Relationship Between Your Food And Mood

“A Food Is Good When It Uplifts The Mood”.

There is an old saying that “You are what you eat”. And we completely agree to it. There is certainly a relationship between your food and mood. There are many ways in which the food we eat impacts the way we feel. These include providing the nutrients we need for our brains to function properly, as well as the association of food with reward and pleasure.

For instance, lacking a certain nutrient or not eating regularly may have a negative effect on the mood. Several years of behavioural study and observation have concluded that some food after consumption alleviate your mood, making you happy and feel better, while consumption of many other just aggravates the situation. Let’s break down our observation of these fact-based studies under different parameters to make results more objective and transparent.

Food consumption pattern

· The food intake pattern is irregular

A good food mood has a lot to do with the way you have your food. Either you are skipping the breakfast, the first meal of your day, or you are missing essential calories required for the daily consumption of your body.

Such irregularities lead to the way you react to situations, spoiling your mood. A consistency with such irregularities can even cause major health disorder due to deficiency of energy. Feeling tired, foggy, headache are some of the common after effects.

· Essential food group items are overlooked

We know that you are not a nutrition specialist, it doesn’t harm to gather a little knowledge about the daily requirement of essential minerals, proteins and calories by your body. Just to give a little heads up here, consumption of balanced meal can lead to produce Serotonin.

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This is basically a feel-good chemical which helps to make the brain nice and happy. Little knowledge about the food you eat, and its nutrition content can bring in watershed changes in the way your brain reacts to situations.

· Missing on essential vitamins and minerals

This is a regular occurrence with a lot of us. Most of the time the food we consume lacks the basic fulfilment of proteins, vitamins and other minerals which are required for our day to day activities. The lack of these has an immediate effect of tiredness, distraction etc. Just to cite an example, if we miss on the daily requirement of iron, it can disrupt the brain chemistry and eventually spoils our mood.

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Sometimes we see a lot of colleagues at work place or fellow students at school or collages just snapping at you instigated by the most innocuous joke. This can happen because of iron deficiency. Tell them to increase the iron intake and have a wonderful food mood.

Similarly, missing on omega 3 fatty acids can create depression and lower your mood instantly. It’s very important that your food intake has sufficient amount of it.

· Regularly eating processed food

The processed food available in the market is prepared of all kind of fancy chemicals and ingredients, to make your food taste good and make you feel full and satisfied. What we do not realise that regular consumption of such food items, brings in these harmful chemicals to our body which do unimaginable harm to our body.

These chemicals have created a lot of modern age diseases which were unheard of a couple of years back. Bloating waistline, Sluggish feeling, heavy head and rising sugar are some of the adverse results, which lead to insulin imbalance in the body. The unchecked acidity level of the food can tamper with the pH level of brain, creating sudden mood swings and emotional outbursts.

Taking a step further, more than the control on mood, role of food on mental health is very complex and researchers are still decoding the various results to understand the benefits and implications. There are a lot of institutes and food giant companies which are spending billions on research linking food and mood.

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Still lots need to be found, but one thing which most of the researchers have unanimously agreed to is that food can contribute to the development, prevention, and management of mental health conditions, including depression and anxiety disorders.

Detailed studies are happening on what diet may influence mental health. A study which can bring landslide results is Neuroplasticity, which means the brains ability to modify structure and function.

Ways to uplift mood with food

Before we start listing the different food items and habits to uplift your mood, a plate full of fresh fruit and vegetables is an all time recommended food to keep you in the best of mental health, improve your immune system, help you to concentrate better, act faster and eventually getting you in a better mood.

· Consume food closer to the way they look in nature

One must consume food which is less or not processed at all. This way, the naturally built minerals and vitamins are intact in the food.

For example, having oranges directly is much better than having canned or even freshly made orange juice as during the process, Orange loses a major amount of nutrition.

· Dopamine-building food consumption

Dopamine is an organic chemical that plays a very important role in the brain functionality. Dopamine controls the starting movement of the brain and the destruction of it can trigger disease like Parkinson.

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Load at least one portion of any of your daily meal with fish, poultry product, leafy green vegetables, avocados, bananas chicken and legumes. These help a lot in the well-being of mental health and subsequently in a good mood.

· Omega-3 rich diets

Flaxseed, chia seeds, walnuts and fish are a rich source of Omeg-3 fatty acids. These acids help to fight the feeling of depression and improve the overall mental health, thus up lifting the mood. Omega 3 is an extremely important supplement requirement for your brain. Apart from a good mental health, it also supports your brain to retain information and makes your memory better.

FAs mentioned, Fish is the most natural source of omega 3, but in case if you are a vegetarian or a vegan and worried about how to full fill the deficiency of it, you need not worry as there are lots of vegan alternatives for it.

Different kind of seeds, like chia seed, Sprouts, Algai Oil, Hump seeds, walnuts and Perillia oil can suffice for fish oil. One must have regular consumption of these food items to avoid any kind of deficiency and hence problems arising due to them.

· An occasional mix of magnesium rich food

Sleep deprivation can be a big mood spoiler, the prolonged effect of loss of sleep can create serious health hazards. Magnesium rich food items support sleep. Food rich in magnesium such as almonds, pumpkin seed, sunflower seeds and spinach should be consumed regularly.

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Consuming any one of them in complete portion, even once in alternate days can suffice their requirement in our body and can create wonders. A body which has a complete 8 hours sleep is the best place for a happy mood to thrive.

· Control Sugar intake

Sugar causes inflammation which in turn triggers depression. A depressed mind leads the sugar level to plummet in our body. To counter this sudden drop of sugar level, our mind starts pumping adrenaline level which eventually causes anxiety, disturbing the tranquillity of mood.

We appear irritable and completely out of context. To avoid this state of mind, we must develop the habit of less or no consumption of sugar. A lot of people have sweet tooth and its nearly impossible for them to give up on sugar completely, but then for them, its highly recommended that they consume, more of natural source of sugar like honey, or fruit salad for desserts and completely avoid sugar sweetened preparations.

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So, to have a sweet food mood you don’t necessarily need to consume sugar, but a right amount of fruit supplement can do the magic for you

· Get the Vitamin D level checked

There are several reasons of Vitamin D deficiency in your body, but irrespective of the cause, lack of Vitamin D has significant consequences on your mental health. It’s important to understand that Vitamin D is the only vitamin, that is actually a hormone.

Its presence in each and every tissue of our body including brain and is the integral part of the fuel which makes our body function at every level. Once consumed, it gets absorbed and further synthesized in our skin, and transported to cells in kidney, brain and other vital organs, where in converts to hormone. It also activates the genes that regulate the immune system and release neurotransmitters like serotonin which affects brain functioning.

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Serotonin is absorbed by the cells who have Vitamin D receptors in the brain that is linked with depression. Once they receive their required dose of serotonin, the depression level is controlled. A lot of researchers have linked the role of Vitamin D in fighting depression.

We have a plethora of food items that can provide the required level of Vitamin D to our body. Milk, yogurt and orange juice is fortified with Vitamin D. Fatty fish like tuna, salmon etc also suffice the need of Vitamin D. Vitamin D uplifts your food and mood.

Conclusion

Hence as per the above points discussed, we can easily conclude that food and mood have a very important relationship. Consumption of food that has health benefits with right kind of minerals and vitamins creates a positive effect on the brain and in turns makes our mood happy. But only to have food with all right kind of nutrition is not complete, unless and until we consume them at right time.

A planned time table of diet is very important so that the food gets enough time after consumption to settle down in our system and start synthesising, so that the nutrients it contain is transported at its right place. One must never miss the breakfast because it is the first meal of the day after a long gap, and our body craves for some sort of nutrition. No matter how busy our schedule is, we must have a healthy breakfast with fruits, vegetables, juices, yogurt or food as per your local availability.

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Missing breakfast is the biggest blunder any individual can commit because we tend to start slowing down from the first half of the day only. This results into stuffing ourselves with any kind of food available in lunch where we mostly tend to either overeat or simply dig into a working lunch, which is mostly junk food because of the kind of life style we live. By the time its evening, we are too tired because of the damages already done.

Now since most of us are starving because of no breakfast or ill manged lunch, we mostly tend to eat junk, because the hunger is now controlled by the taste bud rather than the brain, and the taste buds obviously demands for food that is high in taste rather than nutritional values. The food with unnecessary chemicals is hard to digest and it triggers acids in body which brings in anxiety, and consequently a bad mental stage with bad mood. Sounds alarming? Yes, it does

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A good and balanced food always helps the body to produce chemicals which keep our mind calm and relaxed. Even though, it still hasn’t been verified and concluded with effective reasoning that mood of a person is influenced by the kind of food one eats, but still to be on the safer side, we must follow a timely diet regime which contains healthy supplements and right nutrition.

One more thing which we would like to highlight is the dealing with impulsive eating for mood upliftment. Many a times at home, we tend to dig in that extra bowl of ice cream even though we are not hungry. The feeling to reward yourself with an extra bite of the dessert actually harms your body. So sometimes being in good mood, overeating that extra bowl of ice cream unnecessarily brings that extra amount of sugar which eventually does more harm than benefit.

We hope the above piece of article will give you a good insight of the relationship.