Overcoming Depression My Journey: #2 Nutrition’s Role
How in the World can Nutrition play a role in helping someone Overcome Depression?
Seriously that’s what I would be thinking too if it hadn’t played a role in my journey of kicking clinical depression.
And truth be told overcoming depression wasn’t my initial goal when I started making changes to what I was eating. Yes I was depressed, but I was overweight and scared to leave a legacy of illness and disease to my kids. That was what started my journey.
The First Nutrition Changes I Implemented
They were a suggestion from a friend who was following this food guide called Michi’s Ladder. I’d never heard of it, but his first step before following this plan was to simply remove high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils and enriched flours. That seems easy enough. Way easier than following a full meal plan at that point. So I became a label reader and removed those 3 ingredients from all foods that I ate.
These changes helped me to start on my weight loss journey and without me knowing helping heal my body in a way I didn’t know it needed healing. I consistently made changes to my nutrition, like following that Michi’s Ladder plan and then other clean eating plans. I even added a daily Superfood shake, but again to help me lose weight and have more energy for my family.
Everything I had done was slowly repairing my body internally and I didn’t know.
I know you’re thinking, “How is changing your nutrition going to help you overcome depression?” “What are you talking about your body healing internally?”
Let’s Dive Into Some Cool Science Stuff
Have you ever heard of your stomach referred to as your Second Brain?
Well there’s some truth to that saying. There’s an ecosystem of bacteria and neural network operating in our gut. That ecosystem is our Second Brain. It’s obviously not like the one we have in our head. It doesn’t create stories or solve problems, but research has shown that it strongly influences our mood.
Think about it… Have you ever had that sinking feeling in your stomach when you realize you spent too much when you open your credit card statement? Or how about when you have butterflies in your stomach. That’s all part of your enteric nervous system. This system is a mesh-like network of neurons that lines the digestive tract. The majority of the cells in the system carry information to your brain instead of the other way around. This basically means that your gut can be possibly more influential to your mood than your mind.
Now how does your nutrition make a darn bit of difference??
We’re getting there. Within our digestive tract is our enteric nervous system and that system mainly communicates with bacteria within our gut. That bacteria makes up our microbiome. No worries the bacteria are necessary and have been growing with us since birth. It helps us digest food and fight off illness. They are necessary to keep us healthy, and also communicate with neurotransmitters within our enteric nervous system that influence our mood and how we feel.
This is good news. Studies have shown that people with healthy and diverse microbes are less likely to suffer from depression or anxiety.
Now here’s the kicker. Many of us, I know I did, grew up eating processed junk foods and high amounts of sugar, and also took a far amount of antibiotics. These things can effect the microbes in our gut in a negative way.
There is a Fix Though
Changing nutrition by removing the processed foods, junk food, high sugar and fat foods. Also adding in a prebiotic and probiotic has been shown to help with the good bacteria growth in the gut. This was something I had done with my superfood shake. I knew the pre & probiotics were in there but didn’t realize the role they were playing in the healing process. There are multiple foods in the grocery stores today that say probiotics on them. Make sure that they have real strains of bacteria that will help. A couple of those bacterias would be Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium lactis.
Now how exactly this all works isn’t clear yet
The science of the gut to brain health is still very early in it’s stages. They do know there’s a connection between a healthy gut reducing inflammation and cortisol levels, improving memory, and reducing the reaction to stress. To make changes at home would be simple enough to determine if it helped you by following the suggestions mentioned above.
Again, I stress to you that this is MY JOURNEY. I’m Not a Physician and would NOT suggest to make any changes without consulting a physician to your plan. I’m merely sharing my journey and things that have shown benefits for me.
Please do NOT make any changes to your medication without consulting your physician first.
If you have any questions please comment below or send me a message.
Thank you for taking the time to read the Overcoming Depression My Journey: #2 Nutrition’s Role. If you found this information useful please share it on social media or with your friends and family.
For the rest of the blogs in this series:
