Are you prone to the type of mood swings that have those around you being extremely careful how they converse with you? There is a relationship between food consumption and your emotional health. Food influences your brain chemistry and moods.
Neurotransmitters like serotonin help us relax. Dopamine can help feel more focused. The foods eaten provide the building blocks for these chemicals. Our brains extract the nutrients necessary from the foods we eat to create the neurotransmitters, which regulate our moods.
1. Added Sugars and Artificial Sweeteners: After the initial high and inevitable crash, addictive sugar increases feelings of anxiety, irritability, and depression.
Naturally occurring sugars, like those found in fruits are fine. Those sugars added to food products like yogurt, granola, condiments and bread are what you need cautious of. Artificial sweeteners are bad, too.
From chewing gum to no-calorie waters and even toothpaste, side effects include headaches, mood disorders, dizziness, and migraines. There are many natural sweeteners available that range from raw honey and stevia to coconut sugar and blackstrap molasses. Experiment with the substitute that works best for you.
2. Agave Nectar: In the height of the high-fructose corn syrup crisis, agave nectar burst onto the health food scene. It was sweet, produced from a natural plant and low on the glycemic index scale, making it the perfect substance for marketing to diabetics. Agave nectar is not good for you.
The highly processed procedure that agave goes through to make it to store shelves involves stripping away the naturally occurring agave juice of all nutritional value. It’s made largely from fructose, the most damaging form of sugar.
It is metabolized by the liver, and not the bloodstream. When it comes to your mood, the high amount of fructose found in agave syrup increases your risk of metabolic syndrome. This is a collection of conditions including obesity, high blood pressure and insulin resistance. All of these can lead to a bad mood. If you want to sweeten things up, raw honey is a terrific swap.
Locally produced honey and organic one hundred percent maple syrup are also great options. While all sugars should be consumed in moderation, try these healthier options that have key minerals and plant antioxidants.
3. Alcohol: If you’ve been feeling down in the dumps, it might be time to evaluate how much and how often you’re drinking. Alcohol consumption triggers it to produce hormones that increase feelings of stress and anxiety.
As a depressant, alcohol reduces serotonin (the feel good hormone) and affects the nervous system (all of which can lead to a bad mood). Try gluten-free alcohol. Better yet, go alcohol-free and relax with some probiotic-rich, fermented cold drinks (like kombucha or kvass).
4. Bagels: Bagels (even the whole-wheat kind) are not healthy. Bagels' simple carbohydrates will have you feeling all over the place. This product will affect your focus, alertness, energy, and rapid mood swings. Bagels are made from white grains, which have no nutritional value. The spike in blood sugar will be high if the bagel isn't consumed with protein (like peanut butter).
5. Baked Goods: Cookies, snack cakes, donuts, pies, and muffins are jam-packed with vegetable shortening, saturated oils, and refined sugars, which are known as empty calories that will leave you lethargic, unfocused, and lead to weight gain if you partake regularly. For a healthy alternative and a natural sugar rush, look to fresh fruit (something like a black bean brownie).
6. Carbonated Beverages: Americans consume around six hundred sodas a year. Sugary sodas cause a mood spike followed by a mood crash due to severely low blood sugar. Zero calorie diet sodas are especially harmful, and not just because of the linked-to-cancer aspartame. People who drink at least two diet sodas a day are likely to wind up with a soda belly, which protrudes out like a beer or pregnant stomach.
7. Cereal: Eating refined carbohydrates can cause a blood sugar spike, mood swings, and an increased risk of depression. Instead, opt for a breakfast filled with protein and complex carbohydrates, which will stabilize your blood sugar and keep you fueled and better prepared to tackle the day.
8. Coffee: If you are a regular coffee addict, you’ll suffer jitters, anxiety, headaches, drowsiness, accelerated heart rate, perspiration, lack of focus, and a major mood swing. Try sipping on green tea instead of coffee. Green tea is anti-aging, anti-inflammatory, easy to make, and tastes delicious.
9. Dried Fruit: Dried fruits lose their water content in the dehydration process. It's easy to eat and over-consume sugar, additives, and preservatives. While the fiber in dried fruit helps lessen a blood sugar spike, it can cause a upset stomach if you eat too much.
10. French Fries: Processed and deep fried foods take a long time to digest. They weigh down your body, and cause bloating and the inevitable fast food coma. You'll most likely be consuming a fries full of refined carbohydrates, saturated fats, and high amounts of salt. This wreaks havoc on your moods (and your waistline).
11. High Sugar Juices and Cocktail Mixers: They're a lot like soda drinks when it comes to their sugar content. The sugars will be released into the bloodstream, allowing an energy boost to take place, but ultimately leaving one feeling fatigued, irritable, and depressed.
12. Margarine: Margarine contains processed fats, which causes insulin imbalances, mood swings, weight gain, and increase the risk of heart attacks. It’s best to avoid these smooth, butter-like substitutes. Sticking to butter is your best bet. If you’re purchasing it for cooking, ghee is a good alternative (to butter).
13. Packaged, Processed Seeds: While this is a great choice when consumed raw or roasted, the processed versions are often coated in a preservative called potassium bromate, which blocks iodine from being absorbed by the thyroid. When your thyroid can't function properly, you may not be able to either. Depression can be a side effect of this ailment.
14. Potato Chips: The unhealthy oils used to process chips lower brain activity and negative moods. Fried foods like these contain a toxic cancer-causing substance called acrylamide. The majority of companies use a vegetable oil known to contain a high dose of saturated fats and omega-6 fatty acids, which affect moods by causing inflammation throughout the body and leading to various mental and emotional instabilities.
15. Processed Foods: These chemically-enhanced foods (for the purpose of a long shelf life) disrupt mental functions, and leave one feeling depressed, exhausted, anxious, tired, unmotivated, and uninspired.
16. Processed Lunchmeats: Processed meats like these contain high levels of energy-sucking, mood-altering nitrates, food colorings, preservatives, and additives that cause wicked headaches, low moods, and bloating. Roasting your own turkey or chicken breasts, and slicing it yourself for a healthier alternative.
17. Snack Peanuts: Despite the protein, this nut is full of salt and additives, which leads to migraines, breathing difficulties, sodium-infused bloating, depression, weakness, fatigue, or moodiness with a headache. Salted peanuts should be avoided in diets. Make your own mix of raw walnuts, almonds, and Brazil nuts. Rosemary is a brain-protecting herb. Toss your raw nuts with some rosemary, a pinch of sea salt, and then roast at home.
18. Sugar-Free Drink Mixes: Many of us opt for sugar-free drink mixes in order to stay slim and consume less sugar. However, these little packs of powder or liquids containing additives and aspartame aren’t much better than sugary sodas. A sugar-free drink habit will lead to weight gain and mood swings.
Keeping a big sun-tea jar in your kitchen counter filled with ice water that's been flavored with fruits, veggies, mint, orange, lemon basil, ginger, or cucumber. Tasty and always available, it helps keep you hydrated and healthy.
19. Vegetable Shortening: Vegetable shortening is made with inflammation-promoting industrial fats and high levels of omega-6 fatty acids that can tamper with mood and healthy insulin levels by blocking out brain-building, mood-enhancing omega-3 fatty acids. Olive oil or pasture butter from grass-fed cows contains anti-cancer properties, and decrease belly fat and lower the risk of heart attacks.
20. Wheat: Gluten is the primary culprit of the mood-reducing quality of wheat. Exposure to gluten may cause mental fog (among other undesirable inflammation-related reactions).
Half of all grains we eat should be whole grains (as opposed to refined grains, which strips away much of what is best about grains and can leave a white product that may be up to ninety-four percent starch).
Less than five percent of Americans are meeting this modest goal, according to the USDA. Start with starches. When it comes to pasta, sandwich breads, bagels, dinner rolls, or hamburger buns, opt for whole grain.
“Emotions, by their simplest definition, are something we experience when we perceive something as being more negative than positive or more positive than negative. In other words, when our thoughts and perceptions are unbalanced, emotions arise.” (Matt Stone, author of Food for Mood: Dietary and Lifestyle Interventions for Anxiety, Depression, and Other Mood Disorders )[i]
[i] Sources used:
· “10 Bad Mood Foods — Yes, Poor Nutrition Makes You Crabby” by Dr. Axe
· “20 Foods That Put You in a Bad Mood” by Sharon Feiereisen
· “A Family's Guide to Healthy Food Substitutes” by Dr. Alan Greene, M.D.
· “Hippocrates” Wikipedia
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