WHAT TO EAT to Beat Depression & ANXIETY | Dr. Drew Ramsey

and so if we're going to try to put you on a diet, we're really feeding your brain, you're really promoting brain growth, it's going to be the foods that contain the most of these nutrients that promote bdnf looking for better sleep, try the advancement of the magnesium from biooptimizers and get seven forms of magnesium in every capsule, click the link in the description or pin the comment to save ten percent. Welcome to the podcast. How are you today? I'm very well, jesse, it's a pleasure to see you. How is everything? I'm fine. Things are well. I read your latest book in preparation for this and I have a lot of questions, so I'm ready to dive into it first.

Thank you, thank you for reading. Eat to

beat

depression

and

anxiety

. I really appreciate it and it's nice to be here and to everyone listening, I appreciate that taking the time to talk to you about food and your brain and how to feed it best sounds good, well, I'm curious. Start setting the scene here as someone trained as a conventional doctor. When along your timeline did you first become aware of food and its influence on mental health? I don't know, probably when I was about six or seven, I mean. I think I've always thought of food as a very important part of my health.

I think it's just a value of my family and I grew up thinking about my parents moving to a really rural area of ​​the United States. the 1970s and I grew up on a farm so he grew a lot of our own food and just the ritual of food and the way that food and nutrition were important for health and mental health was always a family value, I think for me in terms of after medical school and then when I was at Columbia University training as a psychiatrist, there was a new class of medications, there was a lot of weight gain, a lot of thought was put into interventions and diets, but more about how to undo them. side effects and that made me think a lot about food at that time in my personal life.

I was also a low-fat vegetarian and all this data was coming out about omega-3 fats and seafood and it really hit me. I start trying to build my diet from scratch and the same for my patients, like

what

are the most important foods for mental health,

what

do you know if you're going to make a list of the top five foods to combat

depression

, like what would they be? and there was nothing like that? I mean, none of that was happening in mental health. This was back in the day, I don't know, 2005 2006. And that really lit a fire in me like me.

I want to eat those foods and if I'm in the business of helping people with depression and

anxiety

, I want to recommend those foods and that brings us to today where you know that, in addition to common sense, it helps There has been a lot of science that has given us helped guide us in what we recommend people should eat for brain health. Well, it's interesting that you got into food as early as you mentioned, that you moved from Long Island to Indiana, so let's talk about that in When you're five, your family decides to make this move.

Are you excited about it at that point or is there a resistance there? Oh man, Jesse, I'm going to like a mess here. I want to go back to five years ago. I haven't done it on a podcast yet, let's see, you know, I think I was excited about the prospect of being in the field. I think growing up as a country kid, since all the country kids who listen to me know that there is a lot of isolation. There's a lot of nature, you know, so there's a mix of a lot of space that I think a lot of kids don't have and a lot of you know, it snows and you can be out there for 10 to 12 hours just playing. in the field or playing in the woods, so it's, in terms of moving with the anticipation of moving, it's hard to remember that a long time ago, I mean, I knew it was going to be an adventure and that always excited me as a kid and I spent some time in Indiana and in the country, so I was intrigued and what was the catalyst for that move, why did your parents want to get out, was it that extra space you were talking about or was there a job that appealed to you. guys, you know, I think they were part of a movement in the United States or getting back to the land, getting back to the land, being self-sufficient, growing your own food, being off the grid, you know, those are things that a times are a little more popular now and after a pandemic and a corn team, people are thinking about it a little more, but there is a whole wave of people in the United States who have been thinking about it for 50 years and I think That was the catalyst.

There was also a type of nuclear weapons where there was really such tension in the world and so a lot of people were just terrified that there was going to be this nuclear event and a lot of people just moved to the rural areas. out of nowhere and I prepared myself for that, so yeah, my parents were a part of that and just to paint the picture a little bit with that lifestyle, if you guys grew a lot of your own food? Did they have animals on the farm? an idea of ​​what it's like day to day, yeah, day to day, I mean, there's a lot of food growing in food storage, like the capacity is being built for that, you know, nice basements and thinking about get our own water, we have a cave. our land, so we built a sister and then the pumps to bring it to the house.

We had an active and passive solar house, so we dug a pond and stocked it with 500 catfish that we fed and grew into this. I know it would all surprise the people in town when you would take them swimming and then walk over there and with the bucket of food after everyone got out of the pond and feed the catfish and you know it seemed like when those ones you know in the movies, when animals cross the Nile and get eaten, it's like, there's a lot of chickens, um, we didn't have a lot of animals growing up, they focused mainly on vegetables and and just a lot of vegetables and vegetables, you put a lot of tomatoes, um, a lot things like dried herbs and that's what it looked like, a lot of dogs and when the catfish came, did you guys grow them so you could eat them or what was their purpose, yeah, yeah, people, yeah, that was the purpose of eating them and then just , it's just a good sustainable food supply and I'm curious about growing up in an alternative like that, you know, a lifestyle, being in the country, being on the farm.

It's interesting that you took a path toward more conventional medicine. It was something that was in you since you were a child or how you became interested in it. Well I do not know. I mean, to me it doesn't feel as much as it has since uh. you know, the conventional unconventional I want to be, I got really interested in science and I think you know doctors are helped in a really special place in society and I had the notion of being useful and the idea that between the kind of training my psychology, but also learning this knowledge base, I could help people, I could potentially save lives, but I don't know, that was really exciting.

Also, Indiana is in the middle of the United States, it's one of these states, it's funny, I trained in New York it's very, it's a little different, but it's still a place that really thinks about medicine and conventional medicine, at least back then, in very traditional ways and it's really like a special place to train and improve. Indiana University Medical Education System. I lived in Bloomington for a few years and had a very small group of about 30 medical students and then, you know, what we call the mecca in Indianapolis, this collection of hospitals where you know all the really complicated stuff.

Things in Indiana come and so, for me, you know this kind of combination of all these natural things, the nutritional psychiatry of food and also this kind of, I don't know, for me, this appreciation and also the fascination with, ya You know, what the avant-garde is. about conventional medicine I really don't know for me I love having both I don't know you don't know I can hear what you're saying like one sounds like weird hippies like running away from fallout getting vegetables and the other sounds like conventional medicine but you know, to me that's just me, that's how I am, those like um, I love both things so much that it's hard for me to imagine a world where they're separate, no, that's just me.

I was just curious, like you said, imagining you guys you know, farming and living off the land. It wouldn't have been surprising if they knew they went into naturopathic or chiropractic medicine or something more alternative, but they chose a more conventional path of medicine. I just found it interesting, that's true, Jesse, and I'll tell you that maybe I'm old and I don't remember it as well as when I was 20 and my struggle with it because I did it. When I was in college I went to an acupuncturist for a really bad time with my back and I loved that treatment and I learned to meditate when I was in high school and I got a lot of massages and I used to continue those. a bit like acupressure cards like palms and feet, I couldn't say it was like trying to pick up girls, but it was also like, I don't think so, I think I was really fascinated that there was a way you could get help. people with your knowledge of touch and you could help people energetically with things just with a set of needles, so it's interesting.

I think early in my career I thought I'd probably go that route. I think probably on my own. Within psychiatry, I was so fascinated by the notion of psychotherapy that, to me, it was really this fascinating notion where there are no pills, no needles, no scalpels, there's just you and your patient, and that's all there is. it's just from their minds and based on the way they communicate the way they open the way they associate that healing somehow can come that that really that really captivated me in some way that that um yeah and that and that something The forms don't let you know that there aren't many good psychotherapists or many of us that you know, that there's no body work involved in mental health, there's very little acupuncture, it's really just mental, so he talked about adopting a vegetarian diet. that happened at a young age and how that happened that happened when I was 20 years old.

I had an uncle, a very special Uncle Bob's uncle, who was actually a psychiatrist, the only psychiatrist I knew who was really into exercise and I think. like a lot of people in the low fat food ideology, uh um, plant based, uh uh, you know, cholesterol has been this idea that cholesterol is bad, eggs are bad, meat is bad and I , better based on, I would say traditional um cardiology uh recipes about food and yeah, and I was an athlete at the time, I was a medical student at the time and I felt very fair because I was also in Indiana where there's a lot of pork and fast food. and um, I was running track and playing basketball, so you know, in these vans I like to go all over the Midwest and like everyone's eating, you know, double cheeseburgers and I'm thinking I'll have two burgers. vegetarian and I'll order fries and ice cream. because it's a vegetarian meal and, um, yeah, I think it was an evidence-based eating hope and then I think I made this real revolution in the way I thought about the evidence as I learned more about it and realized that he had not done it.

I really had a lot of balanced education on that and then when I started thinking, I focused a lot more on my specialty in mental health, in brain health, in human happiness and human functioning and how that's not just nutrients and individual nutrients. And fear. is what we have to talk about, but the general way is that doctors and as health professionals can integrate nutrition as a fundamental piece of what we do and how we help people achieve optimal health, something that not only we do, especially in mental health. We know that we simply exist in the treatment sector.

Now you never talk to a mental health professional preventatively and everyone else in medicine can do that and like if you're a man you're thinking about or a woman, anyone thinking about a colon cancer screening , right, that's on your radar, prevention, you know, cardiology, there's a way to think about eating for heart health or cancer, but there's not much in terms of our mental health that we do besides think. treatment and I think I really think that's changing I really think as we reduce the stigma it's really a very exciting time as we think about mental health, let's talk about the progression on the vegetarian diet, did you feel good eating that way? during a number? of years or how that played out, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't a very good time mentally for me, jesse, if I think back on it, I was very fatigued, I had a very difficult time in the middle of The Day I Was Embarrassed To say this, I liked to sneak away and I would look for places in the hospital where I could take off my white coat, roll it up, put it in my bag and put myself in a chair and I fall asleep, you know, and part of that is just the fatigue of being in the hospital. medical school, but part of me remember that I actually talked to a couple of counselors in college and then in medical school, as you know, and Ihad retired.

My doctors like: Is there anything else I should do? Because I am the way I like it. I don't want to be respectful, disrespectful, like I'm a good student. It was very important to me that I always do well in school. but it would be like literally someone flipped the switch and I fell asleep almost like I had narcolepsy, I thought, and I think a lot of it was just living off carbs and not on, you know what I think a lot of people struggle with. and not at least at that time the healthiest version of a vegetarian diet, you know, with a lot of carbohydrates, a lot of pasta, a lot of cookies, a lot of veggie burgers, a lot of processed food.

As I think about it now, I think my progression I went to a residency and then I was in New York, where it's still strange to be a vegetarian, but not that much, and it's also New York, you know, it's like it once existed, it's wonderful, you know. , you can find a million crazy, wonderful, wonderful companions and whatever mischief you're up to, so New York was wonderful for me and you also know there's a way like New York on the sea and you're surrounded by seafood and oyster bars and oyster happy hour and young chefs who love seafood and I just got wrapped up in all that and friends from all over the world you know, my palette really exploded and it was actually right after the residency when I started eating uh actually I took a trip to South America, I was in Paraguay and I was on a cattle ranch and I love horses and I spent the whole day riding horses and I was friends with my parents and they had made this like a traditional Paraguayan meat stew and I started salivating , I just sat with that feeling and I felt like I was, I don't know, I mean, at the time I was a psychiatrist and I really liked sitting with it, honoring the feelings that you're having and and that and and and it was interesting because years before, when I I became a meat vegetarian, I really disliked it in some ways and it's always been fascinating to me in my life those things like other people, foods or things where you have this intense feeling, don't you love? either you care about them or it's your favorite thing and then it's like, ugh, it's like you can't take it anymore, it's just that I don't know such a fascinating, uh, human part of being human, I think so, anyway, in terms of my progression.

I started eating some grass-fed beef and I started thinking about who I really am as an eater, what I care about, how I make these decisions and I realized it wasn't based on the science I had read, but on I don't know eco eco ideas I had heard things that everyone says like sleeping at eight hours or drinking glasses of water or not eating meat and I thought that is definitely not fair to anyone, my patience, that is not what I want. to make my decisions, so I really started working on the happiness diet. I started reading all the literature I could on nutrition, food, and mental health.

I started going to food conferences and I didn't know everything. cafeteria food for the mind medicine for the body food trainings and building a network of people who kept telling me the same thing this is really important. I just had a lot of mentors that you already know, so this is a good idea, it's very important to keep doing this. You decide you're going to reintroduce me to the diet, do you start to feel a difference right away or does that take time? Oh, that's such a biased answer, Jesse, no one has asked me this, I mean, I start and I also think it's It's hard, I always have a hard time answering as a singular person, where you know I think there's a set of data about whether you should eat meat or not and a set of values, and I can certainly tell you that what happened to me is as if not.

I'm not tired anymore three I don't eat tons of meat, but certainly meat is a component and one of the, I would say, prominent components, but certainly a part of my diet. Seafood exploded in my diet. I eat seafood several times a week. but so did a lot of other things, you know, when I was a vegetarian, I wasn't crazy about kale and now I mean, I've gone through periods of my life where I eat kale every day. I know that's the case, so I think a lot of things evolved quickly for me as a consumer.

What changed in terms of how I felt, I mean, I don't know, for the next 10 years as I eat meat, fish and seafood, you know, maybe a little more. More than 10 years, but you know, it's hard to say that it has been the best of my professional life, but it has certainly been the most creative period of my life. I've written and published four books, you know, I've done all this fun digital work that that's really exciting and interesting in terms of getting to be in mental health and, you know, it's such a crazy idea that instead of just being there me and my couch, you might inspire people to seek help or understand themselves better or eat foods that might help them avoid depression, I mean, so who knows, maybe it all would have happened if I had stayed with my snack, cookies and vegetarian burgers.

I've always been that kind of person, I guess, but I don't know. I feel like those foods have helped me especially now that I'm getting older and into my 50s. It's very clear to me what foods I'm eating like 100 like I have 100 focused on decreasing brain shrinkage and that revolves around a couple of nutrients. Like vitamin b12 and dha, you find them in meat and seafood, so yeah, I think it's a little bit more about regression, Jesse, I don't know, that explains it. I feel like, uh, no, that's great, let's talk about when someone new comes in.

See you, obviously you really like food and helping people navigate that world. How quickly does that come up when someone comes to you for a mental health challenge? Is this something on the first date you'll mention? find out what they're eating and try to steer them in the right direction or I mean, I'm sure you'll find a wide variety of different types of people you're working with, some of whom might be more interested in natural health than others. I mean, naturally, there's going to be a whole spectrum there, so how do you present this concept to someone who's working with you?

Sure, Jesse, that's a big first question these days, since my practice has been pretty comprehensive. a wonderful team of doctors where really the patients who come to us in our mental health clinic, digital nutritional psychiatry, know that they can, they can graduate how much they want, they can take one of our cooking classes or participate with one of our trainers and and work on a certain food group or review your diet for the next six months or you can work with the therapist to talk about something you're really struggling with or get an evaluation from one of our doctors or psychiatrists, so food is Now you know, we kind of work with people who are a little bit entitled in the sense that we always deal with their mental health first and then we hope that food and our other parts of lifestyle psychiatry and mental fitness fit into that .

I would like in my first session, when I meet a new patient, to hear a little bit about how they take care of themselves, so I just listen to how you move your body, I listen to how you think about food and I listen to the relationships in your life and, for Usually in the first or second session I'll get a little more detailed food history of your day-to-day life as an eater, the same thing we do in our e-course, eating for depression, uh and And something that I also guide people through. the book is just taking a broad stroke nutritional history, like they're doing all these food categories, like everyone can do it now, just think about the last three or four days. right, you ate leafy greens, you ate rainbow vegetables, you know, look at your plate and think about it, put it in your mind for a second, it's the beige colors of, you know, you don't call it the modern Canadian Canadian that we call It's the diet modern American or the standard American diet.

It's sad or angry, which I like, but there's no Canadian version. Although no, I think we just adopted the sad, the sad, the standard Americana. It's like you guys deserve yours. They have their own. National foods toxic to brain health, if you think about it, I mean there are some special ones, but yeah, it's um, I'm looking for what people eat, where are their self-feeding abilities and their attitudes about it as a psychiatrist, what? You know? you're eating salmon because someone else told you to or because you think you need it or because you love it, you know, all of that matters to me, and then I'm looking for some cultural piece, everyone comes from a food culture. and I'd like to know what that is for people, what food was like for people growing up, if there are particularly important moral or cultural values ​​about food, you know, and we think that the only moral debate around food is I eat meat or not meat, but some people like me like that I haven't eaten chicken, I don't know for more than 20 years, just because I don't know, I really like chickens, I like my relationship with chickens and chickens. eggs, and chicken just doesn't really excite me as much as a food that seems really strange, but you know, it wasn't really vegetarian or not, you just know that we all have different values, preferences and tastes about how we eat and I hope that I can do it .

I understand a little bit about that with people and I often find that sometimes people just haven't thought about it much, right, we just eat because we're hungry or we eat our favorite foods and, oh, and that's what I like to know too. the favorite foods of people like jesse what is your favorite food favorite food I would say avocado avocado if it were like that and you know? I mean, if I'm honest, I really love spaghetti and meatballs, I'd say it's my favorite right now. I'm a little surprised I haven't eaten that in a while, but overall it's been one of my favorite meals.

I prepared the brain and I think I have almost completely replaced it with gnocchi with sardines, the sardine sauce that I make. I think so, if I'm honest, I like that probably a little more than meatballs these days. That's my complicated answer. Yes, there's definitely a bit more out there. Yes. Earl Gray tea is one of my favorites right now. I really like Earl Gray tea. I answered very well, so let's get back to the chicken question. Are you eating chicken these days or was it something that was an early period in your life where you didn't eat it?

I'm eating. uh, chicken these days, yeah, I'm in a situation where I really try to sit down with almost all different types of foods, there's still, sometimes, but yeah, chicken, not a lot, it's still kind of like I don't. I know, it just doesn't. sit with me like that, but um, but I think it's been interesting, uh, for the last few years we've had chickens here on the farm and they're really wonderful creatures, so there's something about sitting in the emotional complexity of that having an animal and animals that you care about and animals that are the same, you know a different one or one that you don't know that you eat of the same species, it just seemed very emotionally complex to me, yes, but I eat chicken from time to time. then partly because I didn't want my weird ideas about food, nutrition, and deception to rub off on my kids.

I wanted them to develop their own strange ideas about it. I see, and going back to your story that you mentioned being in. In the agricultural part of your studies, you went to New York like you mentioned and you actually have an internship there and now you're working online, but you ended up moving back to Indiana and you know you're living the alternative lifestyle again, so you've You're back to what you did when you were a kid and you're actually in the same house, so talk about that progression and why it was important for you to know how to get back to your roots.

I really felt that nature on the farm was really good for my kids, my wife and our dog. I lived in both places and you can see them in the city and New York was wonderful. for us and we really enjoyed our life there and our friends there, there's something especially when you're at this precious age of having little kids and little babies, to wander around in a safe space and that's kind of hard to do in New York. , I mean, as much as we love the parks there and there's something about the frenzy of New York and the kind of fighting for space, um, that was a challenge, so us and my parents got older and we saw a window where our children could enjoy time with them, so we returned to the farm, in fact we traveled back and forth until the pandemic hit, so I spent a couple of days in New York City and then the rest of the week on the farm here in Indiana and it's been a really fascinating time being on a farm, being within the cycle of nature every day, it really feels during quarantine like a really rare sight and I've never lived so much on a farm.

Like I've never been on a farm in one place for hundreds of days in a row and that happened to us, where you just see the really slow microscopic changes of the seasons and it's really cool, something to meditate on.and witness and So, I want to say that for all of you who are middle-aged, you are in this fascinating place where you see growth and life and skill acquisition in your children and then you see age in your parents and in yourself, and so. uh it's been a very rich and special time for all of us, I think it's a very complex but enjoyable time for our family and when it comes to running the farm, you know, planting plants, harvesting, I know you have chickens collecting eggs.

How involved in that aspect of farming are you personally? You know part of being on a farm is understanding the scale and goals of your farm, so our farm really our goals have been to preserve nature in the forest here, uh. In terms of scalability, when we look at growing a lot of food or for a long time growing a lot of hay and looking at the effects on our ecosystem in our soil, we didn't like what we saw and as anyone who's involved in farming knows it's difficult be profitable on a farm and you end up compromising a lot.

Either you know how to sell your trees because they are mature instead of letting the forest do what it has always done or you are contributing a lot. of amendments when my farmer said he was talking about improving the quality of my soil and I told him I did soil tests and he said yes I did soil tests I told him what happened he said well I put amendments in my soil until I I ran out of money and then I went back to growing the same bed, hey, this doesn't seem sustainable and then in terms of larger animals, you know, because you live on a farm and you see the turkeys go by, the red foxes, the blue herons and bobcats and all the other creatures on the farm.

I came here very excited about a whole regenerative agriculture movement and adding more animals, we had some goats for a while, which were wonderful creatures, but we didn't feel it for us. Right now, the direction we wanted to take in terms of what to do with our land, um, and mostly we've enjoyed seeing what's growing here, like we've had bumper crops of squash, hops are a big hit, you know our garlic harvest It's been really nice and we've really tried to explore and experiment and feed ourselves as best we can, although you know we do a good job, it's still not as good as I would like, some years, how much food you guys are.

Consuming, are you cultivating yourselves? It's going to be seasonal. I would say it's a difficult percentage to get right, I mean, because there are some things that you know, like wild salmon, frozen seafood, that are in my diet every week and are quite caloric. dense, I would say that in the summer, you know, in the middle of summer with the gardens bursting at the seams, I would say that everything on my plate, uh, if I'm okay, if I'm eating grass with our neighbor's beef, that maybe once or twice a week everything on that plate will have its carbon based on my farm, all the plants will be eaten, you know if it's the potatoes, the asparagus, the okra or the garlic onions, and that's a real treat, I wish they were more common in our lives, but there are some foods like that height or summer as fall comes, so you're talking about stored vegetables, so definitely, if it's a good year for pumpkin , we've had a real problem with some, uh, squash borers, uh, beetles, the other thing is you start growing your own food, see, you just have these moments where you know you've worked hard, you've prepared the soil, you have worked on the drainage, you have your seedlings, you have them, you have covered them, you have watered them, you have taken care of them, you have the fruit on the vine and then you go out the next day and all the plants are dead and/or you go out to the next day and like a deer, they didn't even eat them, they just walked through them, so I mean, it just teaches you to value food and vacations, but to answer your question, I don't know, I would say in a in the summer I go say 30 to 40 percent of the calories and probably 80 percent of the calories from my plants because I'll be eating a ton of tomatoes and a ton of greens from here, zero percent of my calories from cheese and then Come on, we make a quarter cup. and half a cow, we share it with our neighbor, who, um, that, I mean, isn't exactly our farm, but we, uh, help them with some hay and um, and it feels close, it's the same pasture, It's across the street. you talk about the pests there and the deer that come and trample the produce, oh, and the raccoons that eat the chickens, oh my gosh, jesse, do you want to, since you want to talk a lot about my childhood and my trauma, yeah, That was one of the strangest moments for me. in the pandemic I was giving this talk at the brain health center at the university of uh texas in houston and they're introducing me I'm like in the little green room on zoom and it's like I don't know 8 p.m. at night 9 p.m. and the sun is setting and I'm in my little blue shirt trying to act professional and I hear this like and I have a and I kind of open my screen door and they say dr.

Dr. Dr. Dr. Ramsey and I say hello to everyone and and As I do, I start hearing my chickens screaming as the raccoons eat them alive and it's just this really weird moment where I really don't know what I'm supposed to do. I must tell the audience. I'm so sorry to sound surprised, my favorite chickens. Raccoons are being eaten alive right now as we speak and I don't know what to do or if you like, press pause and scream. I paused and yelled at the raccoon, but I didn't know that anyway, sorry. about pests, the worst of raccoons, yes they eat your chickens, how many chickens did you lose?

Let's look at last season. Will we hatch? That's one of those specialized things if you have a farm or out in the country or just have curious kids to hatch chicks and then. raise them until they lay, that's really a six month process, it only takes 28 days to hatch an egg and you can buy an incubator on the internet anywhere, we probably went through about 35 last year, no, but since the raccoon attack How many did you lose? So, oh, and that ruin is going to attack, it was only one or two, they took them out one or two at a time, so what I was referring to when we were talking about the past specifically, like the bugs and the deer come and trample.

I've done a bit of gardening myself over the last few years and it's interesting when you grow food and see how you deal with pests and see what you know, all that hard work ends up producing. Food-wise, you gain a new appreciation because, you know, going to the grocery store and buying a container of organic strawberries or blueberries or a bushel of kale, I think that's a really interesting thing to do just to grow a little bit of food and For me it's been a real exercise in rethinking when you see that you know a certain price for organic products, even in whole foods, where they could increase the price a little bit.

It's like it takes a lot to grow it and I'm sure you've had a similar experience, you know, I'm sure you grow your own food, Jesse, I mean, I think that's one of the things that I encourage people to grow a little bit of. food just to see it and see that they know what it's like too. It tastes a little different and that's a little hard sometimes, but you know, especially when you know that the tomatoes that come ripe from our garden just don't taste like tomatoes in the supermarket, so it makes you appreciate them and the effort that goes into it. in it, um, I think it actually makes you appreciate all food, even if I'm on a road trip and I'll eat some fast food or, you know, or I'll run and there's no other option that we don't have. planned, you know there's some way that even with that I'll be like this, it's amazing that for ten dollars you get this garbage and I feel full, that's how it is, even though it's something horrible and I try to eat it, it's like that.

I'm sure I give you gratitude and appreciation for being food secure, so Drew, let's get into the nitty-gritty. If someone suffers from depression, anxiety and comes to see you, what are some of the foods that the heavy hitters will encourage them with? at least consider it, so I'd like to guide people through food categories that simply have more nutrients important for anxiety and depression. It's the same thing I do in the book in a way, which is focus on food categories and think that's okay. Just like omega-3 fats seem important in research on mental health and brain health, omega-3 fats are only released in a few places, seafood or an algae supplement, where does this person get them from and then How can we work in that food category?

In the book I go through each of my favorite food categories, there are leafy greens and then I think, you know, if I say leafy greens and you think salad, excuse me, I want you to level up your game a little bit and think. more about things like pesto or kale chips or how to incorporate dark leafy greens into your soups and stews. The same with seafood, think carefully, many people don't know what to do with sardines or anchovies, how can we help you work on those food categories? but those are some of my favorite foods in the book.

I have a list of power players and they are things like these anchovies, wild salmon, red peppers, there are some nuts like cashews and seeds. Pumpkin seeds are great. Another one of my power players is dark chocolate. So when I see someone who has anxiety and depression, I don't want to overwhelm them with this list of foods or make them feel terrible for not eating these foods. I hope it is a much more hopeful and empowering message. that if you're not eating seafood and you haven't been taking omega-3 fats, you know there's an opportunity here to maybe put some points on the board in terms of combating depression and anxiety and if you don't eat a lot of plants and you have a lot of fermented foods, you know, the data suggests that your microbiome, which is all the bacteria in your gut, is not as optimized as it could be to combat depression and anxiety, let's try adding those foods and see if that helps you and I think that is to think of nutrition as one of the arrows in our quiver when it comes to fighting and overcoming mental health disorders, you mentioned the gut microbiome, let's dig a little deeper and talk about what's really going on, why? we're trying to develop that in a healthy way, how does that specifically affect our brain health?

I like to think about the example of a zoo, so if you have a zoo and you're a zookeeper, you have all these different foods that you can feed all the different animals and if, for example, you were to feed your zoo all the meat, very soon you would have Jesse's tiger and super lion zoo and we watched the Netflix special and saw how it turned out well, so you want to feed a diverse set of plants to your microbiome, the microbiome is a collection of bacteria, mostly , which live in your colon because when you feed them a more diverse set of fibers, you're cultivating a healthier microbiome, which means bacteria that they're going to release. signals and produce more food for you, not food in a bad way, like they don't make you obese or something, it's much more that these bacteria give back to both of us in the form of different vitamins. and minerals feed the inside of our colon, in fact, it's a really interesting way that they work for us and they also regulate inflammation, so if you eat a lot of sugar and a lot of fast food, what happens is like feeding only the Zoo. meat, you're cultivating more of these types of more inflammatory bacteria, you don't have a lot of diversity in your microbiome and so over time, the idea is that this helps promote more inflammation and therefore more depression and more anxiety, can we have some? a little bit more into the details of when you have the healthy microbiome, how it specifically communicates with the brain, the connection between the two, yeah, there's a couple of ways that we understand this to happen, you know, a lot of times this gets a little bit misrepresented. , people say, oh, like 95 percent of the serotonin in your body is in your gut and that's true, but it's different than the serotonin in your brain in the sense that it's not like it's a bunch of serotonin. which then goes up to your brain. the way the microbiome communicates with the brain part of that is largely facilitated through the vagus nerve.

It's this very long nerve that hangs down from the brain, travels through the diaphragm and, like, I don't know, sits down. like the roots of a tree that detect your gut and your microbiome communicates with this in several ways: one, those insects produce the same neurotransmitters that we do, they produce gaba, serotonin and dopamine, the other is that they produce these things called exocrine factors and confactors. additional that They are both produced by the microbiome, but they are also produced by some of the cells that line the intestine and, as they sense the intestine, they send chemical signals to the vagus nerve and the vagus nerve again that's like this is this neurological highway between the intestine and the brain and that's something you can imagine, imagine in your colon there's a wild punk rock party, it's like wild times, it's like crazy, let's not just say Most calm and peaceful things happen fine and yourbrain hears this through the vagus nerve versus like you know everything is soft, it's like people are hugging each other and singing kumbaya and you know your brain is like what's going on there. like everything is fine here in the gut brain, okay, well, so the idea is to eat more plants and more fermented foods is one of the ways you can think about whether your diet is really fueling your mental health or not, let's talk more . about that serotonin that is produced in the intestine and that is down there because it is something that a lot of people talk about, you know, the great predominance of serotonin in your body is in your intestine or it is produced in your intestine and the assumption is that it goes to the brain so talk more about how it's different and what the purpose of that serotonin is if it doesn't facilitate activity and a purpose in the brain then serotonin is probably one of the most misrepresented molecules in wellness and neuroscience at the moment.

You only have about 500,000 serotonin neurons in your brain. None of them are in your new brain. They are located in the middle of the brain and their projections extend forward. In the frontal lobes and in the most modern brain, serotonin is not the happiness molecule either, I mean, serotonin is involved in weight, it is involved in cognition, it is involved in sexual desire, it is involved in irritability , I mean, you know, it does a lot more than just regulating. our mood, so it's just a misrepresentation, it's true, there's a lot of serotonin in the gut, there's also a lot of dopamine and a lot of gaba and a lot of other things, and it's interesting, I think it's often customary to try to attract the people.

I'm excited about the gut's potential to help with mental health disorders or it gets used to undermining serotonin as a major player in mental health, but you know, my take on serotonin is that we should all be talking about bdnf and if only you're talking about serotonin or worried about SSRIs or antidepressant efficacy it's just like the vegan/carnivore argument it's just I don't know, it feels like it's 1995 to me, like it's so nice, just not very, I don't find that It's still a very interesting argument because you know the most important thing is to think about how, through our personal lifestyle, we help actualize more brain health, more brain growth, less inflammation.

It's okay for some people, that's with plants, for others, with more meat, but that's how it is. the question we should be dealing with and worrying about and um, but yeah, there's a lot of serotonin in your body, there's a lot of serotonin in your platelets, no one says, oh, you know what I should do, I should get some of Jesse's platelets and Eat them later tonight to boost my serotonin, right? Well you talked about bdnf there and its importance, we can't just let it go. Sorry, sorry, I started ranting about serotonin. Oh, that's great, I think that's important. we go there with serotonin, but let's talk about bdnf now and talk specifically about what that is, how we control the amount of it in our body and why it's important for everyone listening, it's a brain-derived neurotrophic factor if there's a goal in my work, if you remember anything from this podcast, my hope is that it increases your bdnf and the reason is because bdnf is like a master hormone, it's a hormone or it's a neurohormone, that's what it's called, that regulates brain growth and makes This in a couple of different ways: it regulates whether new neurons are born in our hippocampus, so you actually give birth to some new brain cells every day and how many you give birth to is actually dictated by this bdnf molecule, so more brain cells. that sounds good to me, but that sounds good to you and in the data that is good, so it's very exciting to me that there is this process that promotes more bdnf and it's all the things that we know work for depression, antidepressants. increase bdnf meditation and psychotherapy increase bdnf uh foods high in vitamin b12 and omega-3 fats in zinc seem to increase bdnf, so there's this really interesting kind of shift, maybe instead of just thinking that okay, depression, chemical imbalance, more serotonin, come on I use these medications, I mean I use a lot of serotonin medications in my practice, but this idea that some of us may think that depression and anxiety have to do with inflammation or dysbiosis or that we don't have the right bacteria in the microbiome and these things sort of lead to a final common pathway, but putting your brain into pause and grow mode is disrupted by disrupting bdnf expression.

Can we talk about a number of foods that influence bdnf the most, like my favorite, so there really aren't many studies on it? morpheus directly impacts bdnf there is only one and it was a study in Spain where they gave people nuts and they found out that they gave them olive oil and these were people who followed the Mediterranean diet and they found that the people who were given nuts and ate nuts were protected, they had a 78 lower risk of having severely low BDNF levels, which the researchers called severely low. bdnf is not a perfect biomarker.

I wish I could measure the bdnf level and increase it. The brain is growing, everything is good, so we look. There are six nutrients that influence bdnf magnesium zinc b12 there are some flavanols in plants and then release fats and that's where again, when you think about where these food categories come from, why do I say eat more seafood? Why do I see more leaves? vegetables plus nuts and beans is because those are the food categories that have the most of these nutrients and so if we're going to try to put you on a diet, we're really feeding your brain, we're really promoting brain growth.

It will be the foods that contain the most of these nutrients that promote bdnf, at least that is my hope, so up to this point we have talked a lot about different foods and their influence on mental health, what we have not addressed is the supplementation. I'm curious if in your practice, in your personal life, supplementation plays a large or even a small role in supplementing an already healthy diet, I don't mean certainly with some patients in clinical work in specific situations in which is my job. treat anxiety or depression and someone, let's say, doesn't eat seafood or someone is very anxious at night and, you know, it helps maybe to take some, I don't know, magnesium or they're from a culture where they take a small injection.

Every once in a while, you know, I use some omega-3 fat, a little bit of fish oil, usually, or for vegans, algae oil, certainly in the winter. I make sure my patients take vitamin D. There is some data on supplements. magnesium and zinc, but I don't usually prescribe many supplements, jesse. My main feeling is that the more people can focus on foods high in those nutrients, the better their health will be. Certainly, there are others that you know. There are some various herbs, like uh or or uh, supplements would be l-theanine or St. John's wort or rhodiola, which you know have some really interesting mental health data and I will occasionally use them, but you know, I think of them as I think. about medications, you know, I'm very neutral, as a lot of people think, like Zoloft and St.

John's wort, you know different categories and I don't think they're both things that I'm giving someone and that I'm prescribing? so I'm on the hook if it causes a side effect if it works if it doesn't work that's how it is for me really uh it's important it's something important that you know I wanted uh it just determines how good it is I'm a doctor in some way, so there's not a lot of things. that I trust, but there are some, and what do you think about soil depletion and our degradation of soil quality over the years, even if We're eating, you know, a lot of healthy foods these days.

We are not necessarily guaranteed. We are getting the same nutrition that we would receive if the soil was healthier in an overall sense. Here in a general sense, I think we depend on a lot of monocultures and uh of crops and those uh really the soil is quite depleted, its fertility has been depleted and then we apply it through chemical fertilizers uh, I think there is a lot of complexity and challenges. as we increase our population on the planet and we think about scaling food and it's really a challenge. I think at least I hope there is some real revitalization happening on small local farms.

My vegetables, my soil sucks in Crawford County, Indiana, but let me tell you, my vegetables are delicious and my soil in my garden and the place where we are planting food is really good, it has tons of truckloads of manure and wood chips. old leaves and grass cuttings, and it's been down there developing with worms and everything for a couple of years, so um and and that's how you know all the small farmers are focused on soil health, their focus on really having rich and highly productive soil, so I also think there's a lot to focus on and I think for me like Well, it's true that there is a kind of massive crisis in the soil and its fertility around the world that is slowly being resolved. crumbling or coming to light.

You know, for the individual consumer as a physician, what I really try to focus on is how can people get their hands on it. in the soil more, how can people get more plants in their diet? And sometimes for people that's like an organic treat from the farmers market. Sometimes it's like a conventional bag of celery from a big box store and I think it's one of those types. of I would say the levels of things like, you know, I start with: can you fill the plates with a lot of plants and seafood, a lot of nuts and beans, so my little one rhymes seafood, vegetables, nuts and beans and a little bit of dark chocolate and then how?

Can you start to optimize those things both in terms of your consumption, your taste, your price, your sourcing, but in general, are you an advocate for organic and non-GMO products when possible? more for you for your patients if people are open to that yes, yes, if people ask me, do you know what I buy for my family, um, I buy organic whenever I can, there are times when I don't, yes, I'm sure you know. Sometimes I buy conventional frozen blueberries, if I can't find them organic or if they're too expensive, I buy certain things like onions, for example, where you know I'm not as worried about pesticides as something like kale or my greens or , usually my blueberries where I'm eating the skin, you know, the GMO argument, I think it's really complex and confusing, I mean, very often, you know that's just that if you're eating GMO foods, in you're mostly eating processed foods, so I think avoiding that because I never, I don't really try to buy anything that has a food label on it, you know, maybe my pasta, but you know, I think if you're stuck reading labels and really concentrated In that regard, I think there's a way that some people get dragged into a layer of processed foods that's really pernicious, where it's like healthy eaters who feel like they're eating healthy because there are certain labels on their food instead. of the real ones. nutrition and what are the biggest culprits in that department oh I would say uh low fat flavored yogurt products um and the non-dairy variations of that uh I would say breakfast cereals um I think protein bars end up in that category um a Bunch of them and the powders um those are some that came to mind uh I'm trying to think of another type of healthy organic GMO I think that's often where I see them you know in something like it's organic no transgenic.

Graham cracker is like that, it's still a cracker that you're putting on your s'more, you know it's not the fact that it's GMO organic like that, that doesn't matter, it's not a good food for you, don't be confused. Spending more money or making it organic is somehow changing the fact that it's not good for your health or that you can get it like non-GMO organic toasted oats or cheerios or whatever the breakfast hero is, but let's go like this. that doesn't make it good for you or healthier for your child, so I think to me those labels are like that, it just means that you're eating cereal for breakfast and trying to justify it and if you're going to have breakfast. you say you should eat oatmeal and if there is something other than oatmeal maybe some muesli I don't know I think you are in bed with processed food and it is not the best for your health I understand what you are saying, can you explain to me what a typical day?

What do you eat in the morning for lunch? Snacks? Are you making your most important meal at dinner? Trying to think, I mean, my typical eating day goes something like this. This way, I usually wake up naturally around 6am and have a cup of Earl Gray tea with maybe just a little bit of honey from our farm or have a cup of black coffee and I'm usually not very hungry and then sometimes, I like oatmeal with just a couple of things, I have oatmeal with cinnamon, berries and nuts, I know, sweetener, or I'll have a couple of fried or scrambled eggs or something like avocado toastYes I'm in the mood for carbs or toast with my eggs, but sometimes I skip it and make it.

I don't know, I'll be hungry at lunch time. Lunch for me is usually a mix of raw vegetables. cucumbers red peppers a small portion of soup usually any type of lentil soup makes me happy, but some type of bean soup usually like having white beans uh there's a little bit like leftover chicken noodle soup um I love a lot of protein in lunch so hummus seafood like some poached salmon or smoked salmon and then usually at midday as a snack and dark chocolate or cashews with nuts, I'll have like a dark chocolate bar to nibble on, I try not to do it too much. patience, but I'll like to take a little bit in my mouth um yeah, I like cashews, dark chocolate, pumpkin seeds and then dinner is usually like a big pan roasted vegetables, if you want to see my dinner, I put it on Instagram one good amount.

You can look at all my dinners, where you'll see that I'm a boring mix of carbs, like I like brown rice and wild salmon. for protein and grass-fed beef and usually a bunch of outdoor roasted vegetables, I just don't know, it's a habit we have where I just make a whole rainbow cabbage, asparagus and peppers and put them in the pan. with olive oil, salt and pepper, slide them in um we often bake them like some potatoes like uh love, I love it like a baked potato. I am a big fan of potatoes. I think they're just a great food for the microbiome, especially if you let it um yeah, that's that, that's mostly what I'll be eating during the pandemic.

I'm like a sad regression and living, you know, every night, like going out with my kids. There's definitely more cookies and ice cream which then is usually in my diet um just to be transparent uh and cookies like I never eat cookies but my dad buys them I live with my parents what can I say they're comforting me. um, that sounds good like my diet and how old it is. They are your children and they agree to eat this way or you find some resistance so my children are 10 and seven years old uh our daughter is 10 years old and there are certain things that our daughter likes she loves my wild salmon burgers but you know, I was complaining about um uh Yesterday's baked salmon doesn't taste good so I guess, well, they're allowed to do whatever they want in the sense that we all eat the same thing, maybe that's not true, we should probably ask them, Jesse , it's simply not like that.

I don't think it's fair to speak for them, I think there are some things they don't like and don't have to eat, but we've worked hard to find a lot of foods that we can all agree on, so lentils, cucumbers, red peppers. you know, my kids eat big kale salads, no, but they'll eat kale chips and they'll eat some kale salad and they'd love it, they'll devour it like kale mac and cheese, I mean, pounds of kale. . analyze these kids, so they've taught me a lot, frankly, about our notions of food, like whether your kid likes kale or not, that's how I thought about it before I was a parent and then it's like it really depends.

Does your child see food mostly sometimes like they love smoked salmon on a bagel and they eat salmon most of the time and they weirdly love sushi and sometimes they love shrimp right where it is and then, um, ha been uh kombucha, are they big? Kombucha drinkers love booch, so it's been really interesting, um, interesting, that's a bad word, it's been very complex, balancing being a parent, the time constraints, the budget constraints, and the taste constraints of a child, and still feel like you. You're doing everything you can to fuel their mental health and fuel their brain health.

What I hear you saying is that you are giving them a variety of healthy foods and you are letting them choose, you know their direction a little bit because what I am getting at here, I am sure a lot of people are listening, maybe there is someone who is having a mental health issue that you are listening to and are ready to make a dietary change and maybe you are the cook in the family and have young children. kids and it's like, how do I, it's enough for someone to do this themselves, but when maybe they have some resistance from the kids, how do they do it?

You know again what your end is. This is a personal question, but how? Do you want to navigate that? As a parent, I generally like that we all eat the same thing, but sometimes I feel depressed and I really want my pasta with sardines because I don't like that, it puts me in a good mood, right? far away, but I don't know, it's like a placebo effect on me, it's like the sibo effect of sardines, where I usually feel better the next day and I don't want to force my children to eat pasta with sardines like what you eat. at home when I was a kid, like oh, my weird psychiatrist or my dad made me eat like sardine gnocchi, but I like them to try a little bit, so I think for parents who, or for people who live in a house with other diners, I think. you really want to try and do little things so if you're trying to incorporate more seafood can you add it in or can you do it when other people order sushi or can you do something like um you?

I know how to make salmon burgers, but when people are out and about, so it doesn't sneak through the house like salmon, although it doesn't stick out much of the house, and I think parents focus on things like more plants. raw vegetables we serve the vegetables before the other food it's funny yes, the kids like they like vegetables of course, so you put them cut up, you know, vegetables, peppers, a little bit of any salad dressing, olive oil and lemon juice, and it's like all vegetables. disappear and that is a trick that we do in our house, but I would concentrate on the plants and then roast them in the oven because with roasting in the oven they caramelize a little and that is a little, it is a little sweeter, more tasty and then listen to your kids if they say broccoli tastes like shit and is super bitter, it makes them not traumatize each other, look for other plants, there are like a billion other vegetables, um, you know, see if you like them sweet potatoes, see if you like them. potatoes, you know, I get the kids involved too, where we'll have a smoothie lab while I just take the stuff out and let them blend it and you know, try not to make it gross, is my advice, I want you to drink it like This doesn't It's like that, don't you know, not wasting food is a big rule in our house.

I involve them in the kitchen. My kids had plastic knives when they liked to hold a knife and now they both cut with sharp adult knives. By involving them, my son doesn't eat tons of plants, but he has his world famous pepper salad, which is like chopped red peppers, orange peppers, and yellow peppers with olive oil and lemon juice. Now you know the recipe, but you know it's a treat when he joins us in the kitchen and does it well and it's so much fun to watch him devour it and make us devour it because you know how nice it is to have a younger member of the family contributing to it. prepare the food, so I I think you look for the winds like this and then I emphasize why you know, I say we get our plants because they are good for a god and I also have a great partner in this, my wife is, really, we are united. front when it comes to these things we're both flexible like we're not idiots to each other when I don't know we need to buy pizza because we're lazy or sad or we don't feel like cooking or whatever um but also When the time comes to up the ante and eat better, we're both on board to help with that, so I think that's another thing you need to know if you're a parent and you're worried about introducing this. for kids as you know, incorporate your partner in some way with some small steps and some small intentions and just try something new and make it fun.

If you're not eating a lot of plants, start with fruit salad for dessert for everyone. He loves fruit salad, if you know you haven't made beans and rice for dinner in a long time, like making beans and rice for dinner with lots of salsa, guacamole, and corn tortillas. Everyone loves a bean taco and a corn tortilla with salsa and guacamole, so there are all kinds of ways, I think it may be more fun for kids, but I certainly appreciate the question, Jesse, and I think sometimes it can seem really intimidating, and when it comes to your wife, her influence on eating healthier? through you and you know you want to figure out what the best diet is to work with patients to help them with their mental health and then in turn you know you've adopted this healthy way of eating and you're also talking.

About her children eating healthy, were you her influence on her? Would you say to eat this alternative way? Was she rubbing against him or was there a part of both of them that came together and formed her philosophy? I'm just curious. how that all developed, so I would say I initially influenced my wife in terms of cooking and nutrition and we've been together before I was a nutritional psychiatrist because we've been married for 20 years and I probably bought something brought. uh, nutrition, uh, conscientiousness and cooking initially in the relationship and then, um, and then that started to really change as we had kids and she had more of a primary caregiver role and a little bit of a run-of-the-mill role. food in the house.

More and more, our tastes and our palette are really tailored through books and her work, really being a great partner in all of those projects and, um, you know, really helping us as a family lead by example, which was important to both of us. Of us have purpose-driven lives and we're authentic, if we're going to talk about seafood, we're going to eat seafood and if we're going to promote more leafy greens, those are foods that we're going to eat, so it's uh, and you know what. It's a difficult thing like anything you grow up with together, it's difficult to unravel, you know, I certainly cooked more and introduced her to some food and she had never had sushi, we're both from the Midwest and I remember being a We were dating a young girl. medical student and we took her to a Japanese restaurant in Indianapolis and it was very fun and exotic, I guess, as I said, when I was coming out of vegetarianism, the first thing I adapted to and adopted, I had eaten some sushi.

I didn't have much, like shrimp and some veggie rolls, but yeah, I had a little bit in there that was weird, but that was a good example and then we traveled a lot together, so I just have to be in a lot of strange spaces with food, like living in Kenya for months and, you know, eating the traditional diet there or, you know, just traveling and feeding ourselves on a budget, so it's, you know, I said it's hard to untangle who's who. I hope I give it enough credit because it certainly is some of the things like lentil soup and my new book is directly inspired by it.

Her lentil soup is simple and amazing. That's when wild salmon burgers appear. something we do a lot um and then oven roasted vegetables, I mean, and our I would say probably oven roasted fries, pan roasted fries, not that I should give you all the credit for that, the cooking. on par and then the olive oil she makes a really good one, really good, that's all she kind and

drew

. I imagine someone coming to work with you at first, you know, they say they feel depressed and life is really getting them down. and then all of a sudden they're trying to make this big dietary change and trying to eat healthier, they're on board for that, but their motivation to, you know, actually get in the kitchen and start cooking may be low, especially at the beginning, when they still feel pretty bad, how can anyone?

Because, I mean, it's a big learning curve for anyone to start including some of these foods, but I imagine for someone who's feeling depressed, this could be an extra layer on top. So how can you easily facilitate a dietary change in someone who is, say, depressed? Well, I think that's where the importance of having some training in nutritional psychiatry helps, is where we really try to train hundreds of doctors to do this responsibly because I think you're right, it can be overwhelming. I think a lot of people with depression and anxiety get a lot of advice, and I think, for example, your statement about making big changes, we really try not to frame it that way.

The way is, I had a patient on Tuesday, and I saw her and I told her that we were talking about things that she could really do and that were important and I just took it out of my mouth and said, you know, I really want you to be aware because there are. eating so much healthy food, but I don't even feel like you're watching it. I want you to sit with me. You know, maybe it's an avocado and just use the avocado, a little bit of olive oil and a little bit of salt. I just blur it. it came out of my mouth and I just don't know an example when I started, they said, you know what I did, that avocado thing you're talking about, I just sat down with half an avocado, a little bit ofolive oil, a little salt and a spoon, I just spent a few minutes with it, I ate it, it's really good for me and so I think to thread that needle among overwhelming people you have to eat seafood and fermented foods and a lot of beans and don't forget the pitas. and oh, don't you like anchovies?

Eat more anchovies. Know? between something that sounds like this and hey, jesse, what are you having for dinner tonight? and listening to what you're having for dinner and thinking about it and not really feeling the need to like it. It changes a lot about it, but listen to it and just having a little bit of awareness of talking about it, the knowledge of this category of food is everyone listening tonight, you can see that helps you think more clearly. You look at your plate. Do you see some rainbows? do you see some plants or are there some fermented foods that you've eaten this week some of the things that i also think are really helpful in treating depression jesse likes things that people with depression don't have an appetite for so boom, brain food shakes, come on blender talk like, what are you blending and where can you really have fun?

It's like you know you put a scoop of ice cream in there in the morning, you put a banana, you put a lot of cinnamon, you put some nuts and you say. Having a smoothie in the morning is as if you had a smoothie the other day in the morning. I didn't feel so good, it was amazing, I also had all these amazing nutrients from my brain and I usually don't have an ice ball. Cream in there, I usually just put water and ice over and over, if you don't have much of an appetite you can get a lot of calories and nutrients in a small smoothie or in your favorite snacks.

I find that a lot of people don't have much of an appetite when they're down, so how about we have a little Mediterranean dish that you can throw together quickly with just a little hummus and a little feta cheese and, you know, chop up some cucumbers or peppers? or you know, is there any way you can prepare yourself a little bit again? When you think about that plate, you see colors, you see plant protein, so that's the hope is to give people little victories like that, so what I'm hearing from you. The saying is to start where people aim for small winds, hopefully build momentum and then over time you can figure out how to speed things up safely.

I think you're hearing it exactly right. You sound like a good nutritional psychiatrist Jesse, you mentioned earlier what I know. We got to a part here soon, but before you touched on inflammation and I think it's important that we cover why this is so important when it comes to mental health, what are some of the factors that commonly cause inflammation and then some specific food choices. that we can do that can help buffer that sure is a great question I have a whole chapter in the new e2 book depression and anxiety about inflammation uh it's really one of the ways that we increasingly want to understand mental health disorders is interesting that depression Just having depression increases the amount of inflammatory factors in the body, meaning blood levels just increase of things like interleukin-6, so there's almost a chicken and egg kind of effect. , if we give people inflammatory factors in the laboratory or if we give them inflammatory factors in the laboratory.

The more inflammatory factors running through the blood, the more likely you are to have a low mood and when we give people things like hepatitis C, it is treated with one of the interleukins and in fact, before you get the treatment, they start you on an antidepressant because 50 of the people who suffer from them suffer from severe depression, so inflammation clearly causes depression, clearly causes anxiety, clearly causes cognitive fog, so it's one of those nice new pieces of neuroscience which allow us to better treat anxiety and depression in terms of the causes of inflammation. One of the things that you know, that we're talking about today is diet and not only do you know that people don't get enough nutrients, then you know that 96% of Americans don't get enough vitamin E, which is a powerful fat-soluble antioxidant. , half of people don't You don't get enough zinc, people don't get enough magnesium, you just go through the list of important nutrients that you need to fight inflammation, people don't get enough, you know, and on top of that, we eat foods that They're inflammatory, so part of the reason why eating a lot of sugar is not good is that you get this big spike in blood sugar, then you get this big spike in insulin, and you have tons of extra calories that just float around in your body. . it leads to a lot of inflammation, it leads to the growth of more pro-inflammatory bacteria in the gut and those are some of the ways that diet increases inflammation, then there are other things that people can do well, people sleep very poorly and in general , low quality. they sleep people drink a lot of alcohol a lot of people still smoke cigarettes there are a lot of things we can do to decrease our inflammation a lot of people are exposed to some environmental toxins or you know if you're always like burning candles in your house and you don't have an air filter, either stop burning the tip of the cannon or get an air filter or do both, that will potentially make a big difference in your inflammation, so all of these are, in a way, one of them. the arrows in our quiver is what we think, okay what is something we can modify, this comes from some studies the way these meta-analyses look at hundreds of thousands of patients, there are two of them that came out in 2020 and look at If people got an antidepressant and took an anti-inflammatory of any kind, the risk of getting better from depression increased in one study by a factor of two, twice as many people got better than those who took the anti-inflammatory and the antidepressant, which is something interesting. and then another interesting fact: many of the really popular antidepressants, like Prozac, are powerful anti-inflammatory molecules, so inflammation is a really important concept.

I'm glad you asked about it in terms of us thinking, well, you know, are there things that are telling me that I have inflammation when I see my doctor next time. Can I add a C-reactive protein or homocysteine ​​to my blood test to check this? Do I have a lot of joint pain? Knows? There are some signs that I have that I have too much inflammation and then what can I do about it? Well, Drew, I think that's a good place to end. We've covered tons of things here besides listeners getting a copy of Eat to Beat Depression and Anxiety, how can they connect with you after the show?

Well, the most important thing for me for everyone listening is that I hope that some of what we said today really sticks with you in some way that challenges some notion that you have about food. or you are excited, I know this personally, or hatching chickens or trying seafood. Really the most important thing for me is that you take from this some way that you can think about feeding your mental health and, if you want, follow me. instagram or check out our downloads at drawramcmd.com, that would be great too. I would love to hear your stories about how something impacted you or how some of this sparked your interest in nutritional psychiatry and jesse, thank you for the opportunity to share with everyone some information about the book and information about you know what I hope people feel It's an empowering message, not that we don't need therapy or that we don't need medication, but that there are things we can do in our daily lives to take care of ourselves. of our mental health and that food is one of them and it has been great to be with everyone for a while.

Thanks, Drew really enjoyed this, take care, take care.