Food and Mental Wellness
Studying the brain is a passion of mine. I started with reading ‘The Miracle Brain,’ followed by ‘Food and Behavior (Stitts).’ After that, I was hooked. Here I was, finishing up my coursework/internship for a Masters in Mental Health Counseling. I took extra classes for Play therapy certification.
Not ONE class suggested any link between food and behavior. There wasn’t anything discussed about diet. When I started mentioning what I was learning about the link between food and behavior, I was treated as if I had the mental health issues.
That was a number of years ago. Since, I discovered that I’m not the Lone Ranger when it comes to talking about the Gut/Brain connection. There’s even a company (Amare) that was developed to help heal the gut/brain connection. For more information, go here
Over time, I developed my own training on Food and Behavior. I continued to learn and incorporate new knowledge into the training. In my Facebook group (Natural Mental Health), I share various articles on the topic. I also have a list of books I’ve read on the topic.
Currently, I’m finishing up Dr Amen’s new book, ‘The End to Mental Illness.’ I hope and pray the message in this book goes out through all the world. He not only looks at the nutritional aspect, he also looks at the various ‘hits’ that a brain can experience such as head trauma. He also addresses the social and spiritual aspects of mental wellness. I love that he doesn’t look at it as ‘mental illness,’ but as a spectrum of aspects that affect mental wellness.
I believe focusing on mental wellness will be needed to make the shift from a multi-billion dollar Big Pharma ‘band-aid’ which leads to more and more prescription medications to a whole-body look at true mental wellness, leading to a fully functioning human being.
I want to share a couple of quotes from Dr Amen’s book, The End of Mental Illness.‘ Pg 317-318.
“In 2015, a group of 18 scientists concluded that ‘the emerging and compelling evidence for nutrition as a crucial factor in the high prevalence and incidence of mental disorders suggests that diet is as important to psychiatry as it is to cardiology, endocrinology, and gastroenterology.'”
There’s a growing body of evidence that nutritional treatment can help prevent, treat, or improve depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety, ADD/ADHD, autism, addiction, and eating disorders.
There’s been numerous physicians in the past who connect food to overall wellness. Hippocrates said, ‘Disease begins in the gut.’ Here’s another one to consider as we make this paradigm shift to mental wellness:
“No disease that can be treated by diet should be treated by any other means.” Maimonides, Medieval Philosopher and physician.
If you would like more information, please contact me at kindlingdreamsllc@gmail.com. I have trainings available, but I also offer help to make the lifestyle changes to improve overall mental and physical health.