Over the decades, research has shown that a person’s diet can have some connection to their physical health. Eating a certain diet can give people the nutrients that they need to have enough energy to have a productive day and also avoid getting sick with certain conditions. If they eat a lot of junk food, then they will likely have a low energy threshold and possibly get sick more often. But what about what happens to their minds?
There are a lot of things that contribute to the state of one’s overall mental health. The factors include their living conditions, how much money they have, their job, their relationship status, among others. Should mental health professionals also think about what their patients are eating, too? The answer is not entirely clear.
It’s best to begin eating right early in life. To learn more about starting healthy eating patterns at a very young age, you can go to this page. As far as the diet/mental health connection goes, people are working on it.
Nutrition and Nurture
When people think of childhood, they tend to visualize a happy, idyllic time. Being a child means you’re free of responsibilities, right? Children can be just as susceptible to depression and anxiety as adults can be. Kids as young as five can be depressed and anxious and there have been studies that show nutrition plays a part in their mental health.
The second part of the equation, nurture, also plays a big part. When you’re feeding your child, it’s a very important interaction between the two of you and your child’s going to mimic your behavior. Your maternal diet, especially if you’re breastfeeding, can possibly play a part in your child’s mental health, since it depends on what kind of nutrients they are getting.
Norwegian Study
There was a study that was published in January 2023 which looked at the maternal diet and how it could affect a child’s personality. It had 284,900 people in total, including mothers, fathers and children.
The questionnaires were given when the mother was pregnant and then when the child was eight and other age ranges included six months, 18 months, three years, and seven years. They looked at how a healthy or not-healthy diet could possibly affect the child’s mental health.
If the mother followed a healthy diet while pregnant, the chances of childhood depression are lower, according to the study. There were limitations to the study, though, since all the mothers didn’t smoke and they took prenatal vitamins. It didn’t truly represent the overall population, so the results could be looked at with a grain of salt.
Aging Risks
There’s another factor when it comes to diet and mental well-being: physical activity. If a child doesn’t eat well and sits around being sedentary, that can lead to depression and low self-esteem, especially when they approach their teenage years. These teenagers can be overweight – though there are several factors that can contribute to this, including genetics. Their mood will change a lot and they may have trouble focusing. It can even lead to some eating disorders or substance abuse.
Also, being isolated during the Covid-19 pandemic didn’t help their mental state, since they lost the ability to socialize with people. The effects of that are still reverberating despite some restrictions being lifted.
Nutritional Psychiatry
There is help on the way for both children and adults. For example, this is a newer field that has emerged over the course of the past few years. The people who practice it focus on how diet and nutrition can affect how it can make a person feel mentally. They will work with patients and get them to make changes in both how they live their lives and what they eat each day.
One of the main lines of thinking regarding the diet/mental health connection is that since your gut is so connected to your brain, it’s essentially a second brain.
As smart as scientists and researchers are, they’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to understanding the inner workings of the human brain and what causes it to behave or misbehave.That’s why they are still very hesitant to actually link one’s diet to how they will feel. There’s been no definitive proof of one thing actually causing the other.
Also, just making changes to what you eat might not be the only course of action that you need to take to help your mental state. If you’re still feeling like you’re not in a good place mentally, you should talk with a professional, whether it’s on a helpline or a licensed therapist. They can help guide you back to a better frame of mind. You may even need medication – there’s nothing wrong or weak about that.
More research needs to be done about the link between childhood diet and mental health, but it’s clear that there is a connection. As more work is being done, people’s lives will hopefully be improved in the future.
