Here are some interesting articles linking the two together.
The holidays are notorious for depression for many folks. Please mind what you eat both at work and at home during this holiday season.
Junk Food Linked To Violence and Depression
A food additive found in most fast foods and junk foods may trigger violence and depression later in life if the fetus absorbs its mother’s toxic habits.
New research conducted at the National Institutes for Health outside Washington, D.C. has turned up persuasive evidence that junk food diets can cause depression, violence, and other anti-social behaviors.
A group of 80 volunteers, many of them with criminal records of violence, went through a double-blind study in which half had their omega-6 fatty acids (found in fast foods and junk foods) drastically reduced and replaced with more healthy omega-3 fatty acids as found primarily in fish oil. The result was a startling drop in anger and aggression and depression.
The clinician in charge of the study, Dr. Joseph Hibbein, says our modern diets are “changing the very architecture and functioning of the brain.” For those of you who have read The Hundred Year Lie, you will recognize this sort of language as fitting into my argument that we are becoming a mutant species.
The key finding of the NIH research is that omega-6 fatty acids, found in everything from margarine and ice cream to snack foods such as potato chips, have replaced the healthy omega-3s and that has produced severe disruptions of serotonin and dopamine in the brains of junk food addicts. Low serotonin is known to be linked to depression, the risk of suicide, and violent and impulsive behaviors. Dopamine is crucial to decision-making. (more…)
Rise in Mental Illness Linked to Unhealthy Diets, Say Studies (press release)
Changes in diet over the past 50 years appear to be an important factor behind a significant rise in mental ill health in the UK, say two reports published today.
The Mental Health Foundation says scientific studies have clearly linked attention deficit disorder, depression, Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia to junk food and the absence of essential fats, vitamins and minerals in industrialised diets.
A further report, Changing Diets, Changing Minds, is also published today by Sustain, the organisation that campaigns for better food. It warns that the NHS bill for mental illness, at almost £100bn a year, will continue to rise unless the government focuses on diet and the brain in its food, farming, education and environment policies.
“Food can have an immediate and lasting effect on mental health and behaviour because of the way it affects the structure and function of the brain,” Sustain’s report says. Its chairman, Tim Lang, said: “Mental health has been completely neglected by those working on food policy. If we don’t address it and change the way we farm and fish, we may lose the means to prevent much diet-related ill health.” (more…)
The Obesity-Depression Link
Are you overweight? Depressed? The two problems may be linked.
By:Willow Lawson
Depression in children is often linked with obesity. But it seems to be a case of chicken and egg. The two conditions often occur together, but it is unclear exactly which is cause and which is effect.
Obesity rates are soaring. One study, published in Pediatrics, found that the longer a child is overweight, the more he or she is at risk for depression and other mental health disorders.
The study followed nearly 1,000 white children in North Carolina, ages 9 to 16, over eight years. Young boys, but not girls, proved especially prone to the dual problem of obesity with depression. (more…)
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