This is one question researchers set out to answer in a recent study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, published. Many studies have focused on different nutrients as playing a role in mental health, but this group wanted to look at diet patterns as a whole to determine what big dietary factors might be affecting your mood.

The research team, from the University College of London and lead by Dr. Tasnime Akbaraly, used data from a large study called the Whitehall II study, which monitored many social, lifestyle, work and health factors in a group of over 10,000 British civil servants. Dr. Akbaraly’s team focused on evaluating whether what people ate affected their odds of becoming depressed, using a subset of approximately 3,500 people, for whom this data was available.

The researchers used a food questionnaire to lump dietary patterns into two major groups: a whole foods group (heavily loaded with fruits, vegetables and fish) and a processed food group (heavily loaded with sweets, fried foods, high-fat dairy, and processed grains and meats). What they found was that those who ate more of the whole foods or less of the process foods were less likely to become depressed.

To test the validity of their findings, they used statistical tools to remove the affects of several ‘confounding’ factors that may also be contributing to depression, including: age, gender, marital status, physical activity, smoking, education level, employment grade, and a host of other medical conditions. After adjusting for all of these, the findings still stood. A diet rich in whole foods seemed to protect against depression and a diet rich in processed foods seemed to increase the odds of depression.

These data are interesting because no other studies had really evaluated a ‘pro-depressive’ effect of processed foods. Many studies have shown benefit of individual nutrients, like omega-3s and B vitamin, but not really evaluated diet patterns as a whole.

For many people it’s kind of a no-brainer that the foods you eat can affect the way you feel. However, more studies like this one are needed to really make the link between different aspects of the diet and the risk of real depressive disorders, not just blue moods. The more we understand all the factors involved in contributing to depression and related disorders, the more we can do to effectively treat it.

Currently, psychiatrists, nurses and social workers all work together to help people deal with mental illnesses from different angles. Data is emerging, like this study, that suggests if we added nutritionists and exercise professionals into the mix, we could do an even better job.

Studies like this are the only way we can really solidify the science behind a broad treatment approach; and without the data insurance won’t cover it, and without insurance coverage the system won’t change. But do we need to wait for the system to change in order to live better today? No. Eat Well. Your brain will thank you.

Reference: Akbaraly et al., Dietary Pattern and Depressive Symptoms in Middle Age. The British Journal of Psychiatry (2009) 195:408-413.

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By Simon J. Evans

The role of stress reduction is important to almost any health plan. Keeping your brain fit is no different. Constant stress, which plagues many in today’s society, causes an elevation of hormones, including cortisol, that can be bad for your health.

Now, let’s get something straight before we go any further. Cortisol is not some evil hormone that’s sole job is to make you fat and sick, as many late night infomercials would have you believe. It is a necessary part of your physiology and you would be dead without it. It is part of the flight, fight or fright response which helps you deal with immediate stressors and life-threatening situations. Even when you’re not stressed it plays important roles in vigilance and attention. Controlling cortisol levels with drugs is requires much caution.

Problems with cortisol occur when you stay stressed for long periods of time. The cortisol system is designed to turn on to help deal with stress and then turn off again when the stressor is passed. This can be psychological stress, like work, or physical stress, like a tiger attack. If you are constantly stressed and don’t turn it off, this can lead to problems with your immune system, weight regulation and, yes, brain function. Too much cortisol for too long can impair learning and memory.

OK, so cortisol is good if kept in check, but bad if it gets out of control.

So let’s get back to the title of this article. There is a lot of research in the psychology world showing that unhappy couples in negative relationships activate their stress systems much more frequently, which can eventually lead to poor health. This is probably fairly obvious. Arguments are stressful and we usually dwell on them for too long. Perhaps less obvious is that people in negative relationships are more prone to get stressed in other environment. Laboratory test show that people in negative relationships have an increased stress response to a social conflicts with anyone, not just their ball and chain.

The flipside of this was addressed in a new study published in October 2008 in Psychosomatic Medicine. Researchers looked at cortisol levels in middle age couples with young families to see if the quality of their intimate relationships affected their stress responses throughout the day. Previous studies show that good romantic relationships associate with longevity. Happy married couples, on average, live longer than unhappy couple or singles. In the new study, researchers wanted to know whether or not people in intimate relationships have lower cortisol and are less responsive to stressors from work.

Researchers equipped 51 couples with pocket computers that prompted them to answer some questions about what they had been doing to assess their exposure to stress and measure their levels of intimacy. They were also prompted to take saliva samples every three hours (except when sleeping) to test the level of cortisol, a measure of the level of activity of their stress system. This went on for six days in a row to ensure a good sampling. This is important because it’s the first study to get good measurements in everyday life, outside of the laboratory setting.

In the end, couples with higher levels of intimacy had lower cortisol throughout the day and decreased cortisol responses to stressful situations when they arose. In other words, people in positive relationships dealt much better with stress at the office (as measured by their hormonal response to stress) than those that had lower levels of intimacy in their home relationships. This provides another good reason to focus on balance in life. If you want to perform best at work, well, you know what you need to do at home . . .

Reference: Psychosomatic Medicine (2008) 70:883-889.

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