How To Manage Your Mood With Food (8 Ways)
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
It is hard to be mentally healthy for long without good diet. Food can not only affect our mood directly, but also indirectly because of how our brain works (or doesn’t, if we don’t have the right nutrients, or it is being sabotaged in some other dietary fashion).
Selecting the food for setting the mood
Mind, the mental health charity, have these advices to share (with some bonus notes of our own):
- Eat regularly: blood sugar peaks and troughs can heighten feelings of tiredness, irritability, or depression. Instead, enjoy foods that are high in energy but low in glycemic index, such as nuts, seeds, and oats—that way you’ll have plenty of energy, that lasts longer.
- Choose the right fats: omega-3 fatty acids are essential for the brain. So are omega-6 fatty acids, but it is rare to have a deficiency in omega-6, and indeed, many people have the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 far too imbalanced in omega-6’s favor. So, focussing on getting more omega-3 fatty acids is important. Nuts and seeds are again great, as are avocados, eggs, and oily fish.
- Get a healthy amount of protein: and importantly, with a good mix of amino acids—so a variety of sources of protein is best. In particular, if you are vegan, paying attention to ensure you get a full spread of amino acids is critical, as not many plants have all the ones we need (soy does, though). The reason this is important for mood is because many of those amino acids double up as the building blocks of neurotransmitters, so they’re not entirely interchangeable.
- Stay hydrated: our bodies are famously made of mostly water, and our brain will not work well if it’s dehydrated. The human body can squeeze water out of almost anything that has water in it, but water from food (such as fruit, or soups) is best. If enjoying actual drinks, then herbal teas are excellent for hydration.
- Eat a rainbow of fruits and vegetables: these have many nutrients that are important for brain health, and the point of the colors is that most of those pigments are themselves nutrients. Additionally, the fiber content of fruits and vegetables is of topmost important for your heart, and as you’ll remember (we say it often, because it’s true): what’s good for your heart is good for your brain.
- Limit caffeine intake: for many people, excess caffeine can lead to feelings of anxiety, disrupt your sleep, and for everyone who has developed an addiction to it, it will cause withdrawal symptoms if stopped abruptly. Cutting back on caffeine, or even eliminating it, may improve your mood and sleep quality. Note, however, that if you have ADHD, then your brain’s physiological relationship with caffeine is a little different, and stimulants will be more beneficial (and less deleterious) for you than for most people. If unsure, speak with your doctor about this one.
- Support your gut health: because of the gut-brain axis (via the vagal nerve), and also because nearly all of our endogenous serotonin is made in the gut (along with other neurotransmitters/hormones), getting plenty of fiber is important, and probiotics can help too.
- Consider food intolerances: if you know you have one, then keep that in mind and tailor your diet accordingly. If you suspect you have one, seek a nutritionist’s help to find out for sure. These can affect many aspects of health, including mood, so should not be dismissed as a triviality.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
The 6 Pillars Of Nutritional Psychiatry
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
Do CBD Gummies Work?
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝I take CBD gummies. I don’t know if they are worth buying. Can you find a study on the effectiveness of gummies❞
If you take them, and you’re not sure whether they’re worth it, then it sounds like you’re not getting any observable benefit from them?
If so, that would seem to answer your question, since presumably the reason that you are taking them is for relaxation and/or pain relief, so if you’re not getting the results you want, then no, they are not worth it.
However! CBD gummies are an incredibly diverse and not-well-studied product, so far, given the relative novelty of their legality. By diverse we mean, they’re not well-standardized.
In other words: the CBD gummies you get could be completely unlike CBD gummies from a different source.
CBD itself (i.e. in forms other than just gummies, and mostly as oil) has been studied somewhat better, and we did a main feature on it here:
And while we’re at it:
Cannabis Myths vs Reality ← This one is about cannabis products in general, and includes discussion of THC content and effects, which might not be so relevant to you, but may to some readers.
Companies selling CBD and CBD gummies may make bold claims that are not yet backed by science, so if you are buying them for those reasons, you might want to be aware:
Selling cannabidiol products in Canada: a framing analysis of advertising claims by online retailers
One thing that we would add is that even though CBD is generally recognized as safe, it is possible to overdose on CBD gummies, so do watch your limits:
A Case of Toxicity from Cannabidiol Gummy Ingestion
Take care!
Share This Post
Cool As A Cucumber
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Cucumber Extract Beats Glucosamine & Chondroitin… At 1/135th Of The Dose?!
Do you take glucosamine & chondroitin supplements for your bone-and-joint health?
Or perhaps, like many, you take them intermittently because they mean taking several large tablets a day. Or maybe you don’t take them at all because they generally contain ingredients derived from shellfish?
Cucumber extract has your back! (and your knees, and your hips, and…)
It’s plant-derived (being from botanical cucumbers, not sea cucumbers, the aquatic animal!) and requires only 1/135th of the dosage to produce twice the benefits!
Distilling the study to its absolute bare bones for your convenience:
- Cucumber extract (10mg) was pitted against glucosamine & chondroitin (1350mg)
- Cucumber extract performed around 50% better than G&C after 30 days
- Cucumber extract performed more than 200% better than G&C after 180 days
In conclusion, this study indicates that, in very lay terms:
Cucumber extract blows glucosamine & chondroitin out of the water as a treatment and preventative for joint pain
Share This Post
Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety
Psychologists do love making fancy new names for things.
You thought you were merely “eating your breakfast”, but now it’s “Happiness-Oriented Basic Behavioral Intervention Therapy (HOBBIT)” or something.
This one’s quite simple, so we’ll keep it short for today, but it is one more tool for your toolbox:
What is Behavioral Activation?
Behavioral Activation is about improving our mood (something we can’t directly choose) by changing our behavior (something we usually can directly choose).
An oversimplified (and insufficient, as we will explain, but we’ll use this one to get us started) example would be “whistle a happy tune and you will be happy”.
Behavioral Activation is not a silver bullet
Or if it is, then it’s the kind you have to keep shooting, because one shot is not enough. However, this becomes easier than you might think, because Behavioral Activation works by…
Creating a Positive Feedback Loop
A lot of internal problems in depression and anxiety are created by the fact that necessary and otherwise desirable activities are being written off by the brain as:
- Pointless (depression)
- Dangerous (anxiety)
The inaction that results from these aversions creates a negative feedback loop as one’s life gradually declines (as does one’s energy, and interest in life), or as the outside world seems more and more unwelcoming/scary.
Instead, Behavioral Activation plans activities (usually with the help of a therapist, as depressed/anxious people are not the most inclined to plan activities) that will be:
- attainable
- rewarding
The first part is important, because the maximum of what is “attainable” to a depressed/anxious person can often be quite a small thing. So, small goals are ideal at first.
The second part is important, because there needs to be some way of jump-starting a healthier dopamine cycle. It also has to feel rewarding during/after doing it, not next year, so short term plans are ideal at first.
So, what behavior should we do?
That depends on you. Behavioral Activation calls for keeping track of our activities (bullet-journaling is fine, and there are apps* that can help you, too) and corresponding moods.
*This writer uses the pragmatic Daylio for its nice statistical analyses of bullet-journaling data-points, and the very cute Finch for more keyword-oriented insights and suggestions. Whatever works for you, works for you, though! It could even be paper and pen.
Sometimes the very thought of an activity fills us with dread, but the actual execution of it brings us relief. Bullet-journaling can track that sort of thing, and inform decisions about “what we should do” going forwards.
Want a ready-made brainstorm to jump-start your creativity?
Here’s list of activities suggested by TherapistAid (a resource hub for therapists)
Want to know more?
You might like:
- How To Use Behavioral Activation (guide for end users)
- Treatment Guide: Behavioral Activation (guide for clinicians)
Take care!
Share This Post
Vodka vs Beer – Which is Healthier?
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Our Verdict
When comparing vodka to beer, we picked the vodka.
Why?
As you might have guessed, neither are exactly healthy. But one of them is relatively, and we stress relatively, less bad than the other.
In the category of nutrients, vodka is devoid of nutrients, and beer has small amounts of some vitamins and minerals—but the amounts are so small, that you would need to drink yourself to death before benefiting from them meaningfully. And while beer gets touted as “liquid bread”, it really isn’t. A thousand years ago it will have been a lot less alcoholic and more carby, but even then, it wasn’t a health product aside from that it provided a way of making potentially contaminated water safer to drink.
In the category of carbohydrates, vodka nominally has none, due to the distillation process, and beer has some. Glycemic index websites often advise that the GI of beers, wines, and spirits can’t be measured as their carb content is not sufficient to get a meaningful sample, but diabetes research tells a more useful story:
Any alcoholic drink will generally cause a brief drop in blood sugars, followed by a spike. This happens because the liver prioritises metabolizing alcohol over producing glycogen, so it hits pause on the sugar metabolism and then has a backlog to catch up on. In the case of alcoholic drinks that have alcohol and carbs, this will be more pronounced—so this means that the functional glycemic load of beer is higher.
That’s a point in favor of vodka.
Additionally, in terms of the alcohol content, correctly-distilled vodka’s alcohol is pure ethanol, while beer will contain an amount of methanol that will vary per beer, but an illustrative nominal figure could be about 16mg/L. Methanol is more harmful than ethanol.
So that’s another point in favor of vodka.
Once again, neither drink is healthy; both are distinctly unhealthy. But unit for unit, beer is the least healthy of the two, making vodka the lesser of two evils.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
- Can We Drink To Good Health? (answer: we cannot, but this was about alcohol’s proposed heart-healthy benefits)
- Guinness Is Good For You* (it isn’t, but this was the long-time slogan and marketing campaign that fooled many)
- How To Reduce Or Quit Alcohol
- How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
The Aesthetic Brain – by Dr. Anjan Chatterjee
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Dr. Anjan Chatterjee (not to be mistaken for Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, whose books we have also sometimes reviewed before) is a neurologist.
A lot about aesthetics is easy enough to understand. We like physical features in humans that suggest a healthy mate, and we like lush and/or colorful plants that reassure us that we will have plenty to eat.
But what about a beautiful building, or a charcoal drawing of some captivatingly eldritch horror? And what, neurologically speaking, is the difference between a bowl of fruit and a painting of a bowl of fruit? And what, if anything, does appreciation of such do for us?
In this very readable pop-science book, we learn about these things and many more, from the perspective of an experienced neurologist who explains things simply but with plenty of science.
Bottom line: if you’d like to understand how and why your brain does more things than just process tasks necessary for survival, this book will give you plenty of insight.
Click here to check out The Aesthetic Brain, and learn more about yours!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
More research shows COVID-19 vaccines are safe for young adults
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
What you need to know
- Myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, is most commonly caused by a viral infection like COVID-19, not by vaccination.
- In line with previous research, a recent CDC study found no association between COVID-19 vaccination and sudden cardiac death in previously healthy young people.
- A COVID-19 infection is much more likely to cause inflammation of the heart muscle than a COVID-19 vaccine, and those cases are typically more severe.
Since the approval of the first COVID-19 vaccines, anti-vaccine advocates have raised concerns about heart muscle inflammation, also called myocarditis, after vaccination to suggest that vaccines are unsafe. They’ve also used concerns about myocarditis to spread false claims that vaccines cause sudden deaths, which is not true.
Research has consistently shown that cases of myocarditis after vaccination are extremely rare and usually mild, and a new study from the CDC found no association between sudden cardiac death and COVID-19 vaccination in young adults.
Read on to learn more about myocarditis and what the latest research says about COVID-19 vaccine safety.
What is myocarditis?
Myocarditis is inflammation of the myocardium, or the middle muscular layer of the heart wall. This inflammation weakens the heart’s ability to pump blood. Symptoms may include fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pain, rapid or irregular heartbeat, and flu-like symptoms.
Myocarditis may resolve on its own. In rare cases, it may lead to stroke, heart failure, heart attack, or death.
What causes myocarditis?
Myocarditis is typically caused by a viral infection like COVID-19. Bacteria, parasites, fungi, chemicals, and certain medications can also cause myocarditis.
In very rare cases, some people develop myocarditis after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, but these cases are usually mild and resolve on their own. In contrast, a COVID-19 infection is much more likely to cause myocarditis, and those cases are typically more severe.
Staying up to date on vaccines reduces your risk of developing myocarditis from a COVID-19 infection.
Are COVID-19 vaccines safe for young people?
Yes. COVID-19 vaccines have been rigorously tested and monitored over the past three years and have been determined to be safe for everyone 6 months and older. A recent CDC study found no association between COVID-19 vaccination and sudden cardiac death in previously healthy young adults.
The benefits of vaccination outweigh any potential risks. Staying up to date on COVID-19 vaccines reduces your risk of severe illness, hospitalization, death, long COVID, and COVID-19-related complications, such as myocarditis.
The CDC recommends people 65 and older and immunocompromised people receive an additional dose of the updated COVID-19 vaccine this spring—if at least four months have passed since they received a COVID-19 vaccine.
For more information, talk to your health care provider.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
