Does Eating A Mediterranean Diet Stop Depression?

November 17, 2009 By Mark

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This may be one of those questions that goes around in the health and food industry quite a lot. As to whether what you eat determines how you feel on a day-to-day basis. When people fail to eat certain types of foods they may suffer from the following problems feel stressed or anxious and suffer from depression.

Some people may seem to think it’s just pure coincidence about how they are feeling they may not be thinking any negative thoughts. But just feel stressed or depressed and don’t know why. One of the reasons could be a lack of essential vitamins and minerals. Or is there some other mechanism at work.

So what would eating a Mediterranean diet necessarily make any difference to our moods, let’s see and find out. This type of diet has been well known for the reduction of types of heart related illnesses where it is eaten. The people that follow this style of eating will eat the following more fish than red meat, olive oil a small amount of dairy products.

With a abundance of fruit and vegetables and some red wine in moderation of course. The research fraternity isn’t quite sure why there are so many health benefits to this particular diet but came to the conclusion it’s the but lack of saturated fat within it that you consume.

It also may be because this particular diet contains more monosaturated fats and less saturated fats. According to what researchers have found people who eat a Mediterranean style diet are far less likely to suffer from depressive illnesses compared to other countries.

A study was put together to active find out whether this was the case. The researchers used 10,000 participants in Spain whom were graduates, they were given a questionnaire about food to fill in which was followed by a follow up session.

What did they find

During the period of time that the participants were followed which went over, 4 1/2 years, it was found that those whom leaned more towards a Mediterranean style of eating were far less likely to suffer from mental health problems than those whom didn’t.

The researchers said it was the amount of fruit and nuts and vegetables that they ate largely determine the outcome, they seem to think it might have something to do with the high fatty acid content within olive oil, which prevented them from being depressed. Although they did say it was the overall eating pattern that may have been a contributing factor. Rather than just singling out one particular type of food type.

Is it really that accurate

There could be other things that at work here, such as the fact of whether they exercised or not that can be a big factor in depression, the more you tend to exercise the better you feel. And it could be due to climate as well if you’re living some where that has a lot of sun then you’re far less likely to possibly get depressed. It would be interesting if a British study was done in winter just to see if the results would be the same or not.

Conclusion

So what can we take away from this if anything, well one for sure is. It certainly won’t do no harm to try eating this way and be your own guinea pig to see if it does affect your mood or not. Overall this is quite a interesting piece of research whether or not there is any actual validation to what is said here is another matter. You have to you draw your own conclusion from it and take away from it what you can.

Do you yourself eat this type of diet? And if so have you noticed how it affects your mood? it would be interesting to see what people have to say about this especially in the real world.

Source http://www.guardian.co.uk/