice should be to remove foods that are potentially harmful to you or more importantly harmful to the bacteria in your gut. You should start by lowering sugar intake (remember there is quite a lot if sugar in fruit), then processed carbohydrates and saturated trans fats the sort you find in all deep fried food but also frozen pizza, crisps, biscuits and virtually all pre-packaged foods.

Vegetables contain high levels of nutrients and fiber making them very good for you and most importantly very good for the bacteria in your gut as this what they thrive on.

My Clients experience the positive effects changing their diet has on their health in as little as 2 weeks, so do you really have time to wait for the planned studies into diet and there relationship with chronic health issues?

Refrences

Vighi G et al(2008) Allergy and the gastrointestinal system. Clinical Experimental Immunology 2008 sept.