Dr. Uma Naidoo, a nutritional psychiatrist, professional chef, and author of This is Your Brain on Food, is dedicated to discussing the critical link between brain health and mental health. “Food can have such a powerful impact on our brain health,” she says in a newly released class on MasterClass about brain health.
“That power is right at the end of your fork.” Brain healthy eating entails choosing the best foods to support optimal brain health and a nourished microbiome. It also entails avoiding foods that may be detrimental to the body and mind! In my new Brain Health Series with @MasterClass , I explain which toxic brain foods I avoid and why! Check out the course at the link.
How do you avoid these toxic foods in your daily diet? http://www.masterclass.com/umanaidoo For starters, neuroinflammation—an inflammatory response in the brain—is one of the driving mechanisms of mental health disorders like anxiety and depression, Naidoo tells Fortune .
It can affect the neural circuits in the brain responsible for mood regulation. Excess sugar from ultra-processed foods, a cause of inflammation, damages the brain’s neurons responsible for key functions like memory and attention . It’s precisely why lifestyle changes like diet are recommended to help manage depression and anxiety and to protect the brain against age-related diseases like dementia .
One way to offset the inflammation process in the brain is to eat antioxidant-rich foods like berries, beans, artic.