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10% Happier with Dan Harris

Your Brain on Food | Dr. Uma Naidoo

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.612.9K Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2023

⏱️ 64 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

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Most of us have an intuitive sense that there's a pretty serious link between what we eat and how we feel. Today's guest is here to explain the science behind that relationship.

Dr. Uma Naidoo is a pioneer in the field of nutritional psychiatry and an expert on both the gut-brain connection and the food-mood connection. She is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, a professional chef, and a nutrition specialist. She is the Director of Nutritional and Lifestyle Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and serves on the faculty at Harvard Medical School. And she is the author of a book called This Is Your Brain on Food: An Indispensable Guide to the Surprising Foods that Fight Depression, Anxiety, PTSD, OCD, ADHD, and More.


In this episode we talk about:

  • What the gut-brain connection is, how it works, and why it's so important
  • Her contention that "we are in control of how we feel emotionally through the food choices we make every single day"
  • How to leverage nutritional psychiatry to help you handle:
  • ---Anxiety
  • ---Depression
  • ---Sleep disorders
  • ---Dementia
  • ---PTSD
  • ---ADHD
  • ---OCD
  • Her thoughts on taking in all of this information without developing orthorexia (an unhealthy obsession with healthy food)
  • Her thoughts on intuitive eating
  • How to understand vitamins vs. supplements (and her advice on taking supplements)


Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/uma-naidoo-614

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is the 10% happier podcast.

0:07.0

I'm Dan Harris.

0:12.0

Hey everybody, we all, I think, understand at least intuitively that there's a pretty serious

0:26.4

link between what we eat and drink and how we feel.

0:31.2

Drink too much coffee and you might get the zooms.

0:34.0

Eat too much dairy and it might tie your insides into knots and make you rather irritable.

0:39.5

This has been referred to as the gut brain connection or the food mood connection.

0:44.6

So we all understand this, I think, intuitively, but my guest today is going to help you understand

0:48.6

it on a truly fine-grain level, if you'll excuse the food pun there.

0:54.0

My guest has information about how very specific foods can have very specific effects on your

0:59.7

state of mind.

1:01.0

Dr. Uma Nidu is a pioneer in the field of nutritional psychiatry.

1:05.6

She's a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, a professional chef, and a trained nutrition specialist.

1:11.8

She's the director of nutritional and lifestyle psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital

1:16.2

MGH, where my own mother worked for many, many years.

1:20.0

And Dr. Nidu also serves on the faculty at Harvard Medical School, and she's the author

1:24.4

of a book called This Is Your Brain on Food and Indispensable Guide to the Surprising Foods

1:29.2

that Fight Depression, Anxiety, PTSD, OCD, ADHD, and more.

1:34.6

In this conversation, we talked about the mechanics of the gut brain and food mood connection

1:39.6

and why those are such important processes.

1:42.7

Her contention that we are in control of how we feel emotionally through the food choices

1:47.2

we make every single day.

...

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