Abstract
Many people are today faced with several physical and mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, sleep disruptions, or even mood disorders. While there are pharmaceutical interventions that may help solve these challenges, it is critical to look at the ways of preventing such diseases or other non-pharmaceutical interventions for treating them. Food plays a critical role in developing good mental and physical well-being. Dietary intake is associated with both direct and indirect impacts on mental and physical health. People who start taking healthy foods are often linked with improved overall health. Thus, it is critical to review the available literature on how food affects the psychological status and physical conditions of humans. Some of the ways in which food can directly affect an individual’s health care through relieving pain and reducing gut problems. Gut problems are known to affect the brain by sending stressful signals. Indirectly, the diet can affect sleep duration and pattern, which consequently affect the mental well-being of people.
Keywords: Food, Diet, Mental, Health, Physical, Sleep, and Psychological.
Literature Review
Food Affects Mental and Physical Wellness
This paper posits that diet affects human behavior and consequently impacts their mental and physical well-being. Indeed, behaviors such as sleeping habits and regular exercise are highly dependent on the foods people take. A healthy diet would promote regular physical exercises, which in turn is good for mental and physical health. Certain foods also influence the duration and quality of sleep. Poor sleeping patterns are often associated with stress and other mental illness. Most studies allude that people who start taking healthy diets develop positive signs of mental and physical well-being owing to a desirable change of behavior. A literature review of some of the scholarly studies would help highlight the proposal supported by this paper.
Journal article 1
A proper diet is crucial in mitigating the risks associated with a particular condition, for instance, obesity, lack of sleep, diabetes, and high blood pressure. According to a study by Gangwisch (2014), the food people take significantly influences the quality of their sleep. People who take a healthy diet are linked with better sleep quality than their counterparts who do not focus on their diets. While physical activity and diet directly contribute to conditions like hypertension, Gangwisch (2014) insists that improving sleeping behavior also reduces the impacts of high blood pressure. The literature shreds of evidence from the interventional studies and experimental sleep deprivation studies suggest that having enough sleep does not only treat high blood pressure but also prevents hypertension. Gangwisch (2014) explains that human blood pressure reduces by about 20% when sleeping. Hence, during the summer, when people sleep for lesser hours, their average daily blood pressure elevates to extreme levels. The reduced sleep durations also expose people to more sympathetic nervous system activity and to increased psychosocial and physical stressors. Alongside modern distractions such as work shifts and travels across time zones, more people are exposed to irregular sleep schedules. Different types of food also contribute to different sleep durations. Foods that lead to short sleep duration are hazardous. Gangwisch links short sleep durations to incidences of obesity, hypercholesterolemia, and diabetes. Thus, a positive change in diet would improve overall body health by improving the quality of sleep.
Article 2
A study by Binks et al. (2020) also investigates the association between diet and sleeping patterns. People who take foods such as vegetables and fruits that are known to be rich in vitamins and minerals tend to have a quality sleep. Unlike other studies that have focused on the impacts of sleep restriction or deprivation, Binks et al. (2020) go a step further to clarify the types of foods that tend to promote healthy sleeping behavior. It is paramount to identify diets that can promote good sleeping habits in the general population since poor quality and duration of sleep can impair several psychological and physiological processes.
Dietary intake plays a critical role in sleep, and both influence long-term well-being and health. Binks et al. (2020) insist that there are particular dietary factors that directly impact the sleep behavior of individuals. For instance, the consumption of tryptophan is associated with improved sleep parameters such as duration and efficiency and reduced sleep latency. The amino acid tryptophan is common in milk. Since the depletion of this amino acid is associated with reduced sleep quality, it is advisable for people to take milk or other diets rich in tryptophan. Diets rich in serotonin and melatonin, such as cherries, are also linked with enhanced quality and duration of sleep. With this review, it is, therefore, possible to select dietary factors that can promote desirable sleep outcomes. Extreme disorders related to sleep, such as insomnia, are known to promote stress and depression and hence support the notion that food impacts mental well-being.
Article 3
One critical assumption that is common in today’s society is the notion that solely depending on a plant-based diet is healthy. However, the effect of a vegetarian or vegan diet on people’s overall physical and mental well-being still remains a contentious topic. A systematic review of 205 studies on the impacts of vegetarian and vegan meals on the brain revealed short and moderate-term benefits on energy metabolism, weight status, and systematic inflammation in diabetic and healthy people (Medawar et al., 2019). While the direct influence of plant-based diets on cognitive functions and mental well-being is reported to be largely controversial, a majority of the studies agreed that the vegan or vegetarian diet improves metabolic alterations and mental health through pathways such as neurotransmitter precursors related to diets and gut microbiome (Medawar et al., 2019). The plant-based diets are typically associated with a low amount of calories which consequently reduces inflammatory activity, better glycemic control, and shifts the metabolism of the neurotransmitter through intestinal activity.
The higher intake of animal-based protein, unlike plant-based, is linked with increased risk for cardiovascular derangements controlled by increased metabolites like trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO). Besides, plant-based diets such as vegetables, fruits, and legumes contain more plant-based diets that induce crucial processes of metabolism like downregulated protein fermentation and uncontrolled carbohydrate fermentation that prevent chronic conditions like obesity and type 2 diabetes since food digestion is slowed down. Thus, food intake can also affect people’s mental and physical health directly.
Article 4
An improved diet is a crucial intervention for people suffering from chronic pain and anxiety disorders. According to Majeed and Sudak (2018), chronic pain affects almost 30% of the world’s adult population. While opiates are used to provide essential treatment for chronic pain, the world has shifted from such intervention owing to the crisis of opiate addiction. Chronic pain is typically linked with loss of finance, disability, and emotional and physical problems. While the use of pharmaceutical interventions is effective in lowering pain, their use has been largely discouraged due to addiction. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) now advocates for the adoption of alternative strategies. Non-pharmacological treatments such as mindfulness-based interventions, hypnosis, and cognitive behavioral therapy can help lower pain perception and improve movements and functioning (Majeed and Sudak, 2018). A good diet would encourage non-pharmacological treatments that reduce chronic pain.
Article 5
Foods have a lot of influence on people’s gut health and, consequently, their mental and physical well-being. Schnorr and Bachner (2016) illustrate that poor physical health of the gut that arises after gut microbiota shifts from normal is likely to lead to poor mental well-being. Besides, the authors posit that complementary therapeutic designs such as being focused on diverse nutritional diets and applying supplements for probiotic diets would be instrumental in improving mental and physical health conditions. Extant literature has majorly ignored the interaction between somatic health and psycho-behavioral function. Schnorr and Bachner (2016) explain that psychological well-being and gut health are interrelated and term it the gut-brain-axis (GBA). The enteric nervous system allows the brain and the guts to communicate through signals. Hence, the type of food taken in the gut can influence the anxiety and depression signals sent to the brain.
These shreds of evidence suggest that the type of food people take has a direct or indirect influence on their mental and physical well-being. The food can directly affect mental well-being by causing gut problems or relieving chronic pain. Gut health can affect the mental wellness of any individual since it communicates to the brain through the GBA system. Thus, this directly links food to the psychological health of humans. Diet can also be applied as a non-pharmaceutical technique for relieving pain. The use of opiates has led to a crisis where the majority of the patients are becoming addicted and starting to abuse the drugs. The healthcare agencies like CDC have since promoted the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions. Dietary intake provides a critical intervention to solve cases of chronic pain in patients.
Besides, dietary intake can also affect mental and physical well-being indirectly by affecting behaviors that influence conditions. Quality and duration of sleep are essential to maintain good health both physically and psychologically. However, the quality and duration of sleep are known to be directly affected by dietary intake. People who take plant-based diets are linked with better mental and physical well-being. In addition, plant-based diets reduce the risk of developing chronic conditions such as high blood pressure or diabetes. Other foods, such as milk, contain required amino acids that encourage longer sleep. Hence, dietary intake can also have indirect impacts on mental and physical well-being.
References
Binks, E, Vincent, G., Gupta, C., Irwin, C., & Khalesi, S. (2020). Effects of Diet on Sleep: A Narrative Review. Nutrients, 12(4), 936–. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12040936
Gangwisch. (2014). A Review of Evidence for the Link Between Sleep Duration and Hypertension. American Journal of Hypertension, 27(10), 1235–1242. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajh/hpu071
Majeed, Ali, A. A., & Sudak, D. M. (2018). Mindfulness-based interventions for chronic pain: Evidence and applications. Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 32, 79–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2017.11.025
Medawar, Huhn, S., Villringer, A., & Veronica Witte, A. (2019). The effects of plant-based diets on the body and the brain: a systematic review. Translational Psychiatry, 9(1), 226–17. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-019-0552-0
Schnorr, S. L., & Bachner, H. A. (2016). Focus: microbiome: integrative therapies in anxiety treatment with special emphasis on the gut microbiome. The Yale journal of biology and medicine, 89(3), 397. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5045149/
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