They will have to demonstrate the good ball movement and pressure that was on display today and perform better at the free throw line. Next week’s home game is certainly one to come out to. The Eagles face the Thunder at the RAWC, next Saturday, tip-off at 1:00 p.m.
New developments in nutritional and neurochemical research appear to be steering towards a new form of psychotherapy based simply in changing our diets.
A 2019 review published in European Neuropsychopharmacology by researcher Roger Adan and colleagues from the Netherlands presents the most recent understanding of the ways in which diet and nutrition can influence an individual’s mental health. It is important to make the point that there is currently no evidence that demonstrates a direct connection, but there is promising correlational data. It is already well-known that the nutrients we consume are used to facilitate neural functioning. There are many nerve endings within the digestive system that are affected by the food we eat, but this is not enough to explain a direct link between mental health and diet.
The review discussed how a traditionally healthy diet is positively correlated with better mental health. Diets consisting of fruits and vegetables, as well as foods rich in vitamins like vitamin B12 and vitamin D, reduce the risk of depression and improve cognitive performance. Some diets can deter worsening symptoms for people who already have psychological and neurological disorders.
The keto diet, for example, appears to reduce the frequency of seizures in children with epilepsy. This information is a good step forward in finding new ways to treat epilepsy and, when further research is done into the mechanisms behind this relationship, more effective treatments can be created. Many mental health issues follow this pattern. We see that diet can improve our mental health, we just haven’t figured out how exactly it does this.
To find the mechanisms underlying this relationship, researchers have taken a closer look at the different aspects of the digestive system and how they affect each other. The microbiome, for example, is gaining a lot of attention in the media. The gut microbiome (bacteria, fungi, protozoa and viruses that live in the human body), the community of bacteria and fungi in the gastrointestinal tract, seems to have a great deal of influence on an individual’s well-being. The research shows that diets consisting of nutrients that promote a healthy and diverse microbiome seem to reap the most rewards. The gut microbiome has been studied for its role in how our bodies respond to stress. The health of the microbiome has been found to be correlated with many disorders, including depression, anxiety, and ADHD. To sum it up, the gut microbiome has positive effects on one’s mental health when it is well-kept and well-nourished.
These findings introduce an exciting potential to current mental health treatment. This line of research is quite new and more research is needed to get a full understanding of what foods are beneficial to mental health. With the growing knowledge on this topic, health care practitioners will be able to create diets for their patients that cater to their specific needs as an alternative to more common methods of psychotherapy.
