August 13, 2023 | Categories: Fitness, Health, Health Care, Mental Health
If you’ve been feeling a little more blah or blue than usual these days, you may want to try making some improvements to your diet to see if those changes could put you in a better mood.
“One of the first things I talk about with patients that come in experiencing stress and anxiety is the role of food in mood,” says Dr. Tiffany Caplan, Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner, Caplan Health Institute.
One way dietary choices play a very important role in our mood is via the gut-brain connection. “We think of the gut as our second brain but really it can have more control over our mental health than our actual brain,” says Dr. Caplan.
The gut is often at the root of why someone is producing lower or abnormal amounts of the feel-good brain chemical, serotonin. “That’s because the gut is responsible for producing about 80 percent of the body’s serotonin! It does this with the help of essential amino acids—like tryptophan which is the building block for serotonin—and with the help of our microbiome, the different good bacterial species that live in our gut.” Therefore, when your gut isn’t healthy due to a poor diet and an imbalanced microbiome, your body may struggle to produce these necessary brain chemicals.
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