Diet taboos for depression

The first is to avoid foods that clearly conflict with the medications you are taking. The second is not to rely on high-sugar, highly processed, high-caffeine/alcohol foods for a long time to relieve your mood. The third is not to feel excessive guilt for "eating the wrong thing" - the latter is often much more harmful than the food itself.

Next, I will slowly explain based on the real situations of dozens of depression patients I have contacted in the past few years, as well as clinical opinions in different fields. You can refer to it based on your own situation, and there is no need to be rigid.

A while ago, a junior in college came to see me and said that she had been getting better after taking sertraline for almost two months. In the past half month, she had been suffering from insomnia all night long, and her mood was even worse than before taking the medicine. After asking for a long time, I found out that in order to rush for the final paper, she drank 3 cups of iced Americano every day, and always relied on spicy spicy strips as a late-night snack to relieve stress. I asked her to change the iced Americano to room-temperature honey lemonade, and her late-night snack to steamed corn or plain nuts. After only four days, she said she slept much better and her mood swings were no longer so exaggerated.

Here we have to mention the hard taboos recognized by psychiatrists: If you are taking antidepressants such as monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), you must strictly avoid foods containing tyramine - fermented cheese, cured meat products, nuts that have been left for a long time, fermented bean curd, etc. Eating them accidentally may induce a hypertensive crisis, which is really life-threatening. But don’t worry blindly. These types of drugs are rarely used in clinical practice now. Most people take SSRI and SNRI drugs without such strict dietary restrictions. You don’t have to avoid cheese when you see it. If you are really unsure, just read the drug instructions or ask the doctor during your next follow-up visit. It is more reliable than searching for “general contraindications” on the Internet.

There is actually a lot of controversy about whether you can eat sweets. I have seen two completely opposite situations: some patients say that eating a piece of cheesecake can relieve their mood every time they break down, while others say that they become more emo within two hours after eating sweets. Research in the field of nutritional psychiatry has indeed proven that foods with high added sugars will cause blood sugar to spike rapidly, causing a temporary increase in serotonin. You will feel good at the moment, but after 1-2 hours, the blood sugar will drop off a cliff, and the serotonin will also drop, and the mood will be lower than before eating. Long-term consumption will also increase the level of inflammation in the body, aggravating the physical symptoms of depression such as fatigue and low mood. But there is no need to put sweets on the blacklist. I know a colleague who has been in clinical nutrition for 11 years. Her advice to depressed patients is never to "quit sugar completely", but "the daily intake of added sugar should not exceed 10% of the total calories. If you want to eat sweets, choose naturally sweet foods such as strawberries, mangos, and sugar-free yogurt. If you are really greedy for cake, it's okay to take a bite. Just don't scold yourself for poor self-control after finishing it." After all, the harm of emotional internal consumption is far greater than the sugar in a bite of cake.

There is another minefield that almost all practitioners will emphasize repeatedly: don’t touch alcohol, and don’t use drinking to “help you sleep” or “eliminate your worries.” Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant. You will indeed feel relaxed and sleepy when you first drink it, but it will directly interrupt deep sleep. You may lie down quickly, but you will easily wake up in the middle of the night. Once you wake up, you will not be able to fall back to sleep. The next day, you will feel dizzy and your mood will be worse. Moreover, alcohol will interact with almost all antidepressants, aggravating the side effects of drowsiness and dizziness, and in severe cases, increasing the risk of suicide. There is really no room for negotiation. If you can't avoid it, don't take it.

As for the "can't eat spicy food", "can't eat seafood" and "can't eat raw and cold food" posts on the Internet, there really is no scientific basis. I have a visitor who is from Sichuan. After being diagnosed with depression, he followed the "taboos" on the Internet and gave up spicy food for three months. He ate very bland food every day and felt that life had no fun at all. Later, he resumed eating spicy food and his mood improved a lot. Not to mention seafood. The Omega-3 in deep-sea fish can help improve your mood. As long as you are not allergic to seafood, eating it once or twice a week will be beneficial.

In fact, after all, diet is just an auxiliary item in depression intervention. You can neither rely on it to cure the disease, nor should you treat it as a scourge. If you feel comfortable eating something and it doesn’t affect the efficacy of the medicine, then feel free to eat it ； If you feel flustered, insomnia, and depressed after eating it, just don’t eat it next time. You really don’t need to worry about those dietary taboos all day long. After all, eating well and eating happily are more important than any “perfect diet plan”.