Health Lifestyle Director Penny Lewis
This is a
BRAIN CHANGER!
What we eat can affect our mental wellbeing for better or worse. Here are the foods you need for a boost
e’re used to the messages around healthy eating being about weight loss and improved physical health. But did you know what we eat can actually contribute to our mental health? According to a study by Professor Felice Jacka, Australian scientist and the author of Brain Changer: The Good Mental Health Diet, women whose diets contain a higher level of vegetables, fruit, unprocessed red meats, fish and whole grains are less likely to have clinically significant depressive or anxiety disorders. While those with a more Western-type dietary pattern – higher in processed and
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unhealthy foods such as processed meats, pizza, chips, hamburgers, white bread and sugar – had more depressive symptoms. So what should we be eating to keep our minds in peak condition? Professor Jacka tells all ...
MEDITERRANEAN DIET DETERS DEPRESSION
A study of more than 10,000 Spanish university graduates focused on the impact of the Mediterranean diet and how it supported mental health. The traditional Mediterranean diet has by far the largest and most consistent evidence base for health benefits. It’s high in a wide variety of plant foods, such as colourful vegetables, fruits, leafy greens, wholegrain cereals, legumes and lots of olive oil. It also incorporates Studies claim processed lots of fish, a little bit of food can have a serious effect on mental health. red wine and dairy, and a low intake of red meat. The participants were asked
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Woman’s Day
whether they’d been diagnosed with depression by a medical practitioner or were taking antidepressants – this means the diet was assessed at the start of the study and anyone who already reported depression wasn’t included in the analysis. Then the people with no previous depression were followed up for more than four years to see who developed depression. These researchers found that people whose diets most closely resembled the traditional Mediterranean diet were much less likely to develop depression over the duration of the study. In fact, those participants in the highest categories of the Mediterranean diet score were roughly half as likely to develop depression as those who scored low. This was after considering many other important factors, such as gender, smoking, exercise,
marital status, employment status, physical health and any medical conditions. These results suggested that eating a Mediterranean-style diet might actually prevent depression occurring in the first place.
WHAT IF YOU ALREADY SUFFER WITH MENTAL ILLNESS?
The aim of another study – Supporting the Modification of Lifestyle in Lowered Emotional States (SMILES) – was to see whether helping people to improve their diets would have a meaningful impact on their depressive symptoms. To do this, nearly 180 people with clinical depression (major depressive
