Neurotransmitters, or brain chemicals, regulate your moods and behavior. Amino acids from foods help manufacture these neurotransmitters. The foods you eat can influence your feelings and mental performance. The neurotransmitter serotonin provides you with a sense of calm and improves sleep. Dopamine, another neurotransmitter, works to boost your energy levels. Sugary foods may briefly lift your serotonin levels but soon cause tired feelings. Dopamine levels drop when you eat sugary foods.
High and Low
Eating simple carbohydrates, such as sugary foods, provides you with a temporary boost in energy followed by lows. You may feel an instant rush from these foods, but your insulin levels and energy soon decrease, creating a rebound effect that results in feeling down or even fatigued. By eating sugary foods, you become tempted to eat more to get back that initial energy effect, but it only continues a high-and-low cycle. The fat in these foods also adds pounds, increasing the risk of fatigue from weight gain.
Steady Calm
To get calmness and relaxation without the fatigue and depression from sugary carbohydrates, focus on complex carbohydrates, including whole grains. Carbohydrates help boost your levels of serotonin by releasing insulin into your bloodstream, according to Psych Central, an informational network of mental health and psychology professionals. Insulin clears away amino acids that usually overpower the amino acid tryptophan. While the other amino acids absorb into the body, tryptophan travels through the bloodstream to the brain where it converts to serotonin. Eat whole-grain bread, pasta and cereal. Choose oatmeal, barley and brown rice, which also contain whole grains and have high amounts of carbohydrates. Fruits and vegetables have rich carbohydrate content. Certain protein foods, including poultry, milk, cheese and fish, also contain tryptophan.
Reducing Dopamine
Sugary foods take away energy by reducing dopamine levels. Sugar, saturated fats, cholesterol and refined foods interfere with the pathways to the brain and result in low dopamine. Poor nutrition, which includes sugary foods and alcohol, can diminish the activity of dopamine in the brain, according to Integrative Psychiatry, a psychiatric and medical practice in Sarasota, Florida.
Healthy Protein
Healthy high-protein foods provide you with increased dopamine levels for proper energy. Beef, poultry, fish, dairy products, lima beans, avocados and bananas contain protein that releases the amino acid tyrosine into the blood. Tyrosine increases the production of dopamine and other energy-inducing neurotransmitters, improving mental alertness and energy. Eating more fruits and vegetables may protect dopamine when it is used by neurons to combat free radicals, which cause cell damage that leads to age-related diseases.
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