According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, 18.1% of the U.S. population
suffers from some kind of anxiety disorder and 6.7% suffers from major depressive disorder.
One of the first people I interviewed described depression as a slower way of being dead
And that was a good thing for me to hear early on because it reminded me that that slow way of being dead
Can lead to actual deadness; that this is a serious business
It's the leading disability worldwide and people die of it every day.
The latest estimates from the World Health Organization indicate that more than 300 million people live with depression.
Living with depression is like standing on the edge of a cliff in your own home
It can destroy the very structure of your life and sap your ability to think clearly.
Basically, it really sucks.
Besides, mom, I'm not afraid of the dark. Perhaps that's part of the problem.
Mom says "I thought the problem was that you can't get out of bed". I can't
Anxiety holds me a hostage inside of my house--inside of my head; mom says, where did anxiety come from?
Anxiety is the cousin visiting from out of town-
depression felt obligated to bring to the party--mom I AM the party, only I am a party
I don't want to be at. Ok, so in this video
I'm going to specifically talk about how what you eat or don't eat can cause depression.
But it's important to understand that depression is very complicated and usually it's not just caused by any one thing.
Food can make you depressed, sure, but so can stressful life circumstances, hormones or even genetics.
A study by the Korean College of Neuropsychopharmacology
titled "The Gut-Brain Axis: The Missing Link in Depression" says that research has suggested that the gut
microbiota has an influence on mood. It also states that poor diet is a risk factor for
depression; thus, a healthy diet may prevent depression and that the gut-brain axis could aid in understanding and treating
neuropsychiatric disorders, especially depression. One of the best books on this subject is New York Times bestseller Grain Brain by
neurologist David Perlmutter who explains that carbs and grains can cause not only depression, but also anxiety, ADHD,
dementia, chronic headaches, etc. This is what he has to say:
Researchers have known for some time now that the cornerstone of all degenerative conditions including brain disorders is inflammation
But what they didn't have documented until now are the instigators of that inflammation-
The first missteps that prompt this deadly
reaction. And what they are finding is that gluten and a high-carbohydrate diet for that matter are among the most prominent
stimulators of inflammatory pathways that reach the brain. There are primarily three things you need to watch out for:
Carbs, sugar, and wheat.
ESPECIALLY sugar.
The reason these three things are so insidious is simple: our culture doesn't really tell you how they can be bad for you.
Have you ever noticed that when you eat a large serving of pasta or rice, you feel less motivated to do things?
Or you may straight-up feel depressed or anxious when you eat the worst kind of carbohydrates--refined carbs. This includes stuff like maple syrup,
fructose,
maltose,
glucose syrup,
dextran, and tapioca syrup.
High fructose corn syrup is particularly bad for you.
And also let's not forget that pasta and white bread are also made of refined grains. The largest part of the United States Department of
Agriculture pyramid is carbs and yet even mainstream culture
generally agrees that refined carbohydrates are bad for you.
But the USDA pyramid, as you can see here, does not even tell you that refined
carbohydrates can wreak havoc on your body. A study entitled "Are refined carbohydrates worse than saturated fat?" concludes that refined
carbohydrates are likely to cause even greater metabolic damage than saturated fat in a predominantly sedentary and overweight population.
The study also points out that in this era of widespread obesity and insulin resistance
the time has come to shift the focus of the diet-heart paradigm away from restricted fat intake and toward reduced consumption of refined
carbohydrates. Another study entitled "Increased consumption of refined
carbohydrates and the epidemic of type 2 diabetes in the United States: an ecologic assessment" concluded at increasing intakes of refined
carbohydrates (corn syrup) concomitant with decreasing intakes of fiber paralleled the upward trend in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes
observed in the United States during the 20th century.
Yet another study entitled "A refined high carbohydrate diet as associated with changes in the serotonin pathway and
visceral obesity" concludes that a refined high carbohydrate diet is associated with visceral obesity
increased circulating lipids in the blood and distorted serotonergic signaling
which possibly alters satiety and hunger signals. Now, there is one more carb I want to talk about: rice.
Let me state up front that I don't think rice is bad. The Japanese which are known for their longevity
up until recently only really ate a few major sources of carbs: rice, rice cakes, and buckwheat noodles.
Which are gluten-free.
Westernization brought wheat and other refined carbs to modern Japan, but apart from soy sauce, wheat didn't have that much of a presence in Japan.
However do remember that eating a lot of rice at once is still not a very good idea if food tends to affect you easily.
Japanese centenarians tend to eat a low volume of food, few unhealthy carbs, and not a lot of sugar.
Volume of food is another variable to take into account.
As you can see here on this list of countries by food energy intake, the United States is at number two. Guess where Japan is?
Eighty-one. Your digestive system breaks down
digestible carbs into sugar and this sugar enters your blood. This rise in blood sugar is accompanied by
insulin and glucagon, a hormone produced by the pancreas.
Because fat and fiber is removed from refined carbs, they digest extremely quickly which causes your insulin and blood sugar levels to spike.
We can dance around this issue all day,
But let's be honest here.
Refined carbohydrates are BAD for you. If you're feeling
depressed or lethargic, try cutting back on the refined carbs for a few weeks and see if you notice any difference.
Now, if you thought refined carbs were bad,
Oh, God... sugar...
Sugar... sugar... sugar... where to start? I almost have no words for this.
It's amazing, how all of you--humanity, basically, has been fooled by sugar... by the sugar industry.
Honestly the whole sugar thing borders very close on being a crime against humanity.
The fact that every product you see on any store, anywhere, has sugar in it and more sugar and more sugar...
Okay, let's start. Sugar is made up of glucose, galactose and fructose
Glucose is our primary metabolic field necessary for cellular respiration
Galactose is very similar to glucose and mostly gets converted to
glucose when you consume it. What we're interested in is refined sugar, which is half fructose and half glucose. You see a trend here?
Refined foods are actually what's killing us. Now the important thing to understand here
Is that while
practically every cell in your body can convert glucose to energy, there is only one organ in your body that can deal with fructose
The liver. And the liver deals with fructose in a very unique way.
So how does this work? Well, the liver utilizes fructose to create fat--a process called lipogenesis.
If too much fructose is consumed over a period of time,
which by the way is VERY easy to do in today's world,
well, it makes it impossible for the liver to release all this fat
and it gets stuck in the liver cells and when you accumulate too much of this fat, well, you get non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
You can see the stages of the disease here: first deposits of fat cause liver enlargement.
Followed by scar tissue and liver cell injury, which finally leads to cirrhosis, which hardens and weakens your liver.
Okay, so we know that refined sugar is not your body's friend,
but why is it the risk factor in depression and other similar disorders?
Here's what neuroscientist Amy Reichelt has to say: they taste so good.
And when we consume these foods our brain's reward center activates and it releases the chemical dopamine
Dopamine makes us feel good, and we really like it
So actually when we overconsume these foods, our brains become
overwhelmed with the pleasurable
experiences that we're having.
So our brain's pretty clever and it adapts. It creates more receptors for dopamine.
And what happens then is that we need more of these foods.
To get the same kick out of them. Our brain is basically hardwired to
seek and want these foods, but we're building up a tolerance to them so we eat more.
So we're basically becoming sugar junkies. The sugar and dopamine-cortisol-serotonin connection is a very complex subject
but if you're really interested in learning more I suggest you take a look at Robert Lustig's book:
The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains.
In his book he explains a lot about dopamine and how our surrounding culture makes it so difficult to stop consuming sugar.
It shouldn't really come as a surprise that if you constantly consume something that messes with your body and brain's
chemistry like refined sugar, it's going to have an effect and in this case, a negative effect.
Corporations of America today have engaged in a very specific
attempt to
market their
propaganda in order to get us
to do different things than we might otherwise have done.
Examples...
The easiest one of course is food and the one that I've written about previously.
The idea that foods can be healthy
goes back a long way. In fact not eating food is not healthy.
It's called starvation. The question is which foods are the ones that ultimately
lead to health? The answer is not the ones that the food industry has touted. In fact,
we have the data that demonstrates that they knew what they were doing. When we went low-fat in the
1970s
the Sugar Association
knew what it was doing. In fact, there is a now
paper trail of
the communications between the Sugar Association and two Harvard School Public Health scientists
To specifically exonerate sugar and finger saturated fat as the culprit for our
cardiovascular disease debacle.
Turns out,
we now have the data to show that that was completely untrue, that we have actually experienced an increase in
obesity, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, lipid problems, cancer and dementia.
Because of our processed food diet which we were told was
healthy. So what are we to do? The concept is simple, but the execution is difficult. STOP eating ultra-processed foods.
Stop eating refined sugar, or at least try to consume very little. I know that this is hard to do since it seems like
everything has refined sugar in it,
but a little
mindfulness can go a long way. As for refined carbs remember that a small amount won't have a serious negative effect on most people, but
Definitely avoid consuming a large amount all at once. The main
takeaway
here is experimentation. Be like a scientist. Avoid refined sugar for a month and see how you feel.
Do the same for wheat and
refined carbs. If you never try to change things up once in a while
You'll never know whether or not you're operating at 100% efficiency.
When you are mindful, you become more aware. And when you become more aware,
you can make changes in your life.
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