Your Diet Can Directly Affect Your Mental Health. Here’s What We Know so Far

Everyone is aware of the multiple health benefits that come with dieting and exercising. Over the past year, many people have been able to change their lives using quarantine as the perfect scapegoat to lose the extra pounds. As the attention shifted to losing weight, many people tried different diets and scientists began to make the correlation between mental health and the diets people stick to.

Many studies have claimed that there is significant evidence that confirms that dietary factors do in fact influence mental health. Some of these studies indicate that the Mediterranean diet is linked with a low risk of depression, whereas on the other hand, some low-quality diets are linked to increases in the risk of depression.

Read on ahead to find everything you need to know.

Pexels | Healthy diets are known to be packed with beneficial nutrients

Details of the Study

These researchers hail from New York and work at the Binghamton University and Stony Brook University. They carried out the research through a survey with over 2,600 participants from all over the world including North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. There were groups divided into age and gender. The research’s key goal was to examine whether certain foods or any other factor has an impact on mental health.

Pexels | Everyone’s routine should have some level of physical exercise

So, are diets really influencing mental health?

The study revealed that young people were more prone to mental distress during the spring season. Scientists found a link between negative mental health and consuming high dosage of caffeine and a high intake of fast food.

For mature women, however, if they had breakfast frequently, they were most likely subjected to mental distress. Young women who engaged in exercising showed a better effect on their mental health. Women in Asia or the Middle Eastern region showed more signs of mental distress in comparison to women in the North American region.

The studies showed almost the same results for the men. Young men reported better health when they engaged in exercise and a controlled diet, while if they had a high intake of caffeine and fast food, it was linked to poor mental health.

Pexels | Exercise is known to have great benefits for mental health

Final Remarks

The study does provide a good amount of insight into different lifestyles and their link to mental health. This has also opened a new discussion since most of the research focus on diets and their relation with physical health. Now, with this research, scientists hope to shed more light on this topic.

As for anyone who is looking forward to trying a new diet, they should definitely keep this in mind.