The Shocking Food Combo That's Quietly Destroying Your Mental Health | Dr. Rhonda Patrick EP 602

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11We're talking about the brain and food connection. How important is food by itself in relating to minimizing depression, social anxiety, and mental health? Food is extremely important because it's directly linked to obesity. And obesity itself causes low-grade inflammation. and foods that are really high, particularly when you combine a high saturated fat with a high refined sugar. So let's say you're eating your, you're drinking your glass of milk with your cookie. Like that's the worst because you're getting the saturated fat and the sugar. And that's been shown to cause a very high, what's called postprandial inflammatory response.

0:54We've been talking about postprandial glucose response, which is after you eat. So postprandial, There's an inflammatory response that also occurs after eating. Inflammatory molecules cross the blood-brain barrier, and they play a role in basically depressing dopamine signaling and serotonin and all sorts of affecting neurotransmitters and brain function. And there's been studies directly showing that if you inject a person with an inflammatory cytokine, it causes depressive symptoms versus people who are injected with saline. Yes. So the more inflammation we have in the body, it increases depression.

1:31Exactly. We used to think, again, the brain was separate from the body and that, you know, the immune system and all that didn't affect the brain. Turns out that was all wrong. Absolutely wrong. These inflammatory mediators do get into the brain and they get into the brain and they change the firing of certain neurotransmitters and things like that. They're also activating the resident immune cells in the brain, the microglia. a type of astrocyte. And, you know, that, that also is linked to depression. And we put out a little short video on this on an animated video, actually on depression, inflammation and depression and talked about a lot of the studies, because it's something I don't think people realize that the food you eat and not only the food you eat, your lifestyle, you know, being obese and overweight, being sedentary, exercise is one of the best anti-inflammatory medicines you can get, period.

2:25And it also happens to be one of the best lifestyle remedies for depression as well. I mean, randomized controlled trials showing that, all sorts of evidence. Is this any type of exercise or are you a HIIT training, a cardio, a 30 minutes, 60 minutes? What's your opinion? I would say the large body of evidence seems to show aerobic exercise is really important with respect to depression. and that is because aerobic exercise leads to increases in what's called brain-derived neurotrophic factor. BDNF, as it's called, it's basically a growth factor that's produced. You can, after just 20 minutes of a moderate intensity workout, you can increase your level.

3:06You can find levels increased by like up to 30 % in plasma. It crosses into the brain and in the brain, it does a lot of things. Not only does it do what IGF-1 does, it actually grows new neurons. It helps you grow new neurons and it helps your neurons survive. So it plays an important role in preventing brain aging. But something else very unique that it does, it plays a role in what's called neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is like your brain's ability to adapt to stressful conditions. You know, I mean, this is what children can do pretty good. As you get older, neuroplasticity goes down, as does everything.

3:40But neuroplasticity is important for being able to cope with stress, like the stress of a pandemic, for example. You know, more neuroplasticity helps with those stressful divorce people are going through, you know, or losing your job. Neuroplasticity helps the brain cope with that. And brain-derived neurotrophic factor helps increase neuroplasticity, which decreases with age. Again, aerobic exercise was important. But, you know, there's been studies linking strength training to lower depression rates as well. Yeah. Any type of exercise will help. Exactly. I do, but I really think that aerobic, there is a place for aerobic with respect to the BDNF, the brain drive neurodegenerative.

4:19I always tell people that every day I try to put myself through some type of physical pain that makes me feel discomfort. Whether that's sweating for 10 minutes or a two-hour workout or playing basketball, hiking, whatever. I try to put my mind and body through something and I'm like, gosh, I don't want to do this. But by putting myself through pain, controlled pain, it sets me up to be more under control when there is chaos and pain. Right. I think that's the key we should get to is like controlled pain, healthy pain, so that you're not out of control when there is chaos and pain in the world.

4:56What you're describing, scientists often refer to as hormesis. and that is basically a little bit of stress on the body, like exercise. Basically, because our body tries to maintain what's called homeostasis, a little bit of stress will cause our body to respond to that stress with a lot of anti-stress, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, growing new brain cells, all these beneficial things. Wow. So a little bit of stress gives you a lot of good stuff, right? Interesting. Whereas low-grade chronic stress all the time, it doesn't do anything.

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