Calm your mind with food, with Dr Uma Naidoo

The Liz Earle Wellbeing Show

Liz Earle

Wellbeing, Arts, Gut Health, Self-improvement, Women's Health, Beauty, Healthy Ageing, Menopause, Midlife, Health & Fitness, Hormones, Supplements, Health, Exercise, Fashion & Beauty, Fitness, Education, Better Second Half, Skincare, Liz Earle

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 29 December 2023

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Do you notice a difference in your mental health depending on what you've been eating or drinking? Nutrition therapist, psychiatrist and professional chef Dr Uma Naidoo joins Liz on this episode of the podcast to share how eating the right foods can help to calm our minds.

Uma and Liz take a look at how anxiety is rooted in our guts, metabolism and immune system, plus how eating foods rich in tryptophan, such as chickpeas and turkey, can aid our mood.

The episode also covers resistance to leptin, a hormone that regulates appetite, the impact of diet drinks and artificial sweeteners on our guts, and the key micronutrients for our mental health. Uma also shares what she would cook at an 'anti-anxiety' dinner party.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	So as food is being digested on days that we're eating those healthy salads and salmon, the healthier foods,
0:06.0	when the breakdown products of those foods are being digested, the breakdown products are healthy for our body,
0:12.0	and they form things called short-chain fatty acids which are very positive in the gut.
0:16.7	But if we just only subsist on you know corn chips and fast foods the breakdown products are actually negative and more toxic to the and inflammation in the gut and this is when you start to see either new onset of mental health
0:35.9	symptoms and if someone is prone to anxiety or mood disorder or you see a worsening of symptoms as I've seen you know with some of my patients.
0:47.2	Dr Uma Naidu works in nutritional psychiatry and she's found that the right foods can calm our anxious minds.
0:55.0	This is the Liz Earl Well-being show, the podcast helping us all have a better second half.
1:01.0	I'm Liz Earl and I'm on a bit of a mission to find ways for us all to thrive in later life by investing in our health and our well-being today.
1:10.0	Well, anxiety is the most commonly diagnosed mental health condition in the world,
1:15.9	and there's a good chance the food that we're eating is only exacerbating the problem.
1:21.2	Have you noticed any difference over the festive season?
1:24.2	A bit more sugar than usual perhaps, a bit more alcohol. Do you feel better or worse
1:29.2	after eating certain foods? I know that for me, well they don't improve my mood that's for
1:35.1	sure. Well Dr Uma is somewhat of a triple threat she's a Harvard trained
1:40.3	psychiatrist a professional chef and a trained nutrition therapist and she's
1:46.0	combined all these skills when she founded the first hospital-based nutritional
1:51.1	psychiatry service in the United States. Now Uma has presented
1:55.5	groundbreaking research about the ways anxiety is rooted in our gut, our
2:00.7	metabolism and our immune system in her latest book,
2:04.0	calm your mind with food.
2:06.0	So what is the later science on the connection between diet and anxiety. These days, it's nice to know what you're getting. Like the same, mmm, when you took into our tasty breakfast, the same, yes, when your kids stay and eat breakfast for free, the same,
2:33.0	whoa, knowing there are over 800 hotels and the same,
	...

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