Depression can affect your entire body, making you feel drained and alter your mood. Your food choices can have help boost your mood and energy or make you feel tired and rundown. Neurotransmitters play a part in conducting signals to your brain, and the food you eat changes their action, intensifying or lessening your depression, according Dr. Bill Sears, an author and associate clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of California, Irvine.
Happy Foods
Chocolate is well known for producing feelings of pleasure. That's because your body releases endorphins or natural pain relievers. This boost in endorphins has a calming and mood boosting effect, so you feel a sense of calm and pleasure after eating chocolate, according to author Sears. Other foods that produce the same feelings of happiness include chicken, bananas, milk and green leafy vegetables. These foods stimulate your body to release dopamine, another neurotransmitter involved in pleasure sensations.
Quick Burst of Energy
Some foods provide a burst of energy that elevates your mood by creating a perception of increased energy. Simple carbohydrates, such as table sugar, candy, cakes, cookies, pies, pastries, drinks sweetened with fructose, corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup provide quick-released energy. So do athletic drinks and commercial energy drinks. White foods, such as white bread, potatoes, pasta and rice, provide quick energy because they lack fiber to slow-release sugar into your bloodstream to help maintain even energy levels and mood. Boosting your mood with foods that contain a high amount of sugar makes your energy and mood rise and then comes crashing down soon after. Maintaining an even blood sugar level helps to stabilize your mood and prevent the "downs" or irritability that can result from sugar crashing, author Sears says.
Complex Carbs
Complex carbohydrates contain fiber and include foods, such as whole wheat pasta, whole grain breads, fresh fruit and vegetables, legumes and beans, oatmeal, quinoa, yogurt without added sugar, wild and brown rice. These foods raise blood sugar levels gradually, and don't produce erratic levels that lead to an increase in stress hormones and alter your mood, according to author Sears.
B Vitamins
B vitamins help your body produce energy and the two main vitamins, if lacking in your diet can lead to depressive feelings and moods are folic acid and B12, according to A. Coppen and C. Bolander-Gouaille in their 2005 review of research on depression and B vitamin deficiencies published in the "Journal of Psychopharmacology." Deficiencies in folic acid and B-12 can lead to pernicious anemia, which results in lower energy levels, physical and cognitive functions. Eating citrus fruits and berries increases your intake of folic acid. B-12 can be found in animal products, such as meats and dairy products. Vegetarian-friendly sources include nutritional yeast and fortified B-12 foods.
Happy Fats
Providing essential fats, linoleic and alpha-linolenic fatty acids maintain proper brain function. Plant oils are primary sources of linoleic and alpha-linolenic, so cooking with olive, macadamia, walnut, grape seed and other plant oils helps to provide these essential fats. Alpha-linoleic acids are found in fish oils, flax and pumpkin seeds, wheat germ and walnuts. These fats maintain proper brain cell membranes, which allow proper flow of nutrients and waste products from the brain's fluid environment. Healthy fats help neurotransmitters function properly and help stabilize moods, according to author Sears.
References
- Ask Dr. Sears: Brain Foods
- "Treatment of Depression: Time to Consider Folic Acid and Vitamin B12"; A. Coppen and C. Bolander-Gouaille; 2005
- Dopamine--A Sample Neurotransmitter
- PubMed.gov: "Journal of Psychopharmacology"; Treatment of depression: Time to Consider Folic Acid and Vitamin B12.; A. Coppen and C. Bolander-Gouaille; Jan. 19, 2005
