Could Your Diet Be Causing Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression? – with Dr. Uma Naidoo

Bret: 
Welcome to the Metabolic Mind Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Bret Scher. Metabolic Mind is a nonprofit initiative of Baszucki Group where we’re providing information about the intersection of metabolic health and mental health and metabolic therapies, such as nutritional ketosis as therapies for mental illness.

Thank you for joining us. Although our podcast is for informational purposes only and we aren’t giving medical advice, we hope you will learn from our content and it will help facilitate discussions with your healthcare providers to see if you could benefit from exploring the connection between metabolic and mental health.

How does the food we eat affect our mood and our anxiety? Quite a bit. And Dr. Uma Naidoo, a prominent Harvard and Mass Gen psychiatrist, discusses her tips and her upcoming book, who you can find at umanaidoomd.com or on Twitter or X at DrUmaNaidoo. She’s the author of This Is Your Brain on Food, and now the newly released Calm Your Mind With Food.

So, in this interview, we talk about her approach to nutritional psychiatry, which she has been on the forefront of for decades now. I hope you enjoy this interview with Dr. Naidoo. But please remember before we get started, this channel is for informational purposes only.

We’re not providing individual or group medical or healthcare advice or establishing a provider patient relationship. Many of the things we discuss, including changing your diet, changing your lifestyle, or altering any medications can be very dangerous if not done without proper supervision. So, please always consult with your healthcare team.

So with that, let’s get on with this interview with Dr. Uma Naidoo.

Dr. Naidoo, thank you so much for joining me at Metabolic Mind. 

Uma: 
Thanks so much, Dr. Scher. I’m very excited to talk with you. 

Bret: 
Yeah, so I want to start right off the bat from your website. Dr. Naidoo founded and directs the first hospital-based nutritional psychiatry service in the United States. So, clear you were on this, the forefront of this connection between food and mental health and nutritional psychiatry.

So, I’m curious where that came from? Because every psychiatrist we talk to, they’re very clear. We didn’t get any nutrition training in residency. They didn’t talk about it in fellowship. So, where did this passion of yours come from? 

Uma: 
It stems from my childhood. I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandparents when I was a child because my mom is now a retired double board physician.

But she was in medical school at the time. So, I would hang out with them. And naturally, what was infused and conveyed to me was healthy eating. My grandparents would grow fresh vegetables. I would help my grandmother pick vegetables and do simple things that a little child can do. And we’d eat a really healthy meal together that was also delicious and infused with spices.

To entertain me, they’d teach me yoga and meditation. And there was a lot of science talk in the family because a lot of doctors, but also Ayurvedic practitioners. So cut to the medical school and residency, and a patient early on in my training accused me of causing him to gain weight.

And I was realizing that as I was learning psychotropic medications, I knew that he was a new patient. He’d only started a medication a week prior. It wasn’t the Prozac. But I had been wondering why is it that we are not talking about nutrition to our patients. We are prescribing medications that do cause weight gain. And we’re checking metabolic parameters, but we’re not doing anything else.

And I thought that was a very inactive stance and taught me early on the power of interpreting information to a patient. And I dove deeper into it. I also, Julia Child is my food hero. And as a student in Boston, I couldn’t afford a cable television, i’d watch on public television. And when I discovered that she went to culinary school as a separate and second career, I thought, why not me?

Because I clearly loved cooking and eating and food from my family life growing up. I didn’t realize that these things would really dovetail in the work that I love to do now. And I feel like I had support and also the encouragement of people, pretty senior people, in my department, and I shared the idea of starting this.

They were like, why not try it? Go right ahead. That really gave me the confidence to start seeing patients and focusing in on this. And that’s the long and long, very long, but the long and short of it, so to speak. 

Bret: 
Yeah, and I think it’s great, especially that you’re a trained chef as well. That just adds a different layer and dimension to what you can offer for this food-mood connection.

But one of the things that I think is so interesting for a physician like you to come into nutritional psychiatry and really help create a path at a major institution, is when we look at the evidence, right? When we talk about science and evidence, we’re used to the randomized control trial with the drug changing one thing. And then, nutrition science is completely different on a much, I guess you could, say lower level of quality of evidence.

So, I could see how, maybe an academic institution would be a little hesitant about that, but it sounds like they had open arms. So, I’m just curious for you how you see the difference in level of evidence and how that translates to what you can recommend and? How that sits with sort of academic physicians and like the whole, yeah, the whole evidence environment? 

Uma: 
Sure, I think that’s a great question we certainly, I think, some of my inside story is that senior people in my department did some of the first seminal trials on methyl folate, the effect on mood and things like that. So, I’m definitely surrounded by people who have been doing really groundbreaking research throughout my career.

And I participated when and if I was available to do, I think, that the first thing I’d want to say is that mainstream psychiatry is not practicing this way. It’s not as though because I have a clinic that other doctors, even in the hospital, are practicing this way. There’s a lot of interest from some junior doctors and a core group of us. But for the most part, psychiatrists are practicing the way they always have with being psychopharmacology, really.

In terms of evidence, we have the depression research and clinical program and very strong kind of research background in Mass General, and some of the trials in omega-3s and other nutrients and nutraceuticals, have actually been done there. So, I’m not really fighting upstream where I work.

I think people are very aware of where the evidence is at. That we’re not prescribing food, but we are using it as an additional tool in the toolkit to help people feel better along with therapy, which you know, we very much support as well as medications when it’s necessary. And in terms of other physicians, they’ve been, I presented a keynote at the American Psychiatric Association, which was very encouraging because they invited us to do it along with several other physicians embracing nutritional psychiatry.

At least wanting to hear where things are at for us. And so I never overstate where we’re at because with nutritional science and nutritional epidemiology, food frequency questionnaires really don’t capture everything. I feel like there are a lot of research groups that only do research in nutritional psychiatry and thank goodness.

I’m glad people are focused on that. But you do have to ultimately integrate the clinical and research. You have to have the end of one. You have to see what a patient responds to. I had more than one client who had a different, an opposite reaction. In one particular case, a mother and daughter, she brought in her teenage daughter.

They had an opposite reaction to the same healthy food. So, we really can’t take the group data and assume that it’s the same for everyone. So, I think that integration of clinical and knowing that it’s not that the research is emerging and that we need to be cautious about how we handle it, but offer people some solid guidance.

Bret: 
Yeah, I think that’s such a great point you brought up just as two different people can have different reactions to a medication, the same thing can happen to food as well. But I want to go back real quick to something you said that it’s not like traditional psychiatry practices this way, and most people don’t.

So, I’m curious for someone who’s so passionate about it, does that frustrate you? And why do you think that is? 

Uma: 
It’s an interesting thing. I feel like we are on, especially conversations I’ve had with you and some of my other colleagues and metabolic psychiatry, I think that, oh, I think that things are changing.

I think there’s a core group of like-minded individuals who want to see more of these interventions, and I think that group needs to be grown. So, I’m actually encouraged. I think when I first started this, I was a lonely ship out there doing my thing. But I had good people mentoring me.

And I had patients who were interested, which is great, but I feel like it’s gone. I feel like more and more, I’m getting questions from media. I’m getting questions from colleagues. And we released the first training program, CME-based training program at an academic center the beginning of last year.

Really meant to be a kicking off starting point for any clinician who wants to start to learn these principles, and then we plan to update the course. As it’s CME-based, that had to go through a lot of rigor for us to get it passed and approved and to give it the appropriate credit so that clinicians could take it in the United States, overseas clinicians are, unfortunately, not compatible with the CMEs and things like that.

But even that, it’s so unsteady. And the more people that take that course, the more the message spreads. And no, not frustrated actually. Hopefully. 

Bret: 
Good, I appreciate that optimism. So now, when it comes to food and the food effects on brain, I see it as two different effects.

One is like whether there’s a direct effect of a nutrient on the brain? And the other is, how it affects metabolic health and how metabolic health then feeds into mental health? So, I’m curious what you’ve seen over the course of your career with the maybe lack of emphasis and now emerging emphasis on metabolic health, if you see it that way, or how you see the role of metabolic health as it contributes to mental health?

Uma: 
It’s interesting because in my first book, I certainly touched on things like the ketogenic diet for conditions. My first book was published in 2020, and it was submitted at the end of 2019, for bipolar disorder and schizophreniand I covered the research based then and some of the evidence.

What I discovered, Bret, was for my second book called Calm Your Mind With Food, there was a very interesting connection not only between metabolism and mental health, which is emerging and continuing to provide a really exciting opportunity for change, but also a real connection between the hotbed for anxiety, the amygdala, the hippocampus as well as that impacting, relating and interacting with metabolism.

And what I realized is that many of my patients, for example, who had an uptick of anxiety during COVID. We know that research published in the Lancet showed a 25% increase in anxiety globally, and my patients who were coming in, some of them, there were many different things that happened during the pandemic.

Some people got healthy. They exercised more. They cooked at home, and they did great. But for most people, there was some sort of a little bit of a struggle. And those, given that Zoloft went on shortage early in 2020 because of new prescriptions and anxiety, and we were all being contacted to say that we are going to be short of Zoloft ever so soon.

That was huge shock. But it also showed that people were more anxious, but people were also eating not as great. During the pandemic, processed food sales were high. Some food companies went back and tried, actually manufactured more processed foods, like canned soups, crackers, those types of things, and those sales have continued to remain high.

How has that affected our standard American diet where 93% of Americans have some metabolic problem? I think it has, in fact, it has impacted all of our health. But it’s also impacted our anxiety. 

Bret: 
Yeah. 

Uma: 
And that for me was a very Interesting connection because then I could explain to my patients, if you are reaching this point where your eating is heading really in an unhealthy direction, and these habits that you either picked up during the pandemic or before are continuing. This could be what’s driving one of the big factors driving your anxiety. So, I see it as very important and very related. 

Bret: 
Yeah, and I like how you said one of the big factors driving your anxiety because if you’re anxious about COVID, if you’re anxious about your job or your financial situation. Like the skeptic would say food’s not going to change that.

So how would you react to that type of response? 

Uma: 
I think we are living in a very difficult time, and I think that part of my message around anxiety is that I want people to feel hopeful.

And what I want them to feel is empowered because they have the power. And therefore, research has shown that 70% of individuals globally see a mental health provider. So, there are many people suffering who may not even know that they’re suffering, but they need some form of help. That’s when nutrition and nutritional psychiatry can be very empowering.

The fact that while maybe you’re waiting to see a therapist, maybe just not feeling great, you can adapt how you’re eating and what you’re eating. You can pay attention to that while you’re waiting. It may not be a cure-all, but I have had individuals who are not so severely ill that they can’t function. And they want to use nutritional strategies, and they’re willing to work in a slow and steady way, consistently changing things, and they do well.

So, then we’ve been able to avoid a medication in those individuals. I’ve had other patients who start on a medication, we don’t need to increase the dose or add on a second medication because they’re working alongside with dietary and nutritional changes while being consistent about taking medication.

So I think that for skeptics, I certainly respect their opinion, but I’ve also seen the clinical value of helping people. And I’ve seen the success of my patients. There was one of my most interesting cases was a woman who came to see me because of anxiety. And I initially thought maybe she was more depressed than anxious, but I realized because of the history she provided, that she actually had severe anxiety.

And what was driving her anxiety? One of the things was that she was diabetic. So, she was on insulin and her, basically her, alarm would would go off. She’d always have an afternoon appointment with me and her alarm would go off. And she would dive into a bag and pull up an orange juice or candy because her blood sugar would be low.

She was, she and her endocrinologist, were really just trying to find out what was going on. So we started, I noted that, but I also thought, let’s continue doing, do some work on nutritional psychiatry. And in working to help her lower her anxiety, we worked on a food plan, a careful sort of guide to things that she could do.

Then, it included things like mindfulness. She learned a meditation practice. She learned breath work, but she also changed how she was eating. She worked in a healthcare center. And instead of eating in the cafeteria and eating the, you’ve seen these bread, the peanut butter crackers that are sitting in every kind of doctor’s room or oncall room and that kind of stuff.

She actually started to make her own lunch. She did several things, and she followed along carefully. Her endocrinologist contacted me and want to know what I’d been working on with her because she, for the first time, was able to work with her to lower some of her requirements for insulin.

She also lost weight. She was much calmer. And the most amazing thing was she wrote to me about a year ago, and she was still doing well. She had, she was now on an even dose of insulin, wasn’t changing all the time. Her alarm wasn’t going off. She had really helped her anxiety.

She had lost the weight. She had helped her metabolic health. And that was very, that was just a very, it just stood out because I remember how severely anxious she was when she came in. So, I think that it’s not a one size fits all, but it’s definitely providing some form of solution for some people.

Bret: 
Yeah, so I’m glad you brought that up as the role of blood sugar as it contributes to anxiety. So, do you see that in your patients, even without diabetes, that blood sugar swings from high sugar or ultra-processed foods or whatever the case may be? Blood sugar swings can contribute to symptoms of anxiety?

Uma: 
Yes, people can present with anxiety when they’re hypoglycemic. They can present with anxiety when they’re dehydrated, and they can also present with anxiety when they are tapping into traditional standard American diet, called SAD for a reason. They have these swings in their blood sugar, these crashes after they eat something.

And I’ll say to my patients, if you’re having a donut for breakfast, I had a joke with them and I’ll say, here, why they sell them in pairs, right? Because you’ll eat one now and when you get to work, you’re going need another one because you’re going to be hungry. And you’re going to have that crash, and you’re going to say, I’m hungry. I want something else.

Let’s recheck this and see what you can do. But it’s sometimes, it’s end of experience of those things. It helps people understand, wow, that’s true. That is how I felt. I never really associated with my food because, I think traditionally in the United States, we are such a diet driven culture. And there’s the eat this, not that mentality, but there’s also this focus that food is associated with your waistline and a number on the scale, and not necessarily anything else. And nutritional psychiatry is really showing people that this mental health is not about the above the neck concept.

It’s related to the rest of your body, and how you eat can be impacting some of your symptoms. 

Bret: 
Yeah, let’s talk about some of the foods that you think people should avoid that can negatively impact their mental health, their anxiety, or even contribute to serious mental illness. It is a bit of a trap that you think one specific food rather than the dietary matrix, but it’s a little bit of both, right?

It’s the dietary matrix, right? And how specific foods can contribute to that. So, what are some of the top three on your list that people should stay away from? 

Uma: 
Yes, the ultra-processed foods that you already mentioned, and what falls in that category are sort of junk foods, fast foods packaged, processed foods.

A really interesting study done in animals in 2022 showed that the food thickener, carboxymethyl cellulose, actually led to a lower production of short-chain fatty acids in an animal study when they were fed. This is part of the trial. And you know, what we want to form, short-chain fatty acids, in the gut microbiome when we are eating healthier foods.

And I think that was at least helpful to understand that was impacting these particular animals in this trial. So we know, and there have been actually much, much more that has been written about processed foods to show that they are hyperpalatable.

They tap into our cravings. So, it’s a big category. Things like fast food french fries, people don’t realize actually have hidden sugars in them. They have sugars in them and research and development has been done to make them hyperpalatable so you don’t taste the sugar, but it’s there. And we know that there’s a repository of 262 other names for sugar, the last I checked, on food labels.

So, a big trap is brown rice syrup. And people are thinking, brown rice, I was told by my doctor has more grain in it. But brown rice syrup is simply sugar. So, that’s a big one. Then the second is the added and refined sugars in food. I think that people, kind of speaks to that, looking at a food label and understanding what you’re eating. People, again, associate that with either, if I have too much sugar, have a family history of type II diabetes, or might gain weight.

They don’t associate it with their brain or, specifically, anxiety. And the third is a toss-up between artificial sweeteners or processed vegetable oil. So, it’s you pick which you prefer. But it’s a toss-up of those because we know that they’re problematic to the guts and to symptoms.

Bret: 
Yeah, so with the processed seed oils, it seems like it’s such a controversial topic that some people in medicine will say are beneficial. They lower LDL a little bit in some observational studies. Maybe there’s improved outcome in people who tend to eat more of those, completely like healthy-user bias and not high quality science?

But yet there’s lots of mechanistic studies showing increased inflammation and oxidation and just the concept of how amazingly processed they are. But so, you’re saying it sounds like you’re connecting it to gut health as the primary concern. So, tell us more about that. 

Uma: 
So, in the work that I’ve done in the nutritional sort of side of things with mental health, most Americans, unfortunately, don’t consume enough omega-3 fats.

And they are often consuming omega-6 fats from these processed oils. And when that ratio is upset, the omega oils, also so that’s one of the aspects, but there’s more to it, become pro-inflammatory. As as a guidance, I prefer people to use actual olive oil, avocado oils, some coconut oils and butter and ghee.

Culturally, I and grew up cooking and eating ghee. So, I prefer try to guide people to those sources. And I think for example, people who don’t consume, who are people who are plant-based and don’t consume butter. It always impresses me that there are all these vegan butters that are plant-based, and they’re not necessarily made with the healthiest ingredients.

I think we just need to examine things. It’s not about the diet. It’s about, I know you’re making a choice. I respect your choice, but is it ultra-processed? Is it really that healthy for you? So, I think that, I find it interesting that even in cardiology, the cardiologists that I know don’t necessarily acknowledge, and I’ve heard you talk about this, the sort of our neuro understanding and updated understanding of saturated fats.

Yeah, they will argue pretty long and hard about this. So ,I feel like I’m in a position, in a similar position, but from a different way. I’m not arguing my point, but I feel like not everyone’s on board with the same message. And part of it is helping to understand, better learn more, and to have more trials.

Bret: 
Yeah, and I like how you brought that up. If I can paraphrase, like the less processed, more natural food, even if it has saturated fat, is likely a more reasonable choice and the ultra-processed, lower saturated fat. 

Uma: 
Yes. 

Bret: 
And that seems to make sense. And yeah, not just for metabolic health, but for brain health as well. For brain health probably most importantly.

Yeah, so it’s interesting to hear you say, because like you said, a lot of people are going to, I guess you could say, traditional medicine is going to react to that and say, no, that’s not the case. 

Uma: 
Yeah, that’s not the case. And you need, and I’m sorry. 

Bret: 
No, please go ahead.

Uma: 
Take this medication. This is the thing that bothers me is like, how about lifestyle? If someone’s severely hypertensive and has panels out of control, I understand that there needs to be something. But a lot of people will really make changes in their diet and exercise and lifestyle changes.

At least that’s what I’ve experienced with a lot of my friends, even who are cardiologists. And so there’s a little bit of back and forth, there are now. 

Bret: 
Right, now in your book, This Is Your Brain on Food, you do talk a lot about specific foods and the specific nutrients and how they impact your brains.

You already talked about omega-3s. You’ve mentioned sort of polyphenols. And so, I’m curious how you see those specific foods, the impact specific foods can have versus the impact of the diet as a whole. Like I always say, if you’re eating a bunch of sugar and ultra-processed foods and you add some blueberries, you’re not doing yourself any favor.

So, of course, it’s a balance, right? But how do you see the importance of that balance? 

Uma: 
I think that one, when I first started my clinic, things were honestly not at a point of being as personalized as they are now. So, I think that few basic dietary principles of just moving towards healthier whole foods are going to help overall health.

But then in mental health, there are these different conditions where now we are learning so much more about conditions like anxiety, where for example, certain species of bifidobacterium are actually involved with certain, say in neurotransmitters, in the gut. So things are, research is moving along.

In anxiety, we are learning more, like lactobacillus reuteri, diminishing anxiety-like behaviors. And I have a, I think, list of 10 in my book, but the issue is that we are at a different point in understanding gut health. And I do think that it’s one of the mechanisms, the gut-brain connections, is one of the mechanisms that kind of explains this food connection.

So, I see there being some specifics for certain conditions, of the foods to eat as well as those to avoid. One example is spices, like saffron and turmeric, actually have a good amount of evidence for depression. But with saffron, you have to use a supplemental form because food, you just don’t eat enough of it, and it’s a very expensive spice.

And while it’s flavorful, you would never put that amount in food. So, it makes sense to get a clean supplement. And interestingly, but this is something some of my patients have experimented with, giving saffron supplements to their children with anxiety or even mood disorders, and have found it to be pretty safe.

Not under my guidance, but have decided that they wanted to find a solution because they’re concerned about the level of medications we are prescribing to children. So, I do think there are these little nuances about, here’s another thing, here’s another nuance for example, because one of the things I’m very interested is gut health and gut microbiome.

I talk about fiber a lot. You have to, there’s a nuance around that. If someone has IBS, IBD, SIBO is maybe seen with functional gastroenterology, you cannot say to someone just load up on your fiber and improve your gut health. It has to be nuanced with everything else that’s going on with them medically.

Bret: 
I’m glad you brought up gut health because gut health is, it’s like the new frontier. Sure, there’s so much, so many studies being done about gut health. and a lot of it comes down to that. You mentioned some specific bacteria. So a lot of people would say, can I just take a probiotic and get me more of that bacteria?

Shouldn’t that work? What are your thoughts on that? 

Uma: 
With probiotics, I think there’s a reason that we need some supplementation. It’s because we don’t eat a perfect diet. And we may have some nutritional imbalances or deficiencies or vitamins that we may need more of.

Supplementation is fine in the right context. What we can’t do is, you can’t exercise out of a bad diet, and you can’t supplement your way out of a bad diet. So we, it has to be, I can’t be going through the fast food restaurant every day and then taking a great supplement. It doesn’t quite work. I think you alluded to that earlier.

With probiotics that you purchase, a few things that happen. The one thing is the probiotic you purchase has a certain strains, and that’s it. Versus the food that you eat, fermented foods, you’ll get any variety of different strains that you’ll be comsuming through your food. The second thing I find with probiotics, I find that their a good solution, but many people are inconsistent.

They stop taking them. And we understand that if they stop taking the probiotic, they just forget it, got too expensive. They left it at home or they go on vacation. Those positive changes that have happened in the gut microbiome start to reverse. And so, I think that the short answer is, include probiotics through your food, through fermented foods, through the variety of foods that you eat. But also, if you feel you need a little bit more, it’s fine to supplement.

I don’t believe that we’re at a point, which I hope we get to, which is psychobiotics and the use of food for mental health based on understanding the microbes and which microbes that they, what are we going to treat with and that type stuff. But I think, I hope, we headed in that direction.

So, it would be tough to say, let me go and find the strain, I guess you could have a lab make it, but I’m not sure that I’ve had any patients do that. 

Bret: 
Yeah, it’s the unfortunate of looking for the short answer of the easy way out, of just taking the pill versus changing your lifestyle.

Yeah so, we’ve talked a lot about sort of diet, in general. We’ve talked about metabolic health. So now, I want to steer you towards ketosis and get your opinion on that because a ketogenic diet can certainly improve metabolic health for a number of people. And it can change the fuel that our brain is using. So, if it’s insulin resistance, having trouble using glucose for fuel, can supply ketones for fuel, it’s been used in epilepsy and seizures.

So, bringing all that together, what do you see as the role of ketogenic diets for mental health? 

Uma: 
I think there’s a real role for ketogenic diets. Like I said, I’ve written about this in the book you’re referring to, several years ago, and have two chapters that cover these different, more severe conditions that tend to be in terms of the spectrum of psychiatric illness, more acute, more severe lead to hospitalizations.

A greater need for medications in a traditional psychiatric setting. So, I definitely support its use. I think that clinically my point of view is it’s helpful in the right context. So, part of the setting is in training. In psychiatry, I went through different rotations and different locations including forensic psychiatry and group homes and residential settings.

Some of these settings, the individuals who may have severe bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, those conditions in state facilities where sliced bread is what they’re getting for breakfast, and it usually comes with jam and peanut butter. So, I think that the context is also important because they may not have the supports to actually place them on the correct diet to help their condition.

I think that’s very different in the private sector. I’ve had individuals who were lawyers or doctors or more, I would say, functioning in the real world. Not being hospitalized and wanting to try a variation of the diet to help their metabolic health and their mental health, and where they have structure, maybe a spousal support or partner who’s helping them with meals, helping them food shop.

It can be a very different situation. So, I think context there matters, and I think it can be very helpful, in the right context. 

Bret: 
Yeah, very good. Now getting into Calm Your Mind With Food. Who is this book for and what do you hope people will get out of this book? What’s the experience they’ll have?

Uma: 
So, the book, thank you. So, the book really emerged, following my first book, which unexpectedly really resonated with people during the pandemic, which I was grateful for. But at the same time, I think people were really trying to find solutions for improving their mental well-being. But what I was seeing in my day-to-day practice was a huge burden of anxiety.

And like I said, Zoloft went on shortage. Studies have shown how much anxiety increased, and we know that anxiety has always been the most common mental health condition. But it is increased by 25% now, and it has been the lived experience. So, I felt that we needed to offer people some solutions for how to eat better and use different aspects of lifestyle to improve their anxiety and often anxiety and mood.

In fact, some of the medications we use are the same, but they tend to run together. And sometimes it’s tough to know whether someone has more depression or more anxiety. And out of the pandemic, I really felt we needed to find a hopeful way forward. And for me, that was providing people with the empowerment of learning something behind anxiety that could make them feel better, make them feel calmer. A guide that they could use at home.

Maybe they wait to see a doctor? Maybe they don’t intend to see a doctor? But it’s intended for people to really use as a guide and a protocol with food lists and explaining the science behind these different conditions. So, part one is a problem. Talking about information, new information, gut health, immunity, metabolic health, all of that cool stuff.

And then going into, you know, people get confused by what’s a macronutrient, what’s micro, all of these different words. But just breaking it down simply for people. And then an anti-anxiety shopping list and ways that you can actually try this out on your own. So, it’s intended for any one of us that’s feeling a little bit off in terms of our anxiety, not doing so well after the pandemic, and feeling like I want to do something to improve myself.

And I know that I’m feeling anxious. So, what are the things that I can try on my own? 

Bret: 
Yeah, I like how you described that, describing the science but then boiling it down to what can I do with actionable tips. But now, so you’re a trained chef and you probably love to cook and you love making big meals, but not everybody does. Some people hate to cook. Some people don’t really know what to do in the kitchen. So, do you have some simple advice for someone like that? On how they can, or some quick tips they can do to improve the quality of the food? 

Uma: 
Yes, so I think it comes down to where, one of the things is where you source your food from, and what are the quick things that you can learn to do?

I’m hoping more people will feel encouraged to start cooking a little bit, even if it’s something simple. I know it’s not easy, but large database studies show that when we cook on meals at home, we consume pure calories, and we tend to lose weight over time. And that’s likely because we are controlling the ingredients we are putting in.

We are not adding a lot of added sugar to inadvertently sweeten up the food or something like that. So, it’s worth trying. Some easy tips if you don’t want to cook, can you buy rotisserie chicken from the supermarket? Ask if they’re adding anything to it. The reason is most often rotary chicken is cooked in its own fat, and it actually is a very reasonable solution if you’re not cooking at home as a way to get you started.

I would say that is so much better than buying the family chicken nuggets, which are highly processed with made with little chicken in them and a ton of who knows what. So, I’ve even shown some of my patients, we learn food costing in culinary school, shown families who feel that’s a better solution to buy four meals from a fast food restaurant for their children, that they can actually save money and act and provide real food.

Buying a rotisserie chicken and then using over a couple of days and creating different meals from it that are easy. A salad, a soup, a chicken with some vegetables or whatever that might be. So, having a way to get started in my book, This Is Your Brain on Food, I have a recipe for eggs in a mug so if you are on the way running out the door, you can actually make them the mug.

Transport it to work or eat it while you commute. Not while you’re driving, but while you commute and, or make it if that’s the option. So, just quick and easy steps. How to quickly assemble a salad. Can you buy the different ingredients and just toss it together?

And then add your source of upgrade protein. I think encouraging people in the right direction, even with their children. Having their children have a relationship with food. Attend, go to the farmer’s markets, see what’s out there. See the foods that they, you know, whether it’s a community garden or whatever it might be.

Have an idea of what your food is versus this is the kind of processed foods we’ve gotten used to. 

Bret: 
Yeah, I love the advice of getting the kids involved. I think that’s so important. So, I just bought my son this, it’s like a VR goggle that you put your phone in, and you look at a recipe book and it gives you like this whole 3D experience.

I can’t wait for him to try it. Hopefully he’ll like it. I think I’m going to like it more than he does, but we’ll see. 

Uma: 
I love that. I think that’s so great. 

Bret: 
Yeah, thank you. I really want to thank you for joining me today and talking about your books and talking about your practice and sort of your evolution through nutritional psychiatry.

And thank you for being a proponent of just talking about how the food we eat affects our brains. I think it’s so important. So thank you so much. 

Uma: 
Thank you, Bret. Thanks for the work you’re doing. It’s always great to talk to you, and I appreciate the invitation. 

Bret: 
Thanks for listening to the Metabolic Mind Podcast.

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