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Research

Share your diet-depression success story: SMILES study looking for your input

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Professor Felice Jacka, nutritional psychiatry researcher and founder of ISNPR/International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research posted this exciting news and important request on the ISNPR facebook page:

The SMILES RCT, which is the first randomised controlled trial to test whether dietary improvement can actually treat depression, has now been accepted for publication in BMC Medicine (publication date 31st January).

As part of the media campaign, we will be needing to identify people who are willing to be interviewed. If there is anyone who has personally experienced a benefit from improving their diet, would you please volunteer for this purpose?

It’s a very important role, as the media coverage for SMILES will be limited if we can’t provide personal, first-person experiences to journalists. Clearly – for the sake of the field – it will be important to generate extensive media in order for clinicians and the general public to understand the implications and possibilities that arise from the RCT. Your help is enormously appreciated!

You can read more about this SMILES RCT here and the Anxiety Summit interview with Felice Jacka here: The Research – Food to prevent and treat anxiety and depression?.

Although anxiety was looked at in the study, Felice shared this regarding the type of interviewees they are looking for:

  • We really need to keep a focus on the topic of the RCT, which is depression
  • And to also keep it to those who improved the quality of their diet i.e. moving from a processed food diet, to one high in plant foods and healthy fats and healthy proteins
  • Not a particular type of diet (e.g. not paleo, not gluten free).

If you’ve personally benefited from changing your diet in this way and you’d like to help by sharing your story with the media please comment on the blog (or send an email to support [at] everywomanover29.com) with details of your story and willingness to be interviewed, plus your location. Be sure to let us know how best to contact you.

Right now we’ll just be calling on those who meet the above criteria for the media interviews.

BUT if you’ve benefited from any other changes to your diet – for either anxiety or depression – feel free to share anyway, so we can inspire others to do the same.

Here is my story:

For me it was anxiety and panic attacks that resolved when I made dietary and other nutritional and lifestyle changes.   I had been eating a vegetarian diet for a few years and I suspect the non-organic/GMO processed soy products (soy milk, soy yogurt, soy “butter” etc) were a big issue for me and damaged my gut.  When I added back quality animal protein (grass-fed red meat, wild fish, pastured eggs and chicken), switched to organic produce, added healthy fats and removed gluten my mood improved dramatically.  Now I eat a combination of a Paleo/SCD /low FODMAPS/low oxalate diet. 

During the severe anxiety and panic attacks I also needed additional support in the way of the targeted amino acids GABA (this was a life-saver and stopped the panic attacks in a few days) and tryptophan, plus zinc, vitamin B6, evening primrose oil, a good multi and B complex and adrenal support.  I still continue with some of these basic nutrients today.

My health issues have been complex as I’ve also had to deal with heavy metals, poor gut health and much more so I had what I call “a perfect storm” and yet diet has had such a huge impact for me!

Thanks for sharing your story! I’ll be sharing more as soon as the paper is actually published. Stay tuned for an interview with Felice too! 

And  big congrats to Felice and her team on this ground-breaking research!

UPDATE January 30, 2017: Here is the link to the research – A randomised controlled trial of dietary improvement for adults with major depression (the ‘SMILES’ trial)

 

Research opportunity: Parkinson’s disease and Multiple Sclerosis – participate in diet research

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We know that anxiety is very common in both Multiple Sclerosis/MS and Parkinson’s disease so I’m sharing this diet research opportunity in case you or someone you know can benefit.

Dr. Terry Wahls, author of The Wahls Protocol: A Radical New Way to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions Using Paleo Principles (and past speaker on the Anxiety Summit) shared this diet research opportunity via her newsletter: Dr. Laurie Mischley, ND is recruiting patients for this world-wide research opportunity i.e. you can live anywhere.

Dr. Mischley was so impressed with what she had observed [in her MS diet research] that she added the Wahls Diet as one of the dietary variables to her ongoing Parkinson’s study. If any of you have family or friends with Parkinson’s or MS, please encourage them to participate in one of these studies. Dr. Mischley’s studies are unique. Her team at Bastyr University is studying patients with chronic disease and assessing several variables to see if there is a common theme among those who had the best outcomes and the slowest disease progression.

The effort is minimal–you can participate from anywhere in the world by simply completing online surveys. The surveys are given every six months and include questions about medications, diet, herbal supplements, exercise, meditation, and an array of other factors.

This information will give Dr. Mischley’s team an ever-growing data set to analyze, searching for common traits among those who have the best health and function despite having Parkinson’s or MS. Your participation would be a tremendous gift to society because it would help us better understand the impact of dietary and lifestyle factors on health outcomes and functional status for those with Parkinson’s disease or MS.

We are seeing so much promising research on diet and mental health so it makes total sense to be looking at diet for Parkinson’s and MS. Here is some of the research on diet and mental health: anxiety and hypoglycemia and the Western diet and anxiety.

Without published research, clinical practice won’t change. With published research, more clinicians will be willing to utilize diet and lifestyle therapy, restoring health to more patients around the world.

Here is the link for more on the MS study and more on the Parkinson’s study.

 

Anxiety and stress research summary: mother’s age, coffee and benzodiazepines

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coffee-and-cream

I like to keep up with recent research papers and I post new studies on my facebook page each week asking for feedback, results, opinions and more. I’ve decided to try something new and I’ve gathered a few of the hot topics into a blog to share here.

Here are a few recent studies and links to the facebook discussions:

(1) Mother’s age at birth may influence symptoms of depression in daughters. Father’s age not a factor; effect not seen in sons, study says

Daughters whose mothers were age 30 to 34 when they gave birth reported significantly higher levels of stress and those whose mothers were over age 35 at the time of birth had significantly higher levels of stress, depression and anxiety compared with daughters whose mothers were under age 30.

Is this true for you, your daughters, your family? It’s not for me. My mom was under 30 when she had me and I really have to watch my stress levels and I did have really bad anxiety in my late 30s. Here is the link to the feedback on the facebook post and as you can see it’s about half and half.

(2) Drink To Your Health: Study Links Daily Coffee Habit To Longevity

In our study, we found people who drank three to five cups of coffee per day had about a 15 percent lower [risk of premature] mortality compared to people who didn’t drink coffee

Based on the all the excited and happy comments in this thread on the NPR facebook page there are many coffee addicts all self-medicating with caffeine! Sorry, but it’s the truth and one of the toughest things for most of my clients to quit.

Unfortunately coffee is not a great choice and it affects so many people with increasing anxiety and panic attacks, causing insomnia, impacting the adrenals and hormones. It’s also dehydrating, affects blood sugar levels, is loaded with pesticides unless organic, can cross-react with gluten and can be a source of mold.

Are you a coffee addict and would you like to quit? Are you a coffee addict but don’t plan to quit? Have you quit and are so glad you did? And what do you drink now? I quit about 18 years ago and I vote for rooibos herbal tea or carob!

Here is the link to the feedback on the facebook post and as you can see most commenters have embraced a life with no coffee which is wonderful!

(3) Drug driving: Are your meds affecting you?

In Australia, drivers with Benzodiazepines (used to treat sleep and anxiety disorders) levels at therapeutic concentrations and higher, were more likely to be culpable in a crash.

Many drivers think that the impairing effects of medicines only occur when they are used excessively, or taken in excess, but that is not the case.by drugs, according to (QUT) Queensland University of Technology road safety researcher Dr Tanya Smyth.

She said driving while affected by prescription and over-the-counter medications had the potential to be as dangerous as driving under the influence of illegal drugs.

The biggest problem is that research has shown drivers are unable to accurately self-assess their impairment when taking medication and are overconfident in assessing their abilities.

The concern is that drivers may be assessing themselves as safe to drive, when in fact they are not.

Many drivers think that the impairing effects of medicines only occur when they are used excessively, or taken in excess, but that is not the case.

Drug Driving is an interesting term and this is very scary considering how many people are prescribed benzodiazepines! If you’re currently on a benzo, do you feel safe driving? If you took benzos in the past, did you feel safe driving? Do you think we need better guidelines for driving for folks on certain prescription medications?

Here is the link to the feedback on the facebook post

I’d love to hear what you think of this format and if this is of interest to you? I’d also like to invite you to come on over to facebook and join in the discussion. Or feel free to post questions and comments right here on the blog.

 

Western diet is associated with a smaller left hippocampus and anxiety

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western-diet

A new food and mental health study has been published in the international BMC Medicine journal: Western diet is associated with a smaller hippocampus: a longitudinal investigation. The lead author is Associate Professor Felice Jacka from Deacon University in Australia.

Here is the conclusion of the study: 

Lower intakes of nutrient-dense foods and higher intakes of unhealthy foods are each independently associated with smaller left hippocampal volume. To our knowledge, this is the first human study to demonstrate associations between diet and hippocampal volume concordant with data previously observed in animal models.

Study participants were Australian adults aged 60-64.   The results of the study, show that an unhealthy “Western” diet is associated with a smaller left hippocampus and a healthier “prudent”, nutrient-dense diet is associated with a larger left hippocampus.

The unhealthy “Western” diet was:

characterized by the consumption of roast meat, sausages, hamburgers, steak, chips, crisps and soft drinks

and the healthy “prudent”, nutrient-dense diet was:

characterized by the consumption of fresh vegetables, salad, fruit and grilled fish

This study has importance for cognition and mental health, both depression and very possibly anxiety too:

extensive evidence from animal studies points to the importance of the hippocampus in the association between diet and mental and cognitive health

The hippocampus is a brain structure associated with both learning and memory, as well as mood regulation, and is specifically implicated in depression

The study does group high sugar and high saturated fat together, and unfortunately the healthy diet excludes good quality red meat which is surprising considering previous research and conversations with Dr. Jacka about the benefits of good quality red meat and mental health:

In our study, out of every single dietary food grouping that I looked at including vegetables, fruits, salads, beans, etc the strongest correlate of mental health was red meat intake [grass-fed red meat of course]

Consistently, women who have less than the recommended intake of red meat seem to be in an increased risk for common mental disorders [like anxiety and depression] and bipolar disorder.

It will be wonderful to see follow-up research looking at the effect of quality grass-fed red meat on hippocampus size.  

Drew Ramsey, MD, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City, described the study as “exciting” in an interview on Medscape Medical News:

It’s the first time that a dietary pattern has been linked to specific changes in the brain. We’ve known for a long time that there’s a correlation between dietary pattern and the risk of a number of brain illnesses, like depression and dementia, and the mechanism behind this, we believe, involves neuroplastic processes of how food affects brain growth. This is the first study that’s really shown that quite conclusively.

Dr. Ramsey is the author of The Happiness Diet, and co-founder of National Kale Day. His mission is to educate America on eating healthier and I’ll second what he said about this study:

nutrition should be incorporated into mental health clinical practice.

How wonderful is it to hear a statement like this from a psychiatrist!?

You can read the complete study here.

What does all this mean for you? Eat real whole nutrient-dense food and ditch the junk food and processed food. Your brain will be happy and so will you be!

If you’re a mental health practitioner, start talking to your clients and patients about what they’re eating, ask them what they had for breakfast and share this research.

 

The Anxiety Summit – What if… Nutrition could Treat Anxiety and Depression?

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Julia Rucklidge PhD, Professor of Clinical Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, was interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Julia has over 75 peer-reviewed studies and is passionate about helping people find alternative treatments to medications for their psychiatric symptoms. Her current research interests can be found at the University of Canterbury site here.

What if… Nutrition could Treat Anxiety and Depression?

  • The increasing prevalence of mental health problems and medication side-effects
  • Why diet is so important when it comes to mental health (anxiety, depression, ADHD and even schizophrenia)
  • Nutritional medicine as mainstream in psychiatry and ISNPR (International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research)
  • The problems with food: pesticides, soil quality, Roundup
  • Micronutrient research for ADHD, anxiety, bipolar and PTSD
  • The emerging field of nutritional mental health: Inflammation, the microbiome, oxidative stress, and mitochondrial function

Here are some snippets from our interview:

Why is nutrition important? As a scientist I can just say because the data says it’s important. So if we start with the wonderful work that has really been spearheaded from Felice Jacka and there are other people in Spain and in Japan who have published similar studies showing that the more you eat a processed, western type of diet, the higher your risk for mental illness. They’ve published data on depression and anxiety, but also other mental illness as well. And the more you eat what we call, a prudent or a healthier Mediterranean type of diet, the lower your risk for depression and anxiety.

How long is it going to take our society to pay attention to the research that shows that suboptimal nutrition is contributing to the epidemic of mental illness? Are we just going to sit around and ignore this evidence to our peril? Or are we going to start paying attention and start to invest in the really important research that needs to happen?

Here is an earlier blog post I did on Dr. Rucklidge’s excellent TEDX talk: The surprisingly dramatic role of nutrition in mental health

Here is part of the recent paper titled “What if nutrients could treat mental illness?”

We are at a tipping point in psychiatry.

The growing body of literature on the effect of nutrients on mental health is compelling enough and consistent enough for us to pay attention. It is time to revisit the role of diet and supplementary nutrients in the treatment of mental illness and to invest in this line of research.

Here is the smoking and cannabis study we talked about: Use of micronutrients attenuates cannabis and nicotine abuse as evidenced from a reversal design: a case study.

This case adds to a growing body of research supporting the use of micronutrients in the treatment of psychiatric symptoms and suggests it may extend to substance dependence. Micronutrients, by assisting with mood regulation and reductions in anxiety, may assist with successful cessation of drug use.

We discussed this earthquake paper, a favorite of hers: Shaken but unstirred? Effects of micronutrients on stress and trauma after an earthquake: RCT evidence comparing formulas and doses.

This study supports micronutrients as an inexpensive and practical treatment for acute stress following a natural disaster with a slight advantage to higher doses

If you are not already registered for the Anxiety Summit you can get live access to the speakers of the day here: www.theAnxietySummit.com

Missed this interview or can’t listen live? Or want this and the other great interviews for your learning library? Purchase the MP3s or MP3s + transcripts and listen when it suits you.

You can find your purchasing options here: Anxiety Summit Season 1, Anxiety Summit Season 2, and Anxiety Summit Season 3.