Nutrition and Mental Health

When people talk about mental health and what affects it, a lot of times the conversations are about social media, social interaction, or exercise’s impact. In contrast, I feel people rarely talk about how nutrition and mental health are related. This topic is something I have been curious about for a while because I feel my mood changes depending on what I eat, so I wanted to look into the research on this topic.

One of the findings I found interesting was how diets containing foods with a lot of refined sugar may worsen mental health. One explanation I found for this is eating refined sugar causes your blood sugar to shoot up and then come down. Once it comes down, you might be in a poor mood. Another explanation was sugar causes serotonin, a neurotransmitter related to learning and mood, to be released. Therefore, if you have refined sugar very frequently, you could end up with low amounts of serotonin, which may cause you to feel symptoms of depression.

Another effect I was interested in was the effect omega-3 has on mental health. Omega-3s are fatty acids, and they are involved in making up your cells. Omega-3s are thought to have an impact on mental health because after they go from your gut to your brain, they have interactions with molecules related to mood. Omega-3s are associated with having positive effects on mood. Some of the information I found interesting relating to this was countries where people eat more fish seem to have low rates of depression. There was also a study about depression and omega-3s which had results suggesting omega-3s might be helpful for people who are experiencing depression.

It is important to note that these findings are not conclusive, especially since there has not been extensive research done on the topic of nutrition and mental health. However, I still find it interesting to start considering how what you eat potentially shapes how you feel. 

Written by: Manvi Sial