Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Nutrition”
Fish oil supplementation for major depression continues to garner positive reviews from scientists and clinicians. A recent review of the past few years of data shows significant positive effects without negative side effects for a variety of patients with differing diagnoses. Some recent findings: Systemic inflammation is increasingly recognized as an associated factor in many mental illnesses. MoodSurfing has investigated …
Intermittent fasting, or the “fasting mimicking diet” is slowly gaining credibility and hard evidence for its effectiveness not only in weight loss, but also in improvements in cardiovascular fitness, immune function, diabetes 2, longevity, and mood. There are several ways to fast intermittently, including daily patterns, such as 8:16, in which you eat during an 8-hour window, and not at …
Late night meals limit weight loss Does it matter what time of day you eat meals if you are trying to lose weight? Until recently, dieticians encouraged dieters to concentrate on the number of calories consumed, no matter what the time of day. New research, however, is showing distinct differences in the effect of consuming heavy meals in the morning …
Growing evidence shows a strong correlation between poor diet and mental illness. People suffering from severe mental illness consume more calories, more salt and sugar, and fewer nutrient dense foods like vegetables, nuts and fruit. Evidence also shows that the poor diet is not a result of mental illness, but is discernable in the months and years before diagnosis. Furthermore, …
Diets and Moods Evidence for the importance of diet for mental health is slowly gathering. People are looking into the importance of specific diets like the Mediterranean diet, which we have highlighted here before. And the next big area of research into diet and mental health looks like being the ketogenic diet. Many people have heard of the Atkins diet, …
Many of our patients want to reduce their use of medications, and move to a more natural regimen, utilizing herbal medicine, dietary supplements, and other traditional or less invasive methods of controlling mood swings and increasing stability. However, we have to recognize that “natural” medicine is still a form of medical treatment, and requires patient participation and discipline just as …
Low Serotonin – What do you need? Serotonin is a neurotransmitter and hormone that our bodies produce naturally and that is used by the brain to regulate and support several systems throughout the body. The body produces serotonin using building blocks synthesized from nutritional input. The amount of serotonin produced can vary depending on a number of circumstances, some of …
Dietary interventions for bipolar and major depression A modified diet including high omega-3 and low omega-6 fatty acids has shown “exciting” findings in a small study looking at adjunct treatments to control mood swings in bipolar patients. Researchers at Penn State College of Medicine randomized 41 patients, some to receive a high omega-3, low omega-6 diet, and some to receive …
Sweet Moods? Sugar and mood, a constant dietary struggle. The body learns that reaching for a sweet treat brings energy, alertness and low anxiety. Somehow it doesn’t learn that the crash will inevitably follow. There is now a small literature that supports the common sense observation that simple carbohydrates, like sugar and white flour, have effects that are somewhat akin …
Can a change in diet cure psychological illnesses? What dietary changes or interventions may be effective in treatment or management of mental or mood disorders? Diet is more than weight loss, and has been invoked, modified and studied for a wide variety of physical and mental ills and conditions. Yet there is surprisingly little hard data available to tell us …
Lack of sleep is associated with weight gain, but why is this? Is it just because sleep deprivation makes us grumpy and we “self-medicate” with food? People who get poor quality sleep, or not enough sleep, start craving high carbohydrate and high fat foods that are more likely to cause weight gain. And sleep deprivation makes us less likely to …
Moodsurfing has been promoting the value of the Mediterranean diet for quite a while. It is linked with better weight control, anti-aging, and reduction of depression. A diet rich in fresh vegetables, fruits, nuts, whole grains, legumes, and fish is known to help people lose weight and is associated with longer life expectancies. Eating a lot of refined grains (white …
Probiotics may reduce re-hospitalization rates for acute mania episodes. In a small, but well-designed study researchers have found a clear effect of administration of certain strains of probiotics in reducing re-hospitalization for patients who have been hospitalized for acute mania. The probiotics did not have an effect on mood, but there was a significant reduction of re-hospitalization for patients receiving …
Can the Mediterranean Diet work like medicine? Can food be even BETTER than medicine? Studies have consistently shown that the Mediterranean Diet, heavy in fish, vegetables, nuts and seeds has great benefits for health and weight loss, but what you may not realize is that this way of eating also shows great promise for the reduction of depression, cognitive impairment …
Many people with depression have trouble avoiding weight gain, a recent study suggests that there are three habits for weight loss which may help. The study, which was published in BMJ Open, tracked nearly 60,000 people in Japan who also had type 2 diabetes and looked at eating habits and their relationship to weight gain over time. Aside from the …
What is the most effective way of motivating healthy behavior changes? And how does medical practice best take advantage of information about what motivates people to make positive changes? It should be obvious that just telling someone that a certain behavior is healthy is often not enough to motivate change. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal …
A study in 2017 finds that the composition of food in one meal can significantly affect behavior in the following hours, higher carbohydrate meals increase punishment behavior. How does this work and what does it mean in terms of understanding how diet affects mood? In the study, a high carbohydrate breakfast boosted tryptophan and lowered tyrosine. Tryptophan is the key …
Scientists are uncovering a fascinating relationship between circadian rhythms and food consumption. It looks as though when you eat can have a big impact on how your body metabolizes the food and on whether or not you gain weight. It has long been clear that light exposure plays an important role in setting a number of circadian rhythms in the …
Phosphatidylserine may help protect the body against stress and may improve memory and prevent Alzheimer’s dementia. For the last month I have been examining some of the literature on this topic and working with some people in my practice to see if phosphatidylserine seems to be a useful natural supplement. The research literature on phosphatidylserine is intriguing. But first a …
Conventional wisdom, especially in the realm of diet and health, often turns out not to be right. Conventional wisdom (as it happens, heavily subsidized by grants from the Kellogg Foundation) has argued that “breakfast is the most important meal” and “fasting diets are unhealthy.” An article published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Casazza in 2013 suggested that the …
