In this week’s podcast, we discuss the mental health crisis affecting the entire world. To truly put this epidemic in perspective, let’s go over some of the numbers of people effected by mental health across the world. It’s estimated that 322 million people have depression, that’s the size of USA! Depression is the #1 cause of disability in the world. 800,000 people per year commit suicide which is the #2 cause of death for young people.
Is there anything we can do about this? Why is this happening? I believe we should look into our diets to see if there’s a link between our food intake and our mental health.
The Standard American diet is high carb, high in processed fats, and high in processed foods in general which are low in vitamins, minerals, healthy fats, and quality proteins.
It’s known that a poor diet leads to insulin resistance.
Is there a link between insulin resistance and mental health? Let’s look.
People with depression are 37% more likely to have diabetes.
People with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are 300% more likely to have type 2 diabetes.
80% of Alzheimers patients are diabetic.
Now this doesn’t mean IR causes mental disorders, but we can draw some conclusions from this data. We can look at it deeper because we know what the brain needs to work optimally: Vitamins, minerals, fats, cholesterol.
⅔ of the brain is fat.
20% of fat in the brain is DHA.
20% of the bodies cholesterol is in the brain.
Plant food contain no DHA, no cholesterol, and are low in bioavailable vitamins and minerals.
To learn more about the mental health crisis and how the rise of the plant based diet is leading to more cases of mental health disorders, listen to this week’s podcast.
Link To Book Mentioned During Podcast
