The best antidepressant foods: the right choices, combinations and time

It is absolutely no wonder a dress worn backwards performs the least of the functions expected. Although, it meanwhile covers nudity and even attracts attention just like the one worn correctly. Absolutely the same happens to the most scientifically based recommendations for choosing right types of products that somehow give the least effect possible. To understand why it happens this way, we shall have a closer look at the international program Mood Food, funded by the European Community, to gather the most recent findings on antidepressant nutrition. At the first glance, there can be no objections to Mood Food list of products. But as soon as you try to apply those into your own diet, firstly you will be bedazzled by the Secondly, and most importantly, Mood Food completely ignores the combinability of those foods as well as their vitally important time of consumption. Hence, the Mood Food and likewise programs resemble a dress worn backwards. In other words, the dietologists from the Mood Food, in their pursuit of simplicity and perceived practical value, sacrifice the efficacy and limit the benefits of the dietary recommendations. Remember, complex problems can only be solved by a comprehensive approach. That's why those of you who got used to easy solutions, feel free to put on the dress backwards and skip watching this video. Meanwhile, we shall discuss the results of 61 scientific researchers on antidepressant nutrition and will get the desirable result. Specifically, in this video, I'm going to give you the scientific evidence and dietary recommendations to crown it up at the end with the final list of foods to be eaten for breakfast, for your lunch and for your dinner. You will see that these are quite different foods and diverse combinations of foods. Besides, I will give you a visual diagram for distribution of these products across your meals of the day and brief bottom line recommendations on types, proportions of foods as well as times of their consumption. The bottom line recommendations are given at the end of the video, so if you are impatient enough, feel free to jump into conclusions. Yet, I highly recommend to watch the reviews of the researchers to make sure that the hereby mentioned specific types, combinations and proportions of antidepressant foods as well as the time of their consumption work better and brings you better result. Hello everyone, I'm Max Bucurelli and you are watching my program Deception of Metabolism, where I'm scientifically debunking the dietary myths and fakes. Traditionally, in my videos, we shall rely exclusively on scientific researchers indicated by a number on the corresponding slide and listed for you via a special link in the description under this video. But today's video employs the results of 61 scientific studies and this is the most difficult and complex videos I have so far made in my career. The first question asked by those seeking help against depression by nutrition is whether eating can really reduce depression symptoms. To your surprise, it can. Following even the simplest and most basic scientific recommendations on antidepressant foods can yield some positive results. For instance, in this study, the patients were divided into two groups, those receiving dietary recommendations and those getting only the social support from the scientists. As you can see, the group having a clear, healthier diet did better in reducing their depression symptoms as compared to the group getting only social support. And another study showed that the healthier the nutrition of the patients with depression, the better their results. So, would you need another video on antidepressant foods if you can merely take a food list and follow it to get at least the minimal results? Well, the trick is that firstly, the subjects of these scientific experiments received absolutely specific guidelines on the types, proportions and combinations of proper foods as well as the right time of their consumption, which in your case are not provided. And the second point is that it is exactly the right combinations, distribution and the time of consumption of these foods that boost in many times the efficacy of such antidepressant nutrition plan and your ultimate result. So, the major problem is that the patients rush into choosing any antidepressant food list, force themselves into what they consider as the right diet and finally get the average, if not poor, results. Which, of course, cannot but be disappointing and leading towards antidepressants instead. Consequently, today we are to consider the holy trinity of antidepressant nutrition, the right types of antidepressant foods, the right combinations and the right consumption time for you to maximize your desired result, get rid or at least mitigate the symptoms of your depression. The most important amino acid in combating your depression is tryptophan. Being essential, this acid can only be obtained from food and the patients with depression have significant less acid in their brains as compared to the people without depression. So, what are the factors conditioning the amount of tryptophan in brains, either helping to eliminate depression or, on the contrary, making its symptoms even more severe? Well, it's easy enough. It depends on the amount of tryptophan you get from food as well as the individual differences of your body. Namely, the amount of tryptophan your body obtains from food getting to the blood and then brings from blood to brains. In fact, there is a reduced bioavailability of tryptophan in the patients with depression, which can be improved by improving the gut microflora. We'll tackle this issue later on. So, if we increase the amount of tryptophan in brains and manage to maintain this sufficient amount throughout the whole day, the problem of depression can be solved. This works also the other way around, however. The patients with treated depression showing low levels of symptoms but having tryptophan deficiency in their food had significant drops of the level of tryptophan in their brain in about 7 hours and thus increasing their depression symptoms to the previous pre-treatment levels. Hence, depression relapsed to its full form. By contrast, the amount of tryptophan in brains, according to this Cambridge study, would significantly and quickly improve the mood and reduce depression symptoms. This increase was especially significantly observed among the patients with depressions as compared to people who have no depression symptoms and receive less obvious benefits from such changes in tryptophan levels. To sum up, some studies say that the nutrition poor in tryptophan increases depression symptoms and the others say that the rich tryptophan nutrition containing foods and supplements enough significantly reduces the depression symptoms. Still, jumping at this point into surface conclusions will lead us further to wrong decisions under a pure mechanistic approach. Firstly, giving depression patients only tryptophan supplements or tryptophan-rich foods. I shall warn you, however, that there is no use taking tryptophan supplements because, firstly, the necessary acting dosage can significantly intensify the oxidizing stress, increase the oxidization of lipids, body fat, and thus results into damaging body cells and deterioration of overall health. And secondly, in 1989, the abundant use of such supplements had the result of an outburst of a disease called eosinophilia myalgia, ending up with a ban of tryptophan supplements in a number of countries around the world. Another way is giving patients tryptophan-rich foods, the principle followed also by many mechanic dietologists who recommend following the list of tryptophan foods such as meat, cheese, fish, in vain hope that these foods on their own will automatically combat depression. But it never really works this way. Even though the level of tryptophan in foods impacts depression, it does not significantly raise the level of tryptophan in body. For instance, the average amount of tryptophan consumed in the United States of America per person exceeds the norm by three times and still does not help people to fight or combat depression. Moreover, as you will learn from this video, even though some of tryptophan- The thing is, to combat depression, it is absolutely not enough just to eat a lot of tryptophan. We need to increase its level in the brains. So this is exactly the problem that has recently been discussed as solvable in scientific researches. In English, the very word tryptophan sounds very much like tryptophan. So let's set on a trip to discover the way of getting more pleasure out of food and life as well as the results out of the antidepressant nutrition. First thing first, we need to start with a very important issue, settling down and identifying the right breakfast, lunch and dinner. And the meal to come first in this list is dinner. It is no wonder, because as many doctors treating depression know, it is early morning that shows the highest depression levels, keeping the patients awake early or unable to fall asleep. The reason is that the small initial dosage of tryptophan available to the brain of a patient with depression will run out throughout the night and by the morning you will wake up in the worst possible mood. Then you go and eat something again, slightly increasing the brain level of tryptophan again and thus reducing the depression level a bit. Before we understand how to boost the level of tryptophan in our brain, before going to bed, we shall consider the basics, how this acid gets into our brains. The brain of even a healthy individual without any symptoms of depression receives only about 1% of the tryptophan containing in blood. The holistic cardiovascular system of a human being is separated from brain tissue by a hamelocephalic barrier or blood-brain barrier, a certain custom service filtering blood and protecting the brain from undesirable infections, viruses and other substances. It resembles in a way a witcher's circle, safeguarding the brain and filtering only those substances and in those amounts which are really needed for the brain. Unfortunately, however, this system may have some bugs. Namely, in some cases these bugs are attributed to some diseases or peculiar features of individual bodies. In other cases, however, these are the specific system properties themselves. Speaking about tryptophan, both of them can take place. But understanding the nature of transferring tryptophan from blood to brain through the barrier is very crucial for the strategies of increasing its level in the brains. While the simpler substances, let's say glucose, get through the blood-brain barrier absolutely easy and without any obstacles in their way, for the transfer of complex substances like amino acids, there are special protein carriers to come to service. They literally grab the acid, just like the squirrel in the picture, and carry out through the blood-brain barrier. So finally, the problem of tryptophan getting to the brain is that it has to compete for its carrier with the five other neutral amino acids leucine, isoleucine, valine, tyrosine and phthalelalanine. Hereafter, we will refer to them as big five. Imagine that you have eaten a food rich in tryptophan and capable of fighting depression. For example, fish. This food will always include not only tryptophan but also a lot of the big five substances. Consequently, after eating a piece of fish, you will get not only tryptophan in your blood but the other five amino acids as well. So here is where the competition starts. Tryptophan is trying hard to outsmart the big five acids and have the carrier transfer it to the brain. But the brain can host only a certain amount of all amino acids together taken, so the number of seeds is strictly regulated. Hence, if the proportion of tryptophan and other big five acids is stable in blood, it will be absolutely the same way stable in the brain. Therefore, increasing tryptophan foods without simultaneous reduction of the big five acid levels will in no way give you more tryptophan in your brain. Your brain will not let in more amino acids but will preserve the same ratio between tryptophan and the big five. That's why the first trick, as you might have already guessed, is to change the initial ratio. Changing the relative amount of tryptophan as compared to the big five will lead to its increase in brain and thus result into better mood, less depression and finally a better start of a day as you wake up in the morning. First, how shall we get there? There are actually two ways to go. The first one is prioritizing foods with higher ratio of tryptophan to big five acids. But can you get there? Based on the two scientific researchers, I have compiled a chart of foods ranked by the tryptophan ratio. You can see it from the screen and having a closer look at this chart will take you by surprise because the best tryptophan big five ratio is the best not in the highly recommended by the dietologist foods rich in tryptophan but in the plant foods which do not have the highest absolute amount of tryptophan but take a lead in its relative levels. So, does it mean that our mission of increasing the brain level of tryptophan is impossible? By no means. But we are going to employ this list of relatively tryptophan-rich foods to make up our breakfast, lunch and dinner. But meanwhile, we are going to use one more smart method. Let's play a guessing game. I'm gonna give you a puzzle. Tryptophan is an amino acid. Such acids make up proteins. So, what kind of a diet will boost the brain level of tryptophan? The diet rich in protein and poor in carbohydrates or the diet poor in protein and rich in carbs? Carbohydrates do not contain amino acids. Well, if you are an unreasonable dietologist, you will be likely to fall for the first option. A lot of protein, minimum of carbohydrates and as a result more amino acids in blood. So, probably more of them in the brain. But we have already learned a lesson that the blood level of amino acids does not determine the brain level of tryptophan. Therefore, we'll choose the way opposite to the mechanistic formal logic and go for the second option. More carbs and less protein. The fact is that the consumption of foods with higher glycemic levels, those increasing sugar blood level, significantly increases the availability of tryptophan to brains. The secret is that the insulin produced after eating such foods make the muscles get the big five acids from the blood and thus increases the ratio of tryptophan. On balance, the studies show that the less protein you have in your evening meal, the more intensively your muscles encapsulate the big five amino acids making the competition of tryptophan with them much easier and thus getting much more tryptophan In fact, I'm going to show you by how much this amount can be increased according to the researchers. Well now, based on these studies, we are going to choose the right foods for your dinner to get the brain level of tryptophan up as well as your mood in the morning by saving you from the influx of depression at night. Highly glycemic foods are divided into two big categories. These are firstly the foods with high intake in protein like pasta and cereals and secondly those low protein intake foods like potato, sweet potatoes, starchy vegetables such as carrots and beetroots. Besides, you can include a purified rice which belongs to relatively low protein foods. According to the studies, the lower the protein intake and higher carbs intake in your dinner, the higher the ratio of tryptophan to the other five amino acids. For instance, if the intake of protein was only two percent in the dinner like in vegetables, then its ratio to the big five acids would increase by 23 percent. If the dinner contains from 5 to 10 percent of protein, the tryptophan ratio to other acids is leveled up as 1 to 1. If the dinner contains 20 and more percent of protein, which would correspond to a typical protein meal like a piece of meat or fish, beans or nuts, the tryptophan big five ratio would fall to 75 percent. Well, consequently, a typical western diet containing from 10 to 15 percent of protein does not allow us to keep the tryptophan ratio and thus to increase its level in brains, which in particular leads to widespread depression across the western countries. But reducing only the intake of protein in our dinner, we can significantly improve the tryptophan ratio and thus get more of it to the brain. Hence, here is my first recommendation. For your dinner, please eat high-glucemic, low-protein, starchy foods. These can be baked or boiled potato, sweet potato, a combination of carrot, beetroot, parsnip, celery, cooked to boost You can include rice and quite moderately fruits, which need a special comment in a separate section of the video. In case you prefer fruits, I would still recommend combining them with some veggies to mitigate the harm of extra sugar. Be sure to select the foods with high relative tryptophan like zucchini, pumpkin, mushrooms and other vegetables. I am anticipating the question from those of you who are most advanced in nutrition, whether you should include sweets as they are the foods with the highest glycemic index and the highest level of direct sugar. On the one hand, it is true. The studies find such foods beneficial for the transfer of tryptophan to the brain and improving your moods. But this effect lasts only for a very limited time. In fact, consumption of sugar in sweets only harms the body as well as causes the cravings for the likewise products and adds up to the anxiety level. This is exactly what the researchers demonstrate. Regular eating of sweets gets your depression symptoms higher by 1.5 times or 53%. Among such sweet teas, these are the teenagers who risk most to develop depression later on in life. Hence, another conclusion and a recommendation says the less sweets and sweet drinks to consume, the easier it is for you to fight your depression. Consequently, as you have made sure it is never an option to follow a formal mechanistic approach in antidepressant nutrition, the individual differences shall also be taken into account to achieve the desirable result. Well, to boost the effect of our antidepressant dinner, we need to consider the right foods for the right lunch. Otherwise, the efforts will be in vain. As the proverb says, all is fair in love and war, but not in lunch. In our case, a meal to be eaten within the specific time and with a specific combination of different products. Tryptophan is an essential amino acid that is obtained exclusively out of food. In order to keep its sufficient level till the evening, we need to make sure that the foods chosen for the lunch are good enough, properly combined and eating at the right time. We need specific combinations of foods for lunch. Scientists made an experiment giving the subjects three different regimens of foods, diverging not only in the general intake of tryptophan, but in its relative ratio as compared to other big five acids. The first group received a meal of 200 grams of raw rice, 150 grams of veggies and ended up with the highest value of tryptophan versus big five acids. The second group had a meal of 65 gram of dry rice, which equals 200 grams of cooked rice, and 150 grams of chicken and demonstrated a significantly lower tryptophan ratio. Well, the last group received the same amount, but this time of brown rice and the same 150 grams of chicken and showed even worse results. Different antidepressant food lists place whole grain and brown rice as the right foods, but the combination of brown rice with the chicken would give us three times lower levels of relative tryptophan as compared with the same amount of white rice. So here comes two conclusions from these experiments to shape our recommended lunch, besides the point that we have just proven that the high-glucemic foods boost relative tryptophan. Firstly, our healthy antidepressant lunch is bound to consist highly-glucemic foods, carbohydrates, as well as protein foods, abundant in general tryptophan. Here you can see the significantly proven list of such tryptophan-rich foods. Feel free to choose the products with higher tryptophan levels and beware of the tryptophan-big-five-acids ratio based on the previously given foods list. Secondly, and once again, a successful lunch that gives you enough tryptophan and right ratio of tryptophan to other amino acids should include high-glucemic foods like cooked sweet vegetables, sweet potato, potato, turnip, beetroot, carrot, any refined grains, rice, buckwheat, and millet. As for the wheat and other gluten-containing grains, we will talk about them in a separate section of the video. Beside this, your lunch should contain tryptophan-rich foods such as meat and fish, but only specific kinds of them, dairy products, but again only some kinds, and finally, these are nuts and legumes you should take for your lunch. We will take beans and nuts and discuss more in details later on. And as for the refined grains, as compared to the whole grains, it is an issue of personal choice and needs your attention after you combat the major part of your depression symptoms. According to the researchers, eating whole grains reduces depression better as compared to the refined grains, with males showing even better results as compared to the females. Hence, after eliminating the acute depression symptoms, I advise you substituting refined grains with the whole grains and see how it works personally for you. But again, it is still better to do it with the preliminary positive results on your depression. Gluten is the group of specific proteins in wheat, rye, barkley, and in any of their other forms. There is no gluten in oats, however, at least in the form most negative for the human body. The acute intolerance of gluten, referred to as celiac disease, is fairly rare and happens only in 1% of population. But interestingly, these people have reduced levels of tryptophan and higher frequency of depression cases. Alongside with the direct and acute celiac disease, however, there are also lots of people who have hidden or latent gluten intolerance. For this issue, I have a series of based on more than 150 researchers showing the harm of gluten at different levels and in different extents for all people. And I also have provided a clear plan on making a healthy gluten-free ration. One of the properties of gluten was proven to provoke depression not only among patients with celiac disease, but also with people who have hidden gluten intolerance, attesting to the fact that after eating gluten foods, they are more likely to be in bad mood. Deterioration of emotional state would happen not only under heavy amount of consumed gluten with accompanying irritated intestine syndrome, but also in people, according to the results of studies, who ate at least as much as 3.4 g of gluten, an equivalent of 50 g of cooked pasta, which was enough already to have a negative impact on body and mood. That's why my recommendation would be to go on a gluten-free diet, whether you suffer from depression or not, to follow the ration for 2 or 3 months and observe the state of your physical and mental health, as well as depression symptoms, and then slide back to the gluten nutrition, just to compare the difference based on your own individual experience. I'll tell you one thing. For the major part of people, the difference is going to be immense enough to be gluten-free for the rest of their life. I shall remind you that gluten foods are not limited to wheat, rye and barkley, but also include the by-products like pasta and beer. It can also be found in sauces, canned foods, cheap cheese and others, so I recommend reading the content of the products before buying, and we are finally moving to the antidepressant breakfast. Finally, we arrive at the point of antidepressant breakfast with its specific antidepressant combination of foods. Namely, the major part of them is based on the so-called Mediterranean diet. The thing, however, is that if you take just a random list of Mediterranean diet foods, which do not differ in principle from the unhealthy Western diet, you won't receive any positive result. The trick is, all of these foods need to be well combined and proportioned to be beneficial, just as you can see in the research paper diagram. The right Mediterranean ratio of specific food types is essential as it helps to reduce the overall depression symptoms by 24% a quarter. Moreover, neither our antidepressant dinner nor lunch can be good enough without a well-balanced antidepressant morning meal, adding up essential foods and maximizing the result. Our dinner and lunch lack significant part of essential foods, namely, sufficient amount of healthy fats and carbohydrates, together with vegetables as well as fruits. To select the right foods, we will abide to the chrononutrition, a branch of science concerned with the impact of specific times of consumption of foods as well as their combinations on body. As the studies show, if people eat the major part of their daily fats for breakfast, their metabolism is changed towards consuming less energy, having to eat less as well as setting their organism on a more sufficient work. They would consume more calories throughout the day and burn the morning fats more easily. The other study shows another fact. A sufficient amount of protein for breakfast gives enough tryptophan, reduces the desire to eat more and balances the daily amount of protein for better health benefits of your nutrition. If you decide to shift the fats and proteins to the evening time, according to the chrononutrition researchers, it sets the body metabolism in an unhealthy mode, reducing satiety level, making you want to overeat, consuming less calories and, as the result, gaining more extra weight. Hence, try to eat your fats and proteins in the morning. Your breakfast should rely on fatty fish, poultry, eggs, dairy, nuts and beans. The choice between the level of fat in such foods is another important issue to be discussed later on. Meanwhile, make sure you add alkalizing foods such as vegetables, especially those rich in tryptophan, cooked or predominantly raw vegetables, leaves, greens and green vegetables, giving you more phytonutrients, boosting your energy, helping you to combat your depression. Finally, remember about tea and coffee, typical morning drinks, which have been proven by studies to reduce depression risks by a quarter. After we have identified a healthy antidepressant dinner, lunch and breakfast, now we shall identify specific foods from different food groups and distribute them across your meals. So, here I am going to give you clear guidelines on what specific foods, specific fish, meat, vegetables, dairy and so on should be eating by depression patients and which of them must not be eaten under any circumstances. Now, it is high time we move to the final third component of our antidepressant trinity – selection of specific antidepressant foods. Besides, I will tell you about specific probiotics to improve your depression symptoms. There are two most widely popularized antidepressant foods – fruits and vegetables. Almost all scientific researchers and nutritionists come to the agreement that the abundance of such foods is beneficial for patients with depression. However, it is the amount and the specific balance between these foods that gives you the right oxidifying versus alkalizing effect onto the body, as well as gives you enough fiber necessary for your gut microflora to turn your body into a healthy mode. Finally, these are fruits and vegetables, which are abundant in phytonutrients, some of which are crucial for the depressed patients. But here comes the question what shall we eat more – fruits or vegetables? As the studies show, for the majority of patients with depression, but not all of them, these are fruits which are better than vegetables. They reduce depression symptoms from 55 to 15 percent. Meanwhile, vegetables can show a different effect with some people demonstrating up to 31 percent reduction in the symptoms and others having up to 27 percent increase in severity of depression. Hence, scientists recommend depression patients to go for fruits and, in some cases, eat up to a kilo of them per day. Still, to balance the levels of sugars, it is also necessary to include in your diet vegetables, up to half a kilo a day. It may sound as much, but actually this is the amount people normally eat throughout the day. When choosing among different types of veggies and fruits, please pay attention to the levels of flavonoids, bioactive substances shown to reduce depression symptoms for around 60 percent in average if you have a diet rich in flavonoids. The list, ranking the foods by the intake of flavonoids, you can see at the slide. The major part of them is in fruit, which make them more preferable for antidepressant nutrition. Still, how healthy the fruits may be, its benefits are not for everyone. We need to consider some individual differences of patients. Specifically, there is a big group of people suffering from a so-called malabsorption of glucose, resulting into fructose coming into the rectum, being there consumed by the bacteria, causing severe flatulence and a discomfort. But what is more negative, this abundance of fructose in the gut causes low absorption of tryptophan, thus reducing the tryptophan level in the brain in the long run. You can easily recognize malabsorption of glucose by bulging air, flatulence, temporary discomfort after eating foods rich in glucose, especially sunfruits and vegetables. Still, the most precise test is called hydrogen methane breath test and can be ordered in the internet. You can test yourself if the level of hydrogen you breathe out is high, you most likely have this issue. In this case, you should limit your eating of fruits to the moderate amount, prioritizing those of them containing more flavonoids and those which have less fructose. There are lots of foods in this category, attesting different levels of fructose. On the table I'm showing you, which is based again on the scientific researches, you can see them organized as for the levels of various sugars, fructose, glucose and sucrose. So if you have done a test and have clear symptoms of malabsorption of glucose, you need to choose the least fructose-rich foods and thus improve your symptoms and overall health. Mushrooms, often placed among fruits and vegetables, in fact, form a separate group of foods, which proves to be helpful and antidepressant. Under meta-study, it was proven that eating mushrooms one or two times a week reduces depression by 12% and more than three times give you a reduction in 14% of depression symptoms. Besides antidepressant properties, mushrooms have lots of other positive effects. My recommendation is eating mushrooms three-four times a week, which is enough to get the result. And moving from fruits to mushrooms, we cannot but mention gut microflora. The more diverse inherent microflora, that is the internal diversity, and the more diverse the individual microflora as compared to the nearest population, that is external microflora diversity, the lower your depression symptoms and the better you do on your other parameters of health. However, it is the gut microflora that determines the main part of our health and mood. Increasing diversity of fruits and vegetables, as well as mushrooms in your diet, can significantly boost the diversity of microflora. Eating raw fruits, sometimes even directly taken from the nature, enriches the existing microflora with healthy and beneficial cultures of bacteria. Still worth mentioning, it goes about the naturally planted fruits and vegetables, not about the food markets where they were exposed to large quantities of other bacterias, low hygiene settings and human factor. These are the right bacteria that boost your microbiome. If you don't have a possibility to eat fruits and vegetables from the trees, you can resort to probiotics, products containing spores or live cultures of bacteria. As far as the probiotics function according to the strain dependent principle, that is the efficacy of probiotics, as well as its benefits for your health, depends on specific strains of bacteria in its composition. The difficult part about it is that according to the two scientific researches, there are 13 antidepressant strains of bacteria, and oftentimes it is difficult to find at the pharmacy the right composition. That is why my recommendation is trying several different strains, the more diverse they are, the better. Try to find the listed on the slide microorganisms in the composition of your probiotic. Any of these should be taken for breakfast, lunch, dinner, for about one month or two to improve your gut health, mood, to reduce inflammation and thus improve your overall health as well as depression symptoms. Besides, your microflora will additionally benefit from keeping the right combination of foods in your diet, as the healthy proteins and grains rich diet will help you to get enough fiber for your gut and carbs to maintain a healthy microbiome. So, without changing the nutrition, probiotics will have a limited effect and not receiving enough of necessary nutrients, oligo and polysaccharides, which actually serve as a food for those bacterias that you are trying to breed. Well, you may ask how about shifting to vegetarian diet, often preached to be the best for depression cases. But unfortunately, it isn't simple as it might seem. Well, as the scientific researchers prove, getting rid of meat, especially some kinds of meat, tends to increase depression symptoms, and not only because of you missing your juicy steak. The truth is, vegetarian diet doesn't save you from depression, and based on the analysis of 18 studies on relationship between depression and vegetarians, has shown that such diet reduces depression by 13% for some people and can increase it by 25% for others. So, it is only personal experimenting with the diet that can tell you whether this kind of nutrition works specifically for you. Please remember, however, that as a vegetarian, you will have to balance a large combination of substances and in sufficient quantities, starting from vitamin B12, iron, zinc, selenium and protein, of course. Still, in general, adherence to the vegetarian and even semi-vegetarian nutrition involves significant depression risks. For instance, these are 21 and 22% of Australian vegetarians and semi-vegetarians who suffer depression as compared to 15% of non-vegetarians with depression. Now, as the fruits and vegetables have been sorted out, we come to proteins. And to understand how proteins function, we shall start with discussion of fat. This is the consumption of the right balance on types of fats that determines whether you will or will not have a depression. First and foremost, the amount of fats should be moderated. As far as the abundance of animal fats can boost a gut inflammation and thus inhibit digestion of tryptophan, which as a result stimulates depression. The central place is taken, however, by the right ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids. As the study shows, the more animal and plant omega-6 and the less omega-3 you have in your diet, both from seafoods and plants, the higher your inflammation level, as well as severity of your depression. The essential acids for depression treatment include icosapentaenoic omega-3 acid, EPA, and arachidonic omega-6 acid. These two are found in the membranes of our body cells, and their ratio determines to a great extent our physical cellular health, as well as functioning brain cells. The ratio of icosapentaenoic omega-3 acid and arachidonic omega-6 acid in our body cells is calculated most simply by their ratio in the membranes of erythrocytes, red blood cells. So, the higher the number of omega-6 to omega-3, the higher depression levels, according to the linear scale. The healthy ratio is one particle of omega-3 and two to five particles of omega-6. You can have your current nutrition tested by a fatty acid analysis and find out how it correlates with your depression. Also correct this situation by implementing healthy changes in your nutrition in two ways. Firstly, adding more omega-3 to your diet. As the studies show, you can start getting antidepressant benefits from adding daily even 1000 milligram of seafood omega-3, which unlike flaxseed and nut oil, contains icosapentaenoic acid. If you take from 1000 to 2500 milligrams of seafood omega-3, it will have the antidepressant power equivalent to the antidepressant pills, fluoxetine. Meanwhile, taking omega-3 supplements causes less side effects and does less harm to your body than antidepressant pills. Make sure you consult your doctor before taking any omega-3 supplements, especially if you have a low blood coagulation, not to end up with eternal bleeding or other problems as you start adding this acid to your diet. The second way is eating more seafish. Not only it is recommended as an antidepressant food, some of the fishes have more omega-3 than others. Overall, various studies show that the more fish people eat, the less depression cases they have. Still, it's not the fishy taste that makes fish antidepressant, but the intake of omega-3 and the most importantly a high ratio of omega-3 to omega-6. This last parameter is observed mostly in fish, not in meat. In other words, fish tends to have more omega-3 to omega-6 than meat and thus should be prioritized in your diet as a better protein food. On balance, eating fish, various kinds of fish, reduces depression by 15%, whereas eating red meat, namely mutton, veal, pork, increases it by 35%. If you cannot give up eating red meat, you'd better choose those meats that have more omega-3 and less omega-6, for instance mutton. Gender is also important here, as these are the men who suffer most eating traditionally manly red meat. They have 90% increase in depression as compared to insignificant increase for women. Meanwhile, poultry having more omega-6 reduces depression by a third in overweight people, whereas for people with normal body weight, white meat consumption has no proven effects on depression. So my recommendations include getting rid of red meat completely, going for white meat especially for overweight people who get additional benefits as they lose faster weight and prioritize fish. What kind of fish is better? It is easy. The more omega-3 the better. You can see the two tables from the researchers summarizing kinds of fish by omega-3 intake. As you can see, these are the seafishes that are most antidepressant, such as mackerel, salmon, tuna and others. Additionally, be sure to choose fat seafish, which unlike white seafish, has more omega-3. Hence, balancing omega-3 and omega-6 is an essential part of the changes towards a more antidepressant nutrition. But there is another way to go, which is all about reducing oils and fats rich in omega-6. Be sure to follow this guideline table in choosing the right fats and oils with less omega-6 and more omega-3, as well as neutral omega-9. In particular, these are olive, mustard, avocado, almond and rapeseed oils. All the other oils should be either excluded or severely moderated, just like with all the animal products. Butter, which is among the other people's favorites, is not an exception too. Even 4 grams of butter a day increases depression rates by 27%, whereas 20 grams of olive oil, that's to say, about a spoonful or 15 grams, decreases depression by 34%. Recommendation is clear. Reduce the omega-6 fats and oils, including sunflower and pumpkin seed oil. Increase the omega-3 fats, canola, almond, avocado, mustard and, better of all, extra virgin olive oils. Get rid of all animal fats. Butter, key butter, which is extremely harmful due to the abundance of oxidified cholesterol. Store fish from the cold seas from 2 to 4 times a week and poultry from 1 to 3 times a week. And now we shall talk about other protein foods to be included in your diet. First, while you are gradually changing your nutrition, be sure to talk to your doctor about including seafood omega-3 supplements from 1000 to 2500 milligrams daily. It is better to take irregular non-concentrated forms, as natural fish oil has in many times higher bioavailability than the concentrates. The next antidepressant food group is dairy, eggs and nuts, which are recommended for some reasons in moderate amounts. Now we are going to explore what amounts are considered to be right. Eggs are antidepressant because eating eggs up to 3 times a week decreases depression by 30% as compared to a complete exclusion of eggs from nutrition. 3 eggs a week and more was shown to decrease depression by 38% and each additional egg tends to reduce depression by 4. But as I show in a separate video of mine on the optimal consumption of eggs, there are other reasons to establish a moderate quantity and I would like to recommend eating no more than 5 to 7 eggs a week, just to avoid the risks of other diseases. And now it comes to dairy. As you might already guess, dairy contains a lot of dairy fat, which has a negative effect on depression symptoms, as well as the overall health. In fact, consumption of fatty dairy products increases depression by 11%, whereas low-fat dairy had no effect. Nuts, if consumed from 1 to 4 times weekly, reduce depression symptoms by 18%. On balance, such reduction of risks seems insignificant, but as they say, a penny saved is a penny earned, and by accumulating positive effects, you improve your overall chances. The most prioritized nuts should be those having higher intake of omega-3 and the antioxidant vitamin E, namely hazelnut and almond. Well, and the last protein food group is beans and legumes. Minus 26%. This is by how much the consumption of beans can give you in fighting your depression. Consequently, we can summarize that fatty dairy products are excluded, low-fat dairy is permitted, moderate amount of eggs are recommended, and as for nuts and legumes, their consumption is highly encouraged, but only in balance with general proteins as well as the right ratio of omega-3 and omega-6. Well, that's how we have found scientifically proven choices for each and every antidepressant food groups, and now I'm going to give you your bottom-line guidelines to facilitate the adherence. First, the right foods for antidepressant breakfast, lunch, and dinner are organized in two different charts to facilitate your choice. The first one includes the studies summarized on the antidepressant foods for each meal, and the second one concentrates on the distribution of these foods throughout the day, as well as their calorie balance for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You may also have snacks, or skip them if you will. Second, these are the foods that I recommend excluding from now on. All animal fats, butter, lard, malted pig fat, oils rich in omega-3, sunflower, soy, corn, sesame, wine grape, pumpkin seed oil, milk whistle oils, etc. Sugar, sweets, and sweet beverages should be excluded as well. And now it comes to red meat, perhaps but for mutton and fat dairy products that should be excluded. Third, the foods to be prioritized most. These include vegetables with high relative ratio of tryptophan to other big five amino acids for each meal. Fruit to be eaten one to three times daily if you don't have malabsorption of glucose. Nuts are to be eaten from two to four times weekly. And if you decide to go for probiotics, go for the most diverse compositions and select several cultures for different meals. Eating, meanwhile, enough fiber, nuts, beans, vegetables, and fruits, giving food to the new big bacteria. The next food group is oils rich in omega-9 with some intake of omega-3. These are extra virgin olive oil, mustard, and almond oils. In the amount of 20 to 30 milligrams daily, depending on the estimated healthy correlation of fats, proteins, and carbs specifically for you. Seafish is to be eaten three four times weekly. Taking fish oil should be consulted with a doctor. And you can take it from 1000 to 2500 milligrams daily throughout a couple of months. You can check the dosage of the supplements and take them if your analysis of blood coagulation are within the norm. You can only eat low-fat dairy products from four to seven times weekly. And I remind you that they are an essential source of calcium. The eggs are to be eaten for the amount of five seven eggs a week. The legumes are eaten two four times weekly. For the grains, I recommend eating at the beginning processed high-glucemic grains, and then shifting to non-refined whole grains, which may happen to be more efficient for you, as well as giving up gluten. Tea and coffee are not moderated here. Feel free to enjoy these drinks. On the whole, the combination of all of these foods is compatible to the healthy antidepressant Mediterranean nutrition. You can see on your screen the approximate crite ratio of various foods that make you healthier in antidepressant Mediterranean nutrition. As compared to the depressing Western nutrition, consisting of the same products, but in the wrong proportions. My gratitude goes to Jelena from Ireland, who enabled this video and helped you to learn how to eat healthy. Remember liking this video, sharing it with your friends, and subscribing to my channel to stay updated. Well, this was Max Pogorili. Always remember, the more you know, the better you eat. Eat well, and grow well.