Does A Whole Food Plant Based Diet Help With Depression And Anxiety?

Dr. Bernard, thank you for being here and regarding RoCeage, Roin Nuts, Avocados and olives. Are you preferring that we try to limit these or are you saying eat them freely? If you're trying to lose weight, if you've got any kind of hormonal condition, I suggest that you avoid them because you wanna get your fat content low. If you're already thin and you're healthy and you don't

have any hormonal issues, then I think having some of these Roin Nuts and so forth, or even cooknuts is probably something you could do. And if you're looking for a guide for a reasonable amount, about an ounce a day, it's probably a reasonable amount. And in terms of avocados and olives that we're trying against, limit these or these foods. Yeah, same story. If a person's trying

to lose weight, avocados are gonna shut your weight lost down. I'm sorry to say, they are delicious. I mean, nothing like guacamole, but it will show up on the scale because it's really fatty, which means it's just very, very dense with calories. Does it make your blood sugars stay higher if you have a lot of fat? Well, you remember the beginning of my lecture and I

showed the cell and how the fat molecules get into the cell and stop insulin from working. So guacamole is not as bad as pork chop, but it adds, it adds its low in fat too. Thank you. Am I trying to lose weight? I'm not sharing you up. Isn't that terrible to say something bad about an avocado? Thank you. Sorry, thanks for your question. Okay, next up

is Mary. Mary, what are you? Thanks so much. Whole food plant-based just really resolves so many health issues. I have a friend who's on a prescription for anxiety and depression. And you were talking about how flashes she's having those. So it just made me think about studies and research on plant-based diets for mental health disorders. Is anybody doing any of that? Yes. And if you have

a copy of your body and balance, there's a whole chapter devoted to exactly that topics. And if you don't have a copy of your body and balance, please borrow for somebody. And please do read that. And we talk about not only how these foods appear to work, but also we'll give you some examples of individuals who put it to work. Maybe just a real quick summary.

And I have to say that I don't really think we are anywhere near as far along with mental health as we are with physical health when it comes to studying the effective foods. We've got lots of good research on diabetes and cholesterol and so forth. And with regard to mental health, I think we're still at the beginning. However, I mentioned that we had done a study

with Gaika, the current insurance company, where we did in 10 different cities. We implemented plant-based diets and they were implemented for weight loss and for diabetes. However, we also tracked depression and anxiety and job absenteeism. We wanted to track mood. And what we were a bit surprised to find was as people followed a healthy plant-based diet, their depressive symptoms improved quite dramatically. And also anxiety. Symptoms

and also job absenteeism, all this got better. And so we thought, okay, well, this is kind of creating a hypothesis for us. Is it really true? And have other researchers found this? And as I said, I don't think we've got enough research, but there have been a number of studies that have been done. Bonnie Bezole is a researcher in the Midwest who said some really cool

studies, starting out with observational studies and then doing some intervention trials, looking at plant-based diets and mood and in a nutshell. They confirm what we found is that something about this diet helps the brain. So the question is, why would that be? Two issues. You're already aware of the gut microbiome. You have bacteria in your gut. And those bacteria can be unhealthy bacteria. And if you're

eating meat and dairy in Greece and so forth, they probably are unhealthy bacteria. Unhealthy gut bacteria will communicate with the brain. You know there's a connection between the brain and the gut. When you change your diet, the bacterial species and the gut change. And they change rapidly. Within two weeks or so, you'll start to see changes in the bacterial species favoring the healthier choices. What you

need for a healthy gut bacteria is very low fat, lots of fiber. Beans, vegetables, grains, fruits. That feeds back to the brain. At least this is like poppuses. And as part of the reason why depression can improve. But there's another perhaps, I think, bigger reason. And that's inflammation. We were talking about this earlier with joints and so forth. Inflammatory compounds circulate in the blood. They also

reach the brain. And many people now view depression as an inflammatory process occurring within brain cells. That research is still ongoing. But a plant-based diet is an anti-inflammatory diet. Put this together. Depression is a serious condition. And a person should not cancel their doctor's appointment. And they should not throw away their antidepressants. They should talk to their doctor. I mean suicide is a real risk. But

you talk to your doctor and say, in addition to whatever treatment you're giving me, I'm going to try a diet. Get the animal products out of your diet. Keep the oils really low. Eat healthy foods. And exercise. Whether you're exercising alone or better still as a group, better still outside in the sunshine, put that together. And you've got a regiment that might naturally help you. And

if it's not enough, then medications are a sensible thing to discuss. But let's get the diet and the exercise together in addition to what animals were doing. So anyway, thank you for that great question. Thanks so much. And thanks for the information on soy. I definitely... You know, stop drinking soy milk because of what my friends have said. So do you have a suggestion for what

kind of milks are all the plant-based milks fine? So I milk is perfectly fine. Go to the store, get the organic one. But if you want almond milk or rice, milk or any of the others, they're all fine except I would suggest not using coconut milks. The coconut despite the marketing, when the fat that's in coconut milk is saturated fat. And we really don't want that.

Thank you so much. The next person up is Andrew. Andrew, I'm going to unmute you if you could please ask for a question. At the end of the tunnel or anything on the horizon for IBD patients, especially Crohn's disease with regards to a whole food plant-based diet. And perhaps maybe weeding them off or getting them off of immunosuppressive drugs. Oh, what a terrific question. You know,

it's so frustrating for people who've got irritable bowel or inflammatory bowel disease is either one. And with Crohn's disease, many doctors really are kind of poo-pooing diet, same with ulcerative colitis. Except for the fact that they're at least within the observational research literature. There has really pretty compelling evidence that diet plays a role. Dairy products have gotten the thing you're blame pointed at them for a

long period of time. And there are a lot of people who have avoided dairy or avoided animal products found that their Crohn's gets better. But it's really variable. With some, the improvement is dramatic. Others less so. You may know about Allen Desmond. At the Devon gut clinic in England, he's spoken at our International Conference on Nutrition Medicine a few times. And he's just terrific. And I'd

encourage you to look at what Allen has described specifically for Crohn's disease. And there is no reason why a person seeing their gastroenterologist can't also do a kind of healthful plant-based diet as well. The one thing that I think should probably be added to this. Is looking to see if there might be other triggers too. Getting away from their great idea, that's job one, getting away

from animal products too. But it could also be that somebody, it might be sensitive to other foods. And people are trying, all right, if I avoid wheat, if I avoid gluten in general, will I do better? And to try, those kinds of elimination things, I think, is sensible. And the way that we like to do it is by getting all the common triggers out at one

time. Resting for maybe three weeks or so, and you can eat things like rice and the pain, safe food, cooked vegetables, cooked foods as much as you want, but it's kind of a limited range. Then put the potential triggers back in one at a time and see if any of it causes a flare. Because of the nature of the condition, you might find yourself doing this

more than once, but it's neat to see if there's something else that's kind of an aggravator because of it is, and we get it out of our diet. Then we've got more power than we had before. So that's not a full answer. But researchers are moving in this direction to see what more we can do, because I'm with you. If we don't need to be on

the medications, so much better.