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This Is Your Brain on Food by Uma Naidoo, MD (video interview and review)

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brain on food

Dr. Uma Naidoo has a wonderful new book called This Is Your Brain on Food: An Indispensable Guide to the Surprising Foods that Fight Depression, Anxiety, PTSD, OCD, ADHD, and More (my Amazon link)

Her big bold message is this “Until we solve nutritional problems, no amount of medication and psychotherapy is going to be able to stem the tide of mental issues in our society.”  This is something I wholeheartedly agree with!

I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Dr. Naidoo and we talked about the benefits of fermented foods and social anxiety, vitamin D and anxiety, dietary sources of polyphenols for ADHD and much more:

51 women with type 2 diabetes and vitamin D deficiency were randomly allocated to receive one oral pearl of 50,000 IU vitamin D3 (26 women) or a placebo (25 women) fortnightly for 16 weeks

Anxiety score changes were significantly lower in vitamin D group than the controls

Dietary polyphenols… have antioxidant capacities as well as immunoregulatory effects and, therefore, appear appropriate in ADHD therapy.

  • Dr. Naidoo recommends these sources of polyphenols: berries and other fruit, vegetables, extra virgin olive oil.
  • I’m fascinated by the fact that polyphenols “act as a low-dose toxin that trains the body to mount an immune response in a process called hormesis” (there are many geeky gems like this in the book)
  • Dr. Naidoo shares the story of her 36 year old patient with severe anxiety. He was a binge eater and also had a history of alcohol abuse. Vitamin B1 (250mg) was every effective for him…“In animal studies, thiamine appears to reduce stress-like responses because it protects the hippocampus”
  • We talk about chamomile tea and how it helps with sleep. There are some cautions if you’re on a blood thinner prescription or going to have surgery. Pregnant women should also avoid it.
  • Dr. Naidoo shares a delicious Golden Milk recipe with tips on how to use turmeric (one her favorite spices and inspired by her grandmother’s cooking) with black pepper. You’ll find this in the recipes section.
  • Dr Naidoo also shares one of her favorite comfort foods – a yummy lentil soup recipe called dal in south Indian cuisines. It’s a great source of fiber, plant-based protein and is very affordable. And really healthy when cooked with vegetables and spices like mustard seeds, ginger, garlic and turmeric. She shares a tip to improve the flavors – making tadka (listen to the interview below, enjoy and be inspired!)

 

It’s a wonderful book that I highly recommend if:

  • you are new to nutritional psychiatry and the power of food
  • you are a seasoned foodie and want to geek out on mechanisms and the science
  • you want to learn about foods and nutrients (all science-based) specifically for depression, anxiety, PTSD, OCD, ADHD and insomnia
  • you are a practitioner and want to learn and share a wonderful book with your patients or clients

I read it cover to cover and picked up so many gems. I also loved reading about her memories of cooking with her Pinetown granny (Pinetown is just outside Durban where we both happened to grow up)!

We do have a few professional differences of opinion that I feel I should mention:

  • I am not in favor of canola oil and I’d switch out the recipes that call for canola oil with olive oil
  • I have a difficult time extrapolating high-fat diets in rat studies to concerns about saturated fat consumption in humans (given the nature of the rat chow in many of these studies)
  • I’m more concerned with portion-size of carbs than I am with portion-size of healthy fats (and typically recommend full-fat coconut milk, and chicken and turkey with skin-on)
  • I find grass-red meat to be beneficial for my clients with anxiety and mood issues
  • Many of my anxious clients cannot tolerate any caffeine and I consider 14 alcoholic drinks a week for men and 7 alcoholic drinks a week for women to be excessive
  • I prefer stove-top and oven cooking to using a microwave.

This is the official book blurb:

Did you know that blueberries can help you cope with the aftereffects of trauma? That salami can cause depression, or that boosting Vitamin D intake can help treat anxiety?

When it comes to diet, most people’s concerns involve weight loss, fitness, cardiac health, and longevity. But what we eat affects more than our bodies; it also affects our brains. And recent studies have shown that diet can have a profound impact on mental health conditions ranging from ADHD to depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, OCD, dementia and beyond.

A triple threat in the food space, Dr. Uma Naidoo is a board-certified psychiatrist, nutrition specialist, and professionally trained chef. In This Is Your Brain on Food, she draws on cutting-edge research to explain the many ways in which food contributes to our mental health, and shows how a sound diet can help treat and prevent a wide range of psychological and cognitive health issues.

Packed with fascinating science, actionable nutritional recommendations, and delicious, brain-healthy recipes, This Is Your Brain on Food is the go-to guide to optimizing your mental health with food.

Uma Naidoo, MD is board-certified psychiatrist (Harvard Medical School), professional chef (Cambridge School of Culinary Arts), and nutrition specialist (Cornell University). She is currently the Director of Nutritional and Lifestyle Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), where she consults on nutritional interventions for the psychiatrically and medically ill; Director of Nutritional Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital Academy; and has a private practice in Newton, MA. She also teaches at The Cambridge School of Culinary Arts.

Dr. Naidoo speaks frequently at conferences at Harvard, for Goop audiences, the New York City Jewish Community Center (JCC), and Ivy Boston. She blogs for Harvard Health and Psychology Today and completed a unique video cooking series for the MGH Academy which teaches Nutritional Psychiatry using culinary techniques in the kitchen.

You can get your copy of This Is Your Brain on Food here (my Amazon link) and find additional information about Dr. Naidoo here and the book here.

Let us know what you think in the comments below and be sure to leave Dr. Naidoo a review once you read your copy!

Feel free to post your questions here too.

The Anxiety Summit – Anxiety: Grass-fed beef, fermented foods and healthy snacks the Paleovalley way

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Autumn Fladmo Smith_Anxiety4

Autumn Fladmo Smith, co-founder Paleovalley, is interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Anxiety: Grass-fed beef, fermented foods and healthy snacks the Paleovalley way

  • can dietary intervention reduce anxiety?
  • how the health of the mother affects the child’s mental health
  • nutritional and mental health benefits of grass-fed beef vs. conventionally raised beef
  • benefits of fermented foods for mental wellbeing
  • healthy snacks for blood sugar control and anxiety
  • GMOs, the shikimate pathway and serotonin
  • Paleovalley’s mission, 100% grass-fed beef sticks, why they are fermented, and how/why GMOs and hydrogenated oils were avoided

Here are some gems from our interview:

What happened in around 2009, although the link between diet and mental health was rarely investigated prior to that time, a researcher from Deacon University named Dr. Felice Jacka came on the scene and she did her dissertation exploring dietary patterns.  So not only taking those dietary triggers, which were just really specific foods, but also seeing what were people eating as overall dietary patterns that was making a difference?  And when she did that research she kind of noted two different diets emerging.  And that’s the traditional diet with high intakes of grass fed meats, fish, vegetables and fruit and then our all too familiar SAD diet, the American standard diet.  And what she found was that there were very, very different outcomes, mental health wise, for people who were eating the traditional versus the processed diet.  And in fact her dissertation elucidated that if you were eating higher amounts of processed food or a standard American diet you had a 50 percent greater incidence of depression and anxiety.  So that was really an important finding for my thesis. 

Here is a link to Dr. Felice Jacka’s interview on season 1 of the Anxiety Summit: The Research – Food to prevent and treat anxiety and depression?

It was in this interview that Dr. Jacka said this:

“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.

felice jacka red meat

This blog discusses Dr. Jacka’s current SMILES study on diet in anxiety and depression – A RCT of a dietary intervention for adults with major depression (the “SMILES” trial): study protocol.  We should see published results shortly.

Autumn shares these benefits of grass-fed red meat:

Grass fed red meat is different in two main ways.  And that’s because it has higher and a different fatty acid profile, especially omega-3 fatty acid.  There seems to be more, I think three to five times more than conventional raised beef.  And that’s important because omega-3 are known to be very therapeutic for mental health and a number of other health issues.  So as many of those omega-3’s as we can get is a good thing.  But what it also does is there’s omega-3 fatty acid and there’s omega-6 fatty acid and it improves the ratio.  It has kind of a perfect ratio.  Our ancestors had a ratio between these two fatty acid’s of about one to one and the common American today has a ratio of about 20 to one, which they hypothesize, and a lot of research suggest, leads to inflammation in the body, which is the root of basically all degenerative diseases.  So grass fed beef has a ratio of about 1.5 to one, which is almost perfect compared to one to 7.5 in conventionally raised beef.  So that’s just a huge difference. 

And then there’s also something called CLA, which is another fatty acid known to have cancer fighting properties.  One study showed that the women who ate the most CLA had a lower risk of breast cancer.  And it’s also known to optimize the deposition of fat in the body so that’s really important.  But the other major benefit of grass fed beef is its antioxidant profile.  There’s higher levels of glutathione, which is our bodies master antioxidant.  There’s I think seven times more vitamin A or beta-carotene, the precursors to vitamin A.  And I think three times more vitamin E.  There’s also higher levels of B vitamins, which are so critical for mental health, and minerals, especially zinc and iron and magnesium, which are also really, really important for mental health.  But the other side of the coin is, like Trudy said, what we’re not getting that conventionally raised beef has to offer and that is the hormones, the antibiotics and the pesticides, which just wreak havoc on our health.  And toxins are stored in fat as well, which is a really, really important thing to remember.  So when you’re eating the fat of a conventionally raised animal that fat is actually storing up all of those toxins and then you’re getting a healthy dose in every bite.  So basically grass fed beef is allowing us to only put into our body what’s going to allow us to thrive and none of what won’t, which is why I’m so passionate about it.

Here is Autumn’s digital gift: her antianxiety protocol based on her thesis 

You can use this link to get 30% off Paleovalley’s 100% grass-fed beefsticks 

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, Anxiety Summit Season 3, and Anxiety Summit Season 4.