Nutritional Psychiatry: The relationship between Diet and Mental Health

The link between diet and mental health is now a trending topic, as the links that were once tenuous in the past are now becoming more clear-cut to scientists and many in the health, medical and nutrition field. However, the dualism of the human being, is seen as the body being separate from the mind. This is mirrored in our NHS delivery where mental health provisions, especially at the community level, has been gravely underfunded. There is minimal research activity investigating suitable successful holistic strategic approaches to helping individuals with mental health problems in conjunction with improving their physical health outcomes from disorder or disease at the same time.

Mental health has been a major contributor to years of life lost due to disabilities in developed countries. (ref) The developed western civilisation has undergone rapid industrialisation and urbanisation over the past 50 years socially, yet our genetic variation has not developed at the rate of our civilisation. As a result, human beings pay the price for this imbalance between their physical and mental health. Recent global reports of populations living with depression is well over 300 million people and anxiety disorders affects over 200 million people (ref). 1 in 4 people are diagnosed with mental health problems every year.

Dietary factors are responsible for 10.9 million deaths and 255 million disability adjusted life years. The modern era has been characterised by shifts in nutrition transition, were there has been an evolution from traditional dietary patterns, to the westernised diet. The westernised diet is associated with highly processed energy dense foods, refined sugars, excessive salt, and a poor consumption of plant derived foods. All coupled with reduction in physical activity and an imbalance between calorie intake and calorie expenditure. All of this has led to more attention being paid to the links between the gut microbiome, stress, anxiety and depression.

Yet why is it such a surprise that what we consume as food has an impact on our mental health. Is this because we see ourselves as having a body as opposed being a body? How many times have we conveyed how we respond or feel towards something or someone based on having a ‘gut feeling’? This means that we must accept that we have more than one mind, and that what we feed the gut mind has an impact on the mental mind. The human body is a living breathing vessel containing millions of microorganisms considered to be non-human. Therefore, the gut is a feeling, thinking, storing, remembering organism.  

For that reason, we should aim to seek more exploration with regards to dietary approaches with the inclusion of probiotics and prebiotics to optimise the health of the microbiome as well as our beings.