Health

We’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 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 supp orted 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 lots of fish, a little bit of red wine and dairy, and a low intake of red meat. The participants were asked 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 th an four years to see who developed depression.

These researchers found that people whose diets most closely resembled the traditional Me diterranean 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 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 Studies claim processed food can have a serious effect on mental health. Lifestyle Director Penny Lewis

Edited extract from Brain Changer: The Good Mental Health Diet by Professor Felice Jacka (Macmillan, $39.99)

From CoolSculpting to increasing fibre, try these ways to trim your waistline TIPS TO A TIGHTER TUMMY

Simple food swaps could be the mood changer you need.

disorder) were recruited. Our study used a diet based on a traditional Mediterranean diet, with a focus on vegetables, fruit, legumes, nuts, whole grains, fish and olive oil. But in contrast to the traditional Mediterranean diet, it also included recommendations to consume small serves of unprocessed red meat three to four times a week.

Participants could continue on their current treatment, whether antidepressants, counselling or both, so this was what was known as an “adjunctive” trial – in other words, the intervention was in addition to, not instead of, other forms of treatment. This is important: I would never suggest that a healthy diet should replace other forms of treatment. Our diet did not have a weight-loss focus, and participants were encouraged to eat according to their hunger. Given that, we didn’t expect people’s weight to change and it didn’t. In our study, the average BMI was roughly 30, meaning most people in the study were overweight or obese, and that didn’t change during the trial. What did change, however, was people’s depression and – possibly most importantly of all – it changed in line with dietary change. Simply speaking, this meant the more people improved their diets, the more their depression improved.

1STAY COOL Will & Grace star Debra Messing (above) loves CoolSculpting, a non-surgical treatment that uses cooling to crystallise fat cells. Within a few weeks, the cells die – and new ones don’t come back in their place. “I have fat frozen off of my body [so] three months later I can feel a little bit better in a bathing suit,” says Debra. 2 STEM THE T IDE Asparagus and bananas are good sources of inulin, a prebiotic fibre associated with reductions in waist circumference and belly fat accumulation. Researchers also found that increased fibre intake can lead to a decrease in the harmful fat that surrounds your organs, which is linked to illnesses. 3 GET INTENSE UK medical director Dr Luke James says, “Only doing abdomina focused workouts won’t help [your] bulge.” Instead, try high-intensity interval training, including squats, burpees and treadmill sprints. 4 GO NUTS! Researchers in Spain found that people with diets high in monounsaturated fats, like those in nuts, were less likely to have gained belly fat than people on high-carb or a high-saturated fat plan. 5 HAVE A LIE IN “If you’re exhausted, it’s better to sleep the extra 30 to 40 minutes than to exercise,” says dietitian Rebecca Mohning. Why? It can affect levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which has been shown to increase belly fat. l