It’s a no-brainer: Eating a balanced diet helps you to look and feel good. And now researchers say that eating well may even help fight depression.
A new scientific review published in the journal the Lancet Psychiatry that involved 18 researchers from around the world stresses the role that good nutrition plays in mental health.
“Evidence is steadily growing for the relation between dietary quality [and potential nutritional deficiencies] and mental health, and for the select use of nutrient-based supplements to address deficiencies,” researchers said in the review.
And we’re seeing real-life proof of the relationship between food and a better psychiatric outcome: A study published in 2013 in the journal Neurocase followed two women with bipolar disorder over two years. The women were put on a ketogenetic diet (high fat, moderate protein, low carb), and their moods stabilized better than they did with medication alone.
But the link between diet and the risk of developing depression isn’t the same for everyone. “If your diet is deficient in some nutrients, it can have many effects on the brain,” study co-author David Mischoulon, MD, PhD, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a co-author of the Lancet study, tells Yahoo Health. “It can be subtle in some people and may result in psychiatric illnesses such as depression, anxiety, and so forth in others.”
Mischoulon and his team identified specific nutrients that are particularly helpful with boosting mental health, pointing out that many are often found in the Mediterranean diet.
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