Max Lugavere discusses research showing diet affects depression. A 2017 Deakin University study found people who switched to whole, nutrient-rich foods improved 11 points on a depression scale, with 32% achieving remission versus 8% in a control group.
Questions this episode answers
A 2017 randomized controlled trial from Deakin University’s Food and Mood Centre.
About an 11-point improvement on a 60-point depression scale.
32% of patients in the dietary intervention group no longer met criteria for depression by trial end.
About a 4-point improvement on the same 60-point scale; 8% remission.
A 2019 meta-analysis finding that nutrient-rich diets are associated with meaningful mood benefits in clinically and non-clinically depressed people.
Chapters
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Walgreens Can Diet Help with Depression? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutritionist, nutrition expert, and fitness hall of famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you.
Welcome to Ask the Health Expert.
Sarah from Twitter asks, can diet help with depression? Hey, it's jj and today I have Max Lugaver, the author of the New York Times best selling book Genius Foods. And here with me to answer this question. Besides being an author, he's also a filmmaker and a health and science journalist. In fact, he was pre med in college and then he took this introductory course in filmmaking and fell in love with storytelling. Lucky for him, he found a way to merge all those interests. He also sings and plays the guitar and he even released an album in 2012 called One Year later and went on tour. We'll be right back. Stay with us.
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Diet can certainly help with depression, especially for people who don't have very healthy diets. This was most recently shown in a randomized control trial. This is the gold standard type of research experiment that can actually prove cause and effect and it was published in 2017 and it came from Deakin University's Food and Mood center. And the study found that for patients with major depression, that cutting out junk foods and focusing instead on fresh vegetables, fruits, raw unsalted nuts, eggs, olive oil, fish and grass fed beef improved symptoms by an average of about 11 points on a 60 point depression scale. By the end of the trial, 32% of patients had scores so low that they no longer met criteria for depression. Meanwhile, people in the group with no dietary modifications, meaning the people who were depressed who continued to eat their usual junk food based diets, improved only by about 4 points and only 8% achieved remission. So the group that cleaned up their diets and started eating primarily whole foods, they had almost quadruple the rate of remission from major depression since that trial, which again was in 2017. A 2019 meta analysis of the small but growing body of literature has confirmed that for even non clinically depressed people, as well as clinically depressed people, a nutrient rich diet, especially one that encourages healthy weight, can actually have a very meaningful mood boosting effect. So what I call the genius foods in my work, in my books, those are the foods that I found to be the most supportive of good mental health. And I've already listed a few of the foods that I wholeheartedly endorse. But yeah, I am convinced that food plays an important role in supporting optimal mental health.
This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert.
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