How Diet Can Cause—Or Cure DEPRESSION

Foods have an immense impact on your body and your brain, and eating whole foods is a good way to simultaneously support your mental and physical health. Avoiding sugar and artificial sweeteners is a crucial aspect of preventing and/or treating depression. Both contribute to chronic inflammation and can wreak havoc with your brain function. Recent research also shows how swapping processed junk food for a healthier diet can significantly improve depression symptoms, which really shouldn’t come as a great surprise. Dr Mercola explains.

Why Sugar Takes a Toll on Mental Health

There are at least four potential mechanisms through which refined sugar intake could exert a toxic effect on mental health:

1. Sugar (particularly fructose) and grains contribute to insulin and leptin resistance and impaired signalling, which play a significant role in your mental health.

2. Sugar suppresses activity of a key growth hormone called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which promotes healthy brain neurons. BDNF levels are