How eating right

Your brain is greedy. It needs a lot of energy to work properly and to create neurotransmitters — chemicals that send signals through the nervous system.

Without enough energy or the right nutrients, your brain wont get what it needs. In fact, one study suggests that eating a lot of nutrient-sparse processed foods could up your chances of becoming depressed by as much as 60 percent.

Other research has shown that nutrient deficiencies often look like mental health problems.

Here are some pathways by which a healthy diet might protect your brain.

Nutrition can fight inflammation

Chronic inflammation happens when our body turns on an immune response, then doesnt turn it off again. The resulting damage and chemical stew is linked to all manner of health problems, including cancer, heart disease, neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimers… and depression.

One theory is that proinflammatory cytokines — markers of inflammation — may interact with other proteins in the brain, promoting changes that contribute to depressive illness.

Nutrition can get your gut health back on track

Your GI tract does more than move food from one end to the other. Its responsible for absorbing the nutrients your organs — including the brain — need to function properly, and for constraining harmful bacteria and other molecules so they cant get access to (and harm) the rest of the body.

To do these important jobs, your gut relies on healthy intestinal cells and beneficial bacteria, which help manufacture vitamins, absorb minerals, and digest food.

If your gut microbiome is out of whack, or if the problem develops, via irritation or inflammation, into full-blown gut permeability (a.k.a. leaky gut), your brain could be in trouble.

Consider this: 60 liters of blood are pumped into your brain every hour, providing oxygen, removing waste products, and delivering nutrients. If that blood is nutrient-deficient, or carrying junk that doesnt belong, its going to interfere with your brains function — specifically its ability to create necessary neurotransmitters (more about that in a moment.)

As if that werent enough, a permeable gut can encourage more inflammation in the body, turning all of this into an ongoing cycle.