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Essay: Good Nutrition for Mental Health Progress: What You Should Know

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  • Subject area(s): Sample essays
  • Reading time: 6 minutes
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  • Published: 1 April 2019*
  • Last Modified: 23 July 2024
  • File format: Text
  • Words: 1,720 (approx)
  • Number of pages: 7 (approx)
  • Tags: Essays on mental health

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Paste your eA person’s mental health progress depends on various factors including proper nutrition and diet which results in good wellbeing. Having proper nutrition and diet greatly contributes to good mental health progress. A good nutrition pattern ensures a person has good health and immune system hence resulting in long life and endurance of the daily life activities. Proper nutrition gives us a healthy body and good sound of mind, for some people it brings about contempt and relaxation. According to psychology, people always feel relaxed when eating and when tension arises, they are likely to react appropriately reducing causalities and damages. This factor is important to be considered since 1 out of 4 Americans experience mental health disorder due to various situations presented to them. Also, over 80 percent of teenagers are prone to suffer a mental health disorder while in their teenage years starting from fourteen years when puberty starts.

Some of the risks the American people go through can be slightly attributed to their poor diet program while at home, even though their other many factors that cause mental health disorders. Studies to establish the relationship between mental health disorders and nutrition started a few years back hence its unpopularity to most of the Americans. Most people perceive mental health to be resolved through other means which does not include their diet and eating of natural foods (Selhub 21). And when addressing nutrition to people, they mostly think of their physical appearing and not acknowledging their mental status which can be affected greatly by their poor nutrition and diet. Trying to establish a real connection between food and mental health would make most people contemptuous about the issues. The evidence to be presented in this paper will answer the question of relatability between nutrition and curing people with mental health issues. This paper will further demonstrate how people with different food and nutrition patterns respond to the recovery of mental health.

People observing their nutrition and diet tend to recover faster after having a mental breakdown resulting in mental disorders. Consider your body which tends to recover faster if a person was observing proper diet and nutrition habits leading to having a healthy body. They tend to have good immunity against illnesses; therefore, when treating illness, they recover faster compared to the malnourished people due to poor feeding and nutrition habits hence poor diet. Recently in 2015 psychiatrists and physicians have managed to create a concept that establishes a connection between nutrition and diet with mental recovery (Selhub 23). They decided to name this concept, nutritional psychiatry. According to a psychiatrist, doctor Drew Ramsey, he stated; “Traditionally, we haven't been trained to ask about food and nutrition, “when trying to justify the importance of nutrition and diet in mental recovery (Miller 34). He goes further and justifies his statement when he said that the quality of food entering our system to services the body equally service our brain functioning. It implies that good diet that improves the physiological system of the body also improve the proper functioning of the brain hence acting as a good source of mental cure.

Observing proper diet and eating habits: foods rich in a well-balanced diet rich in legumes, cereals, vegetables and nutrients, help helps improve the well-being of a person. A report released in 2014 by the Mental Health Foundation shows that people who consume a lot of fruits and vegetable tend to feel well and good (Miller 38). So, people with mental disorders could be helped to recover faster when observing their diet and nutrition program. Eating well implies living well, which will help in the healing process of the mentally unstable people. Also, for children above fourteen years majorly the teenagers are highly exposed to mental disorder due to their poor diet and eating habits as they tend to consume processed food with high levels of saturated fat together with refined sugar. Also, supplements like Omega 3 has a high level of fatty acids which helps people in balancing their moods. But for children, they could be encouraged to eat fish since it contains high levels of Omega-3 fatty acids (Selhub 25). And when administered to children from puberty, mostly girls will help in reducing their chances of getting mental disorder due to regular changes in moods and attitudes. The same can be said when presented with other foods with unsaturated fats from olive oil and other foods including cereals, grains, nuts, beans, fruits, and vegetable.

Having good feeding habits and proper diet resulting in eating healthy foods which help mentally disordered people improve their mental cognitive. For the brain to function optimally, a person with a mental disorder needs to consume high-quality food with the required nutrients to assist in improving their mental cognitive. Premium food containing high levels of required nutrients improves brain functions; hence, their body functions can be controlled easily and effectively since its powerhouse; the brain is working optimally.  Consuming food like fish contains fatty acids with Omega-3 and vegetables have high levels of vitamins which regulate hormones inducing good mood and less stress (Sarris, Jerome, et al. 271). Additionally, consuming foods like cereals have a high level of fiber and antioxidants that nourish the brains bringing about less stress since it reduces the chances of the oxidative process from taking place. It ensures the brain uses its oxygen effectively and gets rid of waste from the brain faster reducing brain cells damages (Sarris, Jerome, et al. 274).

As for the people consuming a normal diet with foods containing high levels of saturated fats and refined sugar, they stress their brains since oxidation regularly takes place in their brain harming the brain cells. It increases their blood sugar level hence people with mental disorders tend to be stressed for a long time due to high brain activity. The victims may end up having other diseases like blood pressure, obesity, diabetes or heart attacks due to regular depression and mood disorder, therefore, worsening their mental disorder.

However, their some other aspects of the relationship between mental health and diet is relatively poor since dietary behaviors do not affect the mental state of a person. Other people are prone to having stress and high emotions in certain situations they reach out and take biscuits and sweets that helps relieve them of their fears and depression state. All snacks and sweets are often called “comfort foods” meant for people with high stress and depressive levels. Also, smoking less or many cigarettes and drinking less or much alcohol does not help in relieving depression and stresses based on an animal experiment done using foods with high levels of sugar demonstrated high levels of addiction which is highly interactive with dopamine system (Sarris, Jerome, et al. 272). It is essential to consider the above assumption since there is little to demonstrate the addition of refined sugar to the relationship between mental health and depression.

Lately, doctors have started embracing nutritional psychiatry as one of the treatment plans for people with mental disorder. The rate of mental disorders has been increasing over the years despite its discovery by the medical practitioners. For many decades now, psychiatrists have been treating mental disorders in many patients, but the rate for a mental disorder across the world have risen majorly in teenagers and young adults (Gómez-Pinilla 568). Recently, psychiatrists have resolved to use nutritional psychiatry since young people have poor eating habits and poor diet. Most of them resolve in consuming refined foods and foods with high levels of saturated fats which are not only affecting their physical health but also their mental health. The nutritional psychiatry was administered to some of the depressed teenagers and young adults the results have been impressive. The psychiatrist’s choice to implement dietary counseling has proven to be a success as psychotherapy. The results have translated to a high reduction of transition rate, more than 9% of young depression patients administered with nutritional psychiatry recovered fully from their initial disordered although it fell short from the 25% which was the desired value for all the groups administered this psychiatric program (Selhub 29).

Considering the presented evidence, most of the medical practitioners, manly psychiatrists believe that depression or medical disorder is not only a brain disorder, but it also comprises the whole body. People with weak immune have a high risk of getting depressed when subjected to certain conditions which are out of their reach (Gómez-Pinilla 568). It implies that a person’s lifestyle determines who they may respond to depression or have a chance of suffering from depression. It includes people how do not follow a proper diet; they do not exercise, they are overweight and those who lack vitamin like vitamin D which is found in fruits (Miller 48). Also, people who are prone to getting sick or infection tend to have weak immune hence constantly living in sickness. They may become stressed or depressed from regularly getting sick without apparent serious causes. Having each of these factors that make a person’s body weak implies the relevance of them is becoming depressed thus reinforcing their ideas that the whole body might become depressed when the body has a weak immune system. It is important for everyone to observe their lifestyle especially the depressed or mentally unstable people to ensure a smooth recovery and reducing the chances of having this disorder.

Nutritional psychiatry claims people addicted and have a high intake of refined sugar may end up having a mental disorder. These claims remain unproven for quite some time since other members of the psychiatry community use refined sugar to help their depressed patient to calm down. Other members of medical practitioners dealing with mentally disordered patients claim unhealthy diet and eating habits has a direct link with causative agents of depression and mental disorders (Gómez-Pinilla 568). Most of those psychiatrists fail to identify the specific types of foods with adverse effects on depressed patients. It is important to directly delink sweets and biscuits from other foods with high levels of unsaturated fats like fast foods which are commonly consumed in America. Similarly, biscuits and sweets do not have adverse effects on a person’s body health when consumed moderately. The grouping of other useful snacks or products with refined sugar is very harsh, considering many people nowadays are at risk of getting depressed or any mental disorder.

   

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