More Evidence for the role of Food in Depression

Depression is such a difficult condition to live with.  It sucks the joy out of everyday living and with todays high pressure lives, depression is becoming all too common.  It is also not an easy condition to treat.  Different approaches have to be tried sometimes, even different SSRI’s in order to find one that works (best or at all).  Recently I blogged about an amazing new find regarding the probiotics in yogurt alleviating symptoms of this hard to treat condition!   Depression can be treated, at least to some extent, through diet.  the link between poor diet and depression has been known for a longtime but what comes first isn’t so well known:  does depression make us reach for lower quality foods as a way to make ourselves somehow feel better, or low quality food and poor diet over a period of time leads to depression?

We now know that inflammation anywhere in the body, somehow affects the brain and causes inflammation there as everything is connected and the inflammatory molecules can have some cross activity in that inflammation anywhere in the body most likely means inflammation in the brain as well.  This inflammation is contributing to depression.

A recent study from Australia shows possible mechanisms behind how diet may be affecting symptoms of depression.   They looked at a group of people who were either taking anti-depressants or were in psychotherapy.  All subjects had unhealthy diets prior to the study.  An unhealthy diet is considered one in which there is little dietary fiber, few to none fruits and vegetables, lots of sugar and salt and processed foods.  Vegetable oils also tend to be inflammatory, some more than others; olive oil and coconut oils are not inflammatory.

They split participants into two groups:  whether they were on an anti-depressant or seeing a psychotherapist, they were encouraged to adhere to the regimen.  One group got the healthier diet, the other group essentially made no difference in anything they were doing.