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HEALTH BRIEFS | 16 COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT
Fruit and Vitamin B6 May Relieve Anxiety and Depression
The best strategy to stay upbeat may be to reach for the fruit bowl, suggests a new study comparing the habits and mental states of 428 people published in the British Journal of Nutrition.Researchers at the UK’s Aston University found that the more often people ate fruit, the lower they scored for depression and the higher for mental well-being. The frequency of fruit consumption seemed to be more important to psychological health than the total amount consumed. People that ate savory snacks such as potato chips, which are low in nutrients, were more likely to report more frequent memory lapses and greater levels of anxiety and depression. The researchers found no connection between eating vegetables and psychological health. Nutrients can be lost during cooking. “As we are more likely to eat fruit raw, this could potentially explain its stronger influence on our psychological health,” says lead author Nicola-Jayne Tuck.
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In another study, researchers from the UK’s University of Reading gave 478 young adults either high doses of vitamins B6 or B12 or a placebo. After one month, they found that 100 milligrams of the B6 (about 50 times the recommended daily allowance) significantly boosted gamma aminobutyric acid, which inhibits excitatory impulses in the brain, and reduced self-reported anxiety and depression levels. B12 had no such effects.
Stretching and Balance Exercises Can Avert Mental Decline
To protect against memory loss, simple stretching and balance exercises work as well as hard-driving aerobics, concludes a new study from Wake Forest University. The study enrolled 296 sedentary older adults with mild cognitive decline such as forgetting dates, keys and names. Those that performed simple stretching routines for 120 to 150 minutes per week experienced no memory decline in a year’s time, as measured by cognitive tests and brain scans that showed no shrinkage. These results matched the outcome of people that did moderate-intensity aerobic training on treadmills or stationary bikes four times a week, striving for about 30 to 40 minutes of a heightened heart rate. A control group of equally matched people that did not exercise did decline cognitively. The people that exercised were supervised by trainers at local YMCAs, which may have helped them stay motivated, say the researchers.
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Master Reset Helps Alleviate Stress and Depression
We are confronted by many kinds of stress daily which can lead to depression, anxiety, sleep issues and more. Our adrenal gland makes cortisol in response to stress. Master Reset therapy applies low-level direct current to the vagus nerve, accelerating the physiological processes of healing, repair and regeneration. The stress hormone cortisol is valuable in mobilizing energy to meet immediate challenges, but can have negative conse-
Dr. Meena quences when it stays Malhotra, MD in the body too long. Our flight-or-fight response can be life-saving in the short term, but remaining in that state for a long period of time can have negative consequences for our health.
Sympathetic nervous system overdrive may manifest as palpitations, shortness of breath, poor digestion and elimination, anxiety, cold extremities and others symptoms. The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for restoring the body to a state of calm, slowing the heart rate, improving heart rate variability, digestion of food, sleeping and relaxing muscles and more.
The sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems should be in balance. Master Reset therapy has a profound effect on the parasympathetic nervous system, and is an incredible way to impact the entire autonomic nervous system with a whole-body approach.
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Chicago Chef Offers Food and Hope
to Impoverished Youth
by Bob Benenson
There are nonprofit organizations that work to encourage young people from underserved communities to pursue careers related to food. There are also nonprofits that provide counseling and therapy for young people that have been challenged by poverty, crime and other social ills. Now there is a nonprofit, started in 2021 on Chicago’s South Side, that aims to do both. The Evolved Network is the brainchild of Sebastian White, a young chef and clinical psychologist.
In its current startup phase, the network is providing cooking classes in three Chicago schools for youth living in challenging circumstances. White is raising the organization’s visibility by conducting hands-on culinary demonstrations such as one on which he partnered with Gardeneers (Gardeneers.org), a school gardening nonprofit, on October 8 at the Hangout Lighting events space; performing a chef demonstration at Green City Market (GreenCityMarket.org) on October 15; and a chef-collaboration dinner at UVAE Kitchen & Wine Bar (UvaeChicago.com), in the Andersonville neighborhood, on October 24.
White’s bold vision is to create Evolved Kitchen and Garden, a restaurant in Chicago with an onsite garden on which the young people in the program will work. The restaurant and garden will be the non-profit’s platform to teach its young charges about the benefits of farm-to-table eating while providing restaurant service training.
But that’s just the start. The plan also calls for providing individual and group therapeutic intervention and case management for participants, many of which have endured life-altering traumas. There will also be a curriculum to teach business management and financial literacy, which White says was influenced by the work of William White, his father.
“We’re using the culinary to discuss how you can create better connections with your peers, how you can heal from different things that we’re doing, or the different tasks that we’re doing,” White says. He grew up in Dallas, in a more fortunate environment than many of the young people he is trying to help. His father was a developmental psychologist; his Aunt Gwen and her garden first taught him about growing food.
He learned how to cook watching his mother. “From the age of 5, I remember seriously making my breakfast before school and
Chef Sebastian White of The Evolved Network does food prep for his culinary demonstration in Chicago on October 8.
Sebastian White, founder and president of The Evolved Network nonprofit, spoke to a tour group visiting Green City Market in Lincoln Park on October 1.
standing up on the counter watching her cook dinner,” White says. “It was just me and her. My mom was busy working and had other things to do, so food’s always been a part of my life in that way.”
After graduating from Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut, in 2012, he first taught at a Montessori school in the Washington, D.C. area, then came to Chicago to pursue his master’s degree in clinical psychology at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. His first postgraduate job, starting in 2017, was as a gang intervention therapist working with vulnerable youth in Waukegan for the Community Youth Network Counseling Center (cynGrayslake.org), based in Grayslake.
“If you get the kids in high school, it’s too late,” White explains. “We decided to focus on middle schools within a district. A lot of my work was with kids who were either on the edge of being in [gangs]; some had been in already. We talked through that decision and that choice. I wouldn’t focus on it, but I would help them try to explore what their lifestyle is really like and if that’s something that they truly want.” He notes, “It’s interesting—all of the kids that I worked with that were in regretted it, and they all would tell it all the other kids, ‘If you’re not serious about this, you don’t want this life.’”
White found the work fulfilling, but pivoted to seeking an even greater purpose after the (non-COVID-related) deaths in early 2020 of two of the people most important to him: his Aunt Gwen, who he describes as a second mother, and his father. “I hate that that had to happen for me to figure out what I was supposed to be doing,” he says. “Everything’s clear. And it’s really cool that I can try to keep them alive through my work. And that’s my goal. That’s what drives me and gets me up every day.”
The garden space at Evolved Kitchen and Garden will be named “Gwen’s Garden” after his aunt. White said her acre-and-a-half growing space was where he learned to appreciate the farm-to-table concept. “We’d just walk through our garden and cut stuff,” he recalls. “That was therapeutic and powerful for me. And not only was it better for you, it tastes better—you just improve everything.”
White says part of his mission is to break a vicious cycle in which underprivileged kids believe that they are only supposed to eat cheap, less-healthy food. “Those stereotypes also impact how they feel about themselves, ‘I am less worthy, so I eat this … The rich eat this, I am poor, I must eat this.’ And that doesn’t have to be the case.”
Bob Benenson is publisher and writer of Local Food Forum, a newsletter that covers all aspects of the local food community in the Chicago region. He can be contacted at Bob@LocalFoodForum.com.
Sebastian White with students at The Stein Learning Garden on St. Sabina’s campus on July 28.
Photo credit: Diana Klimovich Sebastian White teaches students at the Douglass Branch of the Chicago Public Library on July 20.
