Depression & Anxiety - Does Food Play any Role?
Does Food have any Influence on your Depression?
It seems that there are more people suffering from depression now than ever before. Hey, for several years I was one of them. Is this just because more people are coming forward to admit to having mental illnesses?
It's unlikely. More likely is that there are new external factors that are making depression more prevalent in our society. Like triggers that are making us feel so much worse than our previous generations did.
We have found that fructose (a type of sugar) affects our energy levels, and also affects all sorts of hormonal balances. Our bodies & brains have been hardwired to use fructose at a certain time of the year (late summer) in order to fatten up for winter. This association with fructose has potentially saved the human species from extinction over the past 100 thousand years, so we must give thanks where it is due!
Fructose affects our bodies by slowing us down - physically, and slowing our brains down so that we burn less energy as we hunker down for another freezing winter. Our ancestors' bodies need to slow down so they would burn less energy daily. It was a bit like a half-cocked hibernation. While the bears & hedgehogs were snoring, our ancestors were still lucid but just lacked that spring in their step and that ability to complete a crossword in their cold, dark cave (not to mention pencils hadn't yet been invented).
Now we are in the situation where the seasonal supply of fructose has become a staple of our diet; the standard western diet means we consume large amounts of this sugar every day of the year, not only in foods that are obvious such as a can of Coke, but also hidden away in all sorts of processed foods. Those bran flakes you have for breakfast are likely to be loaded with sugar (take a look at the nutrition label on the back of the box if you don't believe me). That orange juice that you drank for breakfast has about 9 teaspoons of fructose loaded into it.
This means our minds are being bombarded by a product that has been genetically embedded into us as a depressant. Once you see things from this perspective, depression in the 21st century suddenly becomes, well, almost obvious, and expected!
How do we rectify this? Remove sugar from your diet. Sounds simple? Until you realize that sugar in one form or another is in so many of our foods, it becomes quite difficult. To do this properly you'll need to remove almost all carbohydrates from your diet, since the carbs in such common products as bread & pasta will be quickly dissolved in your stomach and released as sugars into your bloodstream.
You might be thinking that this is an unrealistic, watered-down version of possible events, but the fact is that thousands of people who have switched to a full ketogenic diet for at least a couple of months have noticed a significant increase in their positivity and overall happiness. This has been well tabulated, and most ketogenic people will sing this fact from the rooftops. It's not mumbo jumbo. It has been the savior of so many people. I think the fact that it has alluded therapists so far is because it sounds just too good to be true!
If you don't believe me and you are currently suffering, I have a very simple challenge for you. Give it a try. Cut out your carbs, switch your metabolism so that your body learns how to use fats as its energy source, increase your protein intake, settle in for a few weeks and you will start to gradually feel better, until one day you'll notice that all those feelings of terrible loss and devastating emptiness have dissipated somewhere.
If you're not sure where to start, buy my book "The Complete Fatloss Manual for Middle-aged Men" available on Amazon. I explain how to do it properly in the book, and I explain what to expect and what to avoid, so you are more likely to succeed.
If it doesn't work, what have you lost from trying? You've just got different foods in your pantry & fridge, which has probably done you a world of good in so many other ways!