Mood
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Mood
How your diet affects your mood
ELEMENT 5.3: MOOD
“He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.”
–Marcus Aurelius
YOUR MICROBIOTA
The health of the microbiota in our gut plays an essential role in our physical, emotional, and mental health. When our gut is functioning properly, we feel for the first time what it is like to be truly healthy and happy.
Our gut microbiome contains tens of trillions of microorganisms, including at least 1,000 different species of known bacteria with more than 3 million genes. Our microbiota can, in total, weigh up to 2 kilograms. Only one-third of our gut microbiota is common to most people, while two-thirds are specific just to us. In other words, the microbiome in our intestines is like an individual identity card.
All these bacteria are divided into two types: healthy bacteria that digest food and preserve our intestinal lining, and the unhealthy bacteria that we consume. If these unhealthy bacteria find their way into our bloodstream, they can kill us.
There is a constant battle going on between the two different types of bacteria in our gut. Eating unhealthy foods kills off the good bacteria and increases the number of bad bacteria. Stress also kills off good bacteria, as does the consumption of antibiotics, both through prescribed medication and through the factory-farmed meat we consume.
When the good bacteria in our gut die off, it not only affects our physical health, but also our mental and emotional well-being. We can experience depression and increased emotional sensitivity as a result of poor gut health.
The GUt's Effect on Mood
Our gut microbiome directly affects the way our brain operates. The human gut is lined with more than 100 million nerve cells. That’s more than we have in our spinal cord or our peripheral nervous system! Thus, if our gut isn’t healthy, our mind isn’t healthy.
Because stress makes the gut more permeable to bacteria, it makes us more likely to suffer from mood disorders like depression, anxiety, and PTSD. By taking better care of ourselves mentally and emotionally, we can improve the health of our gut—and the reverse is also true. When we have a healthy level of good bacteria in our gut, we become more emotionally resilient and less likely to experience depressive states.
Mental exercises for a healthy gut
In Stage 4, we looked at ways to reduce and eliminate stress in your life. Many of these same strategies can also help improve the health of your gut:
- Meditation to calm the mind
- Mindfulness exercises
- Power Breath exercises
- Regular physical exercise
- Spending time in nature
YOUR FOOD PYRAMID
While the stress-reducers mentioned above are crucial in helping your gut to heal, the quickest and most effective way to improve the health of your gut is to closely monitor what you eat. By eating a healthy diet, you can boost the numbers of probiotic bacteria (the good kind of bacteria) in your diet and minimise the amount of pathogens (the bad kind of bacteria).
The best way to bring your gut back to health is to consume lots of greens and vegetables. Fruits, nuts, and berries are also important, as are fish and fermented foods. The diagram below illustrates your optimum food choices.
Like the traditional food pyramid, this one shows which foods nourish healthy microbiota in the gut. Eat plenty of those foods at the base (these foods represent the foundation of a psychobiotic diet) and less of those foods in the smaller sections at the top.
Fermented foods are also beneficial because they contain prebiotics, which help in the formation of probiotic bacteria in the gut. Good sources of fermented food include unsweetened yoghurt, sauerkraut, pickles, miso, tempeh, kombucha, and kefir.
It’s also helpful to take a probiotic supplement to help boost the levels of good bacteria in your gut.
YOUR DIET
Your diet should primarily contain the following foods:
- Fresh vegetables
- Seafood
- High-fibre whole grains
- Nuts
- Eggs
- Quality vegetable oil
- Lots and lots of water (about three litres a day is ideal)
It’s a good idea to avoid—or very rarely consume—these types of foods:
- Junk food
- Refined grains (white bread, cakes, cookies, cereals, etc.)
- Sugar
- Foods laden with sugar (sweets, ice cream, soft drinks, etc.)
- Salty snacks (potato chips, cheese puffs, etc.)
- Processed meats
(If you do eat meat, choose organic—so as to avoid meat that is loaded with antibiotics—and eat it only once or twice a week, not at every meal.)
YOUR EMOTIONS AND FEELINGS
In addition to de-stressing and making these dietary changes, you can improve your gut health by gaining a clear understanding of your emotions and feelings.
Many people use the words “emotions” and “feelings” interchangeably. However, it pays to think of emotions and feelings as distinct but related things. An emotion is a physical response that is hardwired into your body (for example, your face turning red when you get angry). The other side of the coin is your feeling, which is a mental reaction to your emotions (for example, feeling ashamed when you experience anger). Emotions precede feelings.
Because emotions are physical, they can be measured objectively by blood flow, brain activity, facial expressions, and body language. However, feelings are mental, so they can’t easily be measured.
Emotions are more predictable and easily understood than feelings, which are often idiosyncratic and confusing. Feelings reflect your personal associations with emotions.
Neuroscience has found that feelings are sparked by emotions. When you experience a particular emotion, it ignites thoughts and images that have become paired in your mind with that emotion. While emotions are usually fleeting, the feelings they provoke may persist or grow over a lifetime.
Because emotions initiate feelings, and feelings in turn initiate emotions, your feelings can prompt a never-ending cycle of painful and negative moods. In order to stop this cycle, you must first work to understand the connection between your feelings and emotions, and then work to control your response to them. Although we are not able to stop our emotional responses to external events, we can learn to better understand them and control their impact on our lives.
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