The Relationship Between Food and Mental Health

From a young age, we’re taught that eating healthy helps keep us looking and feeling our best. What we’re not always told, is that good nutrition significantly affects our mental health, too. A healthy, well-balanced diet can help us think clearly and feel more alert. It can also improve concentration and attention span. Which we all know is super helpful for those long days in the tractor!

Conversely, an inadequate diet can lead to fatigue, and impaired decision-making, and can slow down reaction time. In fact, a poor diet can actually aggravate, and may even lead to stress and depression. The link between diet and emotions stems from the close relationship between your brain and your gastrointestinal tract, often called the “second brain.”

Here’s how it works: Your GI tract is home to billions of bacteria that influence the production of chemical substances that constantly carry messages from the gut to the brain. Two common examples of this are dopamine and serotonin. Eating nutritionally dense food promotes the growth of “good” bacteria, which in turn positively affects the production of these chemicals. When production is optimal, your brain receives these positive messages loud and clear, and your mental state can reflect it. On the other hand, when production goes awry, so might your mood. Nothing has to change overnight but maybe a quick swap for baby carrots instead of potato chips every once in a while might help your mood!?

Tip of the Week: Feed Your Mind

When you stick to a diet of nutrient-rich foods, you’re setting yourself up for fewer mood swings and an improved ability to focus. Here are a few ways to feed your mind;

• Vitamin D.Vitamin D helps with the production of serotonin, and we usually get it from exposure to sunlight, but mushrooms, salmon, and beef liver are also good sources.
• Magnesium. This essential mineral helps with everything from nerve and muscle function to keeping a steady heartbeat. But it’s also vital to the food-mood connection. A mineral deficiency can hurt the bacteria in your gut and cause depression and anxiety-like symptoms. Load up with natural sources such as cacao nibs, almonds and cashews, spinach and other dark leafy greens, bananas or? beans.
• Whole Foods.The powerful nutrients produced by colorful produce have tons of benefits for the mind and body. Their nutritional properties are often contained in the colors themselves. By including naturally colorful foods in our diet, we make it much easier for our bodies to get more vitamins and nutrients and reap the many physical and psychological benefits.

Looking for a new book to read??

I recommend The Algebra of Happiness: Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love, and Meaning by Scott Galloway. It's a mix of anecdotes and no-BS insight to share hard-won wisdom about life's challenges, along with poignant personal stories. Whether it's advice on if you should drop out of school to be an entrepreneur (it might have worked for Steve Jobs, but you're probably not Steve Jobs), ideas on how to position yourself in a crowded job market (do something "boring" and move to a city; passion is for people who are already rich), discovering what the most important decision in your life is (it's not your job, your car, OR your zip code), or arguing that our relationships to others are ultimately all that matter, Galloway entertains, inspires, and provokes.

You can learn more about the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Algebra-Happiness-Pursuit-Success-Meaning/dp/0593084195/ref=nodl_?dplnkId=8e66dd1b-38af-435a-a180-08bb6e3b667f

“You want to cover more ground in less time than your peers. This is partially built on talent, but mostly on strategy and endurance” ― Scott Galloway, The Algebra of Happiness: Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love, and Meaning