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Good Food For Good Mood

by Karen Schachter
Copyright 2008 Healthy Bodies, Happy Minds

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” - Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was on to something: food - and our relationship to it - is our sustenance, our lifeblood. It has the potential to be a source of nourishment and wellbeing or, as is the case for many people, a source of angst and unhappiness.

Last month, I wrote about sugar and its impact on our mood, cravings, attention, and energy. I know, based on your notes to me, that many of you resonated with my thoughts, and that many of you struggle with sugar cravings, sugar crashes, and sugar conflicts of your own.

This month, I want to extend that conversation to talk in general terms about food and how it affects our biochemistry (mood, cravings, attention, energy, etc. . .). It has become clearer and clearer to me as a therapist and a certified health counselor that everything we eat has a powerful effect on our lives. No, not just our weight (which is what most of us focus on), but on how we feel physically AND emotionally.

As a psychotherapist, I was never taught to think about food and nutrition. I was taught that people’s unhappiness or anxiety or eating disorders or other various struggles were a result of their early upbringing or difficult experiences or traumatic losses. I was taught that if there was something going on with a person’s brain chemistry (as evidenced by specific signs and symptoms), it should be treated with medication.

Although this perspective is useful, it leaves out a huge missing piece: The idea that food matters; that my clients’ nutrition might be contributing to their depression, their anxiety, their binging, their purging, their lethargy, their attentional problems, their behavioral concerns, and their mood instabilities. And even more importantly that these feelings, in part caused by mis-firing or mis-wiring in their brain, might be improved by nutritional changes.

At this point in my career, I know better, but many people -psychotherapists, doctors, and consumers included - still do not think this way.

Yes, when a destructive or negative mood hits, it often does have some psychological and historical origins, and in some cases, medication may be needed. However, this is not always the case and it is almost never the only thing going on. What, how and when we eat - as well as the quality and quantity of the food we put in our mouths - has a profound effect on our mind and our mood.

According to Anne Marie Colbin, in her book, Food and Healing, “mood. . . can be one of the first indicators that something is out of kilter . . . A change in diet, which can be embarked upon at any time, at any hour of the day, can make us feel more centered, improve our disposition and concentration, and even increase our joyfulness and good cheer.”

And in her book, The Mood Cure, Julia Ross contends that the brain is responsible for most of our feelings. If our brain is high in certain neurotransmitters (like serotonin and endorphins, for example), we will feel happy and optimistic, focused and calm. However, when our brains run low on these neurotransmitters, due to genetic factors, stress, or diet - “it stops producing normal emotions on a consistent basis” and we feel bad. She states loud and clear that “regardless of your genes, but especially if your mood-programming genes are inefficient, good nutrition is essential.” According to Ms. Ross, we can repair our brain with foods and nutritional supplements.

However, some of us may use food (or other substances) to self-medicate. This is what I often see in my practice. Unfortunately, the foods we usually turn to are the foods that make us feel worse. Truth is, the Standard American Diet (also known as “SAD”) consists primarily of highly processed, refined foods . . . foods which are altered so much from their original state, that it’s not clear whether they are actually even a food anymore (I mean, what are Cheetos anyway???!).

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April 28, 2008 | Category: Diet & Weight Loss 

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