Category: Depression

Hundreds of studies have linked a better diet with improved mental health.

Adding more fibre to the diet is linked to a lower risk of depression.

Dietary fibre is mostly found in legumes, fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

Fibre is commonly recommended for a healthy diet as it reduces the risk of heart disease, diabetes and some types of cancer.

But it has also repeatedly been linked to a lower risk of depression.

The latest findings come from a study of almost 6,000 pre- and post-menopausal women.

The results showed that in pre-menopausal women higher fibre intake was linked to a lower risk of depression.

The link was not, however, seen in post-menopausal women.

Higher fibre intake improves the diversity and richness of the gut’s microbiota.

Dr. Stephanie Faubion, director of the The North American Menopause Society, said:

“This study highlights an important link between dietary fiber intake and depression, but the direction of the association is unclear in this observational study, such that women with better mental health may have had a healthier diet and consumed more fiber, or a higher dietary fiber intake may have contributed to improved brain health by modulating the gut microbiome or some combination.

Nonetheless, it has never been more true that ‘you are what you eat,’ given that what we eat has a profound effect on the gut microbiome which appears to play a key role in health and disease.”

Diet and mental health

Hundreds of studies have linked a better diet with improved mental health.

For example, studies have shown a link between a diet rich in vegetables, nuts, fruits and fish and a lower risk of depression.

Raw fruits and vegetables in particular have been linked to better mental health.

Avoiding a high-fat diet can reduce depressive behaviour in mice.

Reducing the intake of common inflammatory foods including fast food, cake and processed meats reduces the risk of depression.

Similarly, cutting down on refined carbohydrates, such as white bread, white rice and soda, may lower depression risk.

All sorts of positive dietary changes, including weight loss, fat reduction and nutrient boosting diets, have been shown to improve mental health.

The study was published in the journal Menopause (Kim et al., 2020).

The bias may make it harder for depressed and anxious people to take a risk on a new relationship, job or other career opportunity.

People with symptoms of depression and anxiety tend to focus more on the mistakes they have made in the past, research finds.

This makes it harder for them to take advantage of potentially beneficial opportunities in the future.

Worse, other studies have shown that people who are depressed tend to believe that bad things that happened to them were inevitable.

The bias may make it harder for depressed and anxious people to take a risk on a new relationship, job or other career opportunity.

One suggestion for escaping this cycle is to consciously focus more on past successes.

Unfortunately, depressed people also have a difficulty appreciating or recalling positive experiences.

Cognitive-behavioural therapy is one way of changing habits of thought that might affect decision-making.

In contrast to the depressed and anxious, people who are emotionally resilient find it easier to adapt to a rapidly changing environment and to take advantage of opportunities.

Professor Sonia Bishop, study co-author, explained:

“When everything keeps changing rapidly, and you get a bad outcome from a decision you make, you might fixate on what you did wrong, which is often the case with clinically anxious or depressed people.

Conversely, emotionally resilient people tend to focus on what gave them a good outcome, and in many real-world situations that might be key to learning to make good decisions.”

The researchers tested the decision-making of over 300 people for their study, some with depression and others with anxiety.

Professor Bishop said:

“We wanted to see if this weakness was unique to people with anxiety, or if it also presented in people with depression, which often goes hand in hand with anxiety.

We also sought to find out if the problem was a general one or specific to learning about potential reward or potential threat.”

The results showed that people with symptoms of depression and anxiety had the most trouble making sound decisions.

Professor Bishop said:

“We found that people who are emotionally resilient are good at latching on to the best course of action when the world is changing fast.

People with anxiety and depression, on the other hand, are less able to adapt to these changes.

Our results suggest they might benefit from cognitive therapies that redirect their attention to positive, rather than negative, outcomes.”

The study was published in the journal eLife (Gagne et al., 2020).

Eight exercise for developing serenity and calm.

Teaching people to focus on positive emotions helps them deal with stress, new research finds.

People were taught classic positive psychology exercises such as keeping a gratitude journal, recognising positive events each day and doing small acts of kindness.

Together, the training helped reduce people’s anxiety and depression over the six weeks of the study.

The researchers focused on 170 caregivers for people with dementia.

Half were put in a control group, while the rest were encouraged to focus on their positive emotions.

People were taught eight skills:

1. Practice a small act of kindness each day and recognise the power it has to increase positive emotions.
2. Set a simple and attainable goal for each day and note down progress.
3. Savour a positive event through journalling or discussing it with someone.
4. Spot at least one positive event each day.
5. List a personal strength and how you have used it recently.
6. Use mindfulness to pay attention to daily experiences.
7. Identify a daily stressor and reframe it as a positive event.
8. Keep a gratitude journal.

Professor Judith Moskowitz, the study’s first author, said:

“The caregivers who learned the skills had less depression, better self-reported physical health, more feelings of happiness and other positive emotions than the control group.”

The results showed that those who learned the positive psychology exercises experienced a 7 percent drop in depression scores and 9 percent drop in anxiety.

This was enough to move people from being moderately depressed to being within the ‘normal’ range.

Professor Moskowitz chose dementia caregivers as the disease is on the rise:

“Nationally we are having a huge increase in informal caregivers.

People are living longer with dementias like Alzheimer’s disease, and their long-term care is falling to family members and friends.

This intervention is one way we can help reduce the stress and burden and enable them to provide better care.”

One participant in the study commented:

“Doing this study helped me look at my life, not as a big neon sign that says, ‘DEMENTIA’ in front of me, but little bitty things like, ‘We’re having a meal with L’s sister, and we’ll have a great visit.’

I’m seeing the trees are green, the wind is blowing.

Yeah, dementia is out there, but I’ve kind of unplugged the neon sign and scaled down the size of the letters.”

The study was published in the journal Health Psychology (Moskowitz et al., 2019).

This type of food is linked to developing depression.

A high-fat diet can cause depression, research reveals.

The fatty acids enter the brain through the bloodstream and accumulate in the hypothalamus.

There they affect critical brain signals that are linked to depression.

It helps to explain why scientists have found that depression and obesity are often seen together.

For the study, mice were fed a high-fat diet, made up of 60 percent saturated and unsaturated fats.

The results showed that the mice began to demonstrate depressive behaviour after three weeks.

Professor George Baillie, who led the study, said:

“This is the first time anyone has observed the direct effects a high fat diet can have on the signaling areas of the brain related to depression.

This research may begin to explain how and why obesity is linked with depression and how we can potentially better treat patients with these conditions.

We often use fatty food to comfort ourselves as it tastes really good, however in the long term, this is likely to affect one’s mood in a negative way.”

Examination of their brains revealed that the fats had built up in the hypothalamus.

The hypothalamus is an area of the brain that causes levels of cortisol — the ‘stress hormone’ — to rise in the body.

Normally the hormone reduces once a threat passes, but in people with depression, their cortisol levels can remain high.

Higher levels of cortisol are linked to depression.

This may help to explain why people who are obese do not respond as well to antidepressant medication.

Professor Baillie continued:

“We all know that a reduction in fatty food intake can lead to many health benefits, but our research suggests that it also promotes a happier disposition.

Further to that, understanding the types of fats, such as palmitic acid, which are likely to enter the brain and affect key regions and signaling will give people more information about how their diet can potentially affect their mental health.”

The study was published in the journal Translational Psychiatry (Vagena et al., 2019).