Hey, this is Ari. Welcome back to the Energy Blueprint podcast and with me today is a Harvard-trained

psychiatrist, a professional chef graduating with her culinary school's most coveted award and trained nutrition

specialist. And that is a very unusual combination to see somebody with a strong background

and nutrition who is also a psychiatrist. Hence why Dr. Uma Naidu is today's guest and why I brought her on to the show. Her nexus of

interests have found their niche in nutritional psychiatry. And this is really where she

specializes. She wrote a book called This Is Your Brain on Food, which is a national bestseller,

which I highly recommend. And she founded and directs

the first hospital-based nutritional psychiatry service in the United States. She's the director

of nutritional and lifestyle psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and the director

of nutritional psychiatry at MGH, Massachusetts General Hospital Academy, while

serving on the faculty at Harvard Medical School. She was considered Harvard's food mood expert

and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal. And in her book, This is Your Brain on Food,

she shows the cutting edge science explaining the ways

in which food contributes to our mental health

and how a sound diet can help treat and prevent

a wide range of psychological and cognitive health issues

from ADHD to anxiety to depression to OCD and others.

This is a deep and wide-ranging conversation with a lot of value.

We talk a lot about depression.

We talk a lot about anxiety, about neurotransmitters,

about different kinds of foods and nutritional factors that relate to one's risk

of these different conditions,

...