Dr. Brian Mackin (916) 930-6848
Nutrition and Mental Health
Dr. Mackin will explore the connection between your diet and mental health. Below you will find some articles by Dr. Mackin covering topics regarding how we eat and how we feel.
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July 1, 2011
Food and nutrition is one of the most controversial topics of our time. Truth be told however, it is not controversial enough. Perhaps more often than anything else that we do in our lives, we will pick up a piece of the earth and put it in our mouths. These things that we pick up and call food make up our most intimate interaction with this planet. How our bodies respond to this interaction will create great health or devastating disease.
Perhaps what is most striking about food and nutrition is how much we know about it while so much remains a mystery. And what is truly shocking is that while we have learned more about food during the past century our nutritional health has plummeted. We have seen dramatic rises in the diseases most tightly linked to our dietary habits. It is no exaggeration to call diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease an epidemic. The numbers are staggering.
But what do we do? Millions of us have responded to that question with “dieting”. We have struggled to force change in our relationship with food. I think it is fair to say we all have tried desperately to control or change a least one eating behavior. Many people ask, “Well doctor, what diet should I be on to manage these conditions?”. I believe the best place to start is recognizing you are already on a diet.
Most Americans with out realizing it are already on the most radical diet plan that humankind has ever seen. It seems hard to make a change in how we eat but when an entire culture shifts the most profound radical changes can occur right under our noses without ever noticing a thing. Some of the products we now call food would not even be recognizable to our grandparents. The dramatic changes in how we eat are numerous but two easier ones to understand is the change in the fats we eat and the refined carbohydrates.
There is no mystery as to when the fats started to change. If you take a look at a graph of when heart disease began to skyrocket, you will find a flat line that shoots way up after 1911. So what happened in 1911? A candle making company named Procter and Gamble stumbled upon the invention of Crisco. This is no joke. As industry began to tinker with the fats we eat our diets began to change in a sneaky but profound way. The very nature of the fats we were eating changed and were no longer natural. This is especially important because our brains are 60% fat, and this brain fat is not one that our bodies make but fat that must be eaten. It’s well documented that if we dramatically change the fat we eat we change our brains. So as it turns out, the radical diet most Americans are on greatly changed in 1911.
Another big diet change began with the introduction of high fructose corn syrup and the refining of other carbohydrates. Essentially carbohydrates were tweaked to be sweeter, cheaper, and easier to snack on in excess. The amount of fructose found in one can of soda was likely never consumed in one sitting by any human in all of human history before its mainstream commercial introduction in 1975. Now it is difficult to find a meal that does not contain high fructose corn syrup.
Now we are discovering a new change that has happened right under our noses. The very genes that code for the life and nutritional benefits of food are being altered. And once again the driving force behind genetic modification of food is not better health but better sales. 80% of food found in American grocery stores contains genetically modified food and 100% of it has no label to show for it. It remains unclear how these industry driven dietary changes will affect our health but one thing is clear; we are already on a radical new diet.
Finding out what diet we are on now is really the greatest first step. Change comes a whole lot easier when we know what we are trying to move away from. Learning more about our modern day diet becomes critical in understanding our health and disease.
In later updates I will examine in more detail how our the “diet” we didn’t know we were on can nourish or attack our brains. This becomes particularly critical as we explore the impact of our food choices on mental health. Understanding this mystery can make at least some of our food decisions a no brainer.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 1, 2011
Food and nutrition is one of the most controversial topics of our time. Truth be told however, it is not controversial enough. Perhaps more often than anything else that we do in our lives, we will pick up a piece of the earth and put it in our mouths. These things that we pick up and call food make up our most intimate interaction with this planet. How our bodies respond to this interaction will create great health or devastating disease.
Perhaps what is most striking about food and nutrition is how much we know about it while so much remains a mystery. And what is truly shocking is that while we have learned more about food during the past century our nutritional health has plummeted. We have seen dramatic rises in the diseases most tightly linked to our dietary habits. It is no exaggeration to call diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease an epidemic. The numbers are staggering.
But what do we do? Millions of us have responded to that question with “dieting”. We have struggled to force change in our relationship with food. I think it is fair to say we all have tried desperately to control or change a least one eating behavior. Many people ask, “Well doctor, what diet should I be on to manage these conditions?”. I believe the best place to start is recognizing you are already on a diet.
Most Americans with out realizing it are already on the most radical diet plan that humankind has ever seen. It seems hard to make a change in how we eat but when an entire culture shifts the most profound radical changes can occur right under our noses without ever noticing a thing. Some of the products we now call food would not even be recognizable to our grandparents. The dramatic changes in how we eat are numerous but two easier ones to understand is the change in the fats we eat and the refined carbohydrates.
There is no mystery as to when the fats started to change. If you take a look at a graph of when heart disease began to skyrocket, you will find a flat line that shoots way up after 1911. So what happened in 1911? A candle making company named Procter and Gamble stumbled upon the invention of Crisco. This is no joke. As industry began to tinker with the fats we eat our diets began to change in a sneaky but profound way. The very nature of the fats we were eating changed and were no longer natural. This is especially important because our brains are 60% fat, and this brain fat is not one that our bodies make but fat that must be eaten. It’s well documented that if we dramatically change the fat we eat we change our brains. So as it turns out, the radical diet most Americans are on greatly changed in 1911.
Another big diet change began with the introduction of high fructose corn syrup and the refining of other carbohydrates. Essentially carbohydrates were tweaked to be sweeter, cheaper, and easier to snack on in excess. The amount of fructose found in one can of soda was likely never consumed in one sitting by any human in all of human history before its mainstream commercial introduction in 1975. Now it is difficult to find a meal that does not contain high fructose corn syrup.
Now we are discovering a new change that has happened right under our noses. The very genes that code for the life and nutritional benefits of food are being altered. And once again the driving force behind genetic modification of food is not better health but better sales. 80% of food found in American grocery stores contains genetically modified food and 100% of it has no label to show for it. It remains unclear how these industry driven dietary changes will affect our health but one thing is clear; we are already on a radical new diet.
Finding out what diet we are on now is really the greatest first step. Change comes a whole lot easier when we know what we are trying to move away from. Learning more about our modern day diet becomes critical in understanding our health and disease.
In later updates I will examine in more detail how our the “diet” we didn’t know we were on can nourish or attack our brains. This becomes particularly critical as we explore the impact of our food choices on mental health. Understanding this mystery can make at least some of our food decisions a no brainer.
