Like an expensive car, your brain functions optimally when it gets mostly “premium fuel”. Eating high-quality foods that contain an abundance of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants nourishes the brain and protects it from oxidative stress.
What Is Oxidative Stress?
Oxidative stress reflects an imbalance between the systemic manifestation of reactive oxygen species and a biological system's ability to readily detoxify the reactive intermediates or to repair the resulting damage which can cause things like diabetes, cancer, heart disease and other serious illness.
Diets high in refined sugars, for example, are harmful to the brain. In addition to having a negative impact on your body’s regulation of insulin, they also promote inflammation and oxidative stress.
Multiple studies have found a correlation between a diet high in refined sugars and impaired brain function and even a worsening of symptoms of mood disorders, such as depression.
Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that helps regulate sleep, appetite, mood and inhibit pain. Since about 95% of your serotonin is produced in your gastrointestinal tract, and your gastrointestinal tract is lined with a hundred million nerve cells, or neurons, this is the reason your digestive system does not just help you digest food, but also impacts your emotions.
Studies have compared diets, like the traditional Mediterannean diet to a typical Western diet and have shown that the risk of depression is 25% to 35% lower in those who eat a traditional diet. Scientists account for this difference because these traditional diets are higher in things vegetables, fruits, unprocessed grains, and fish and seafood, and to contain only minimal amounts of lean meats and dairy. They are also void of processed and refined foods and sugars, which are staples of the “Western” dietary pattern. In addition, many of these unprocessed foods are fermented, and therefore act as natural probiotics.
Activity time: Start paying attention to how eating different foods makes you feel not just in the moment, but the next day. Try eating a Mediterranean diet for 2 to 3 weeks; cutting out all processed foods and sugar. See how you feel. Then slowly introduce foods back into your diet one at a time, and see how you feel. Keep a food diary if this helps.
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