- Can a dysfunctional dopamine circuity system be used to our advantage in addictions? When we study the dopamine system, we learn it is about motivation, not just reward. We learn rewarding things so our brain can assign value to them and repeat the behavior. When we get addicted to substances, the brain knows that this is the primary source of reward, and in recovery, we start to get passions, purpose, meaning, and direction. Things become rewarding when you find your passions which make us want to learn more and do more.
- Night Eating Syndrome? It’s a growing problem and a wide range of how people classify this. There isn’t one thing that works. Instead, we must look at entire eating behavior and its relationship to food. It could be not eating enough daily, medications, blood sugar, circadian rhythms, or gut health. Once you look at all contributing factors, we can rule things in or out. It can be very debilitating, but it can be treated.
- Nutrition for mental health outcomes? More frequent consumption of fruit was associated with reduced symptoms of depression and greater psychological wellbeing. More frequent consumption of savory snacks, such as chips, was associated with increased symptoms of stress, depression, and anxiety and reduced psychological wellbeing via an increase in cognitive failure. How often we consume fruit might be more important than the total amount we consume. Replacing savory snacks with fruit 2-3 times per day may positively affect psychological health.
- What is the outcome we are looking for in nutrition programs? Most people do it specifically to change body weight or look a certain way. What if we used nutrition to change how we feel? It hasn’t been done. Let’s use food to improve depression and anxiety, sleep better, and connect to society. What if the person doesn’t have fitness goals? Maybe they want to use nutrition to be a better person, worker, parent, or spouse. This discourse hasn’t been created because people have historically focused on food to manipulate body weight and fitness.
- Effectiveness of dietary interventions for mental health treatment? What is the extent of research on the efficacy of nutritional interventions on individuals with depression and anxiety? Forty-six studies in the last five years show dietary interventions were effective, especially for depressive symptoms. Most studies use supplements, highlighting a need for actual nutritional interventions. The involvement of a dietitian is essential to deliver lifestyle interventions, including natural food for interventions in mental disorders.
- Dietitians for mental health? Mental health is every dietitian’s business. Since mental health conditions occur alongside other medical conditions, dietitians upscaled in mental health can provide dietary assessments focused on mental health. However, dietitians are often not part of the treatment team, and other professional doesn’t understand the impact that food can have on overall health and wellbeing—dietary intake influences mental health, and mental health influences dietary intake. Intervention studies demonstrate improvements in mental health outcomes, including depression, when whole foods, Omega-3, pre, and probiotic supplementation are used. Lifestyle medicine, including diet, should be the first-line treatment for mood disorders. Unfortunately, nutrition is underutilized and underrecognized in mental health.
- What is nutrition for mental health? Nutrition for mental health is mainly about the biological impact of food on our bodies. Food can affect inflammation in the gut, which involves inflammation in the brain. The biological effect of food on the brain is referred to as nutritional, psychiatry-including the gut-brain axis, microbiome, nervous system, and immune system. But when we talk about food for mental health, we also must consider nutritional psychology, which is how we think about our food and body. Suppose someone spends 75% of their day obsessing about food. In that case, it is a mental health problem. Not just about the biological impact of food but the way we think about things and the amount of cognitive effort we put into eating, health, wellness, and exercise. Nutrition for mental health is broad and has wide-ranging implications.
- What is disordered eating? Eating disorders can be considered severe psychiatric diagnoses. However, I think many people don’t have clinically significant conditions but have disordered eating. There might be some subtle dieting, body image issues, night eating, and compulsive overeating; it doesn’t have to be a full-blown eating disorder before someone seeks help. Any time dysfunctional or disordered eating is active is the perfect time to get help from a professional, so it doesn’t progress into a higher level of dysfunction, causing significant impairment or distress. You can get recovered from disordered eating one bite at a time.
- How does sleep relate to nutrition and eating? Sleep is super important, and I think a lot of people think about sleep as something we should quantify (7, 8, 9 hours a night), but there is such a thing as sleeping too much. Quality and quantity are equally important. One thing you see is if you don’t get good sleep quality, it does affect cravings for food the next day. Many people who don’t get enough sleep have a sweet tooth and have appetite dysregulation, which plays out with food. So when we think about wellness, we want to address sleep, nutrition, exercise, love, social support, and relational health- these are the pillars of health.
- Ultra-processed foods? 70% of the US food consumption is ultra-processed foods. The real detriment of ultra-processed foods is also what has been removed-not, just the added ingredients of sugar, salt, and fat. Most of the time, what is lost is fiber and phytonutrients. When processed, lots of nutrients are lost, so it isn’t just about adding nutrients that make it more palatable but all the things the food loses.