564. This Is Your Brain on Food: Connecting Mental Health & Nutrition with Dr. Uma Naidoo

Our guest today is the brilliant Uma Naidoo, MD, a Harvard board-certified psychiatrist, professional chef, author, and nutrition specialist. Dr. Uma's book is called This is Your Brain on Food. It's a full guide to the surprising foods that fight things like depression, PTSD, ADHD, anxiety, OCD, and more. 

We go super cutting edge in this one as we talk about the undeniable relationship between our mental health and diet/nutrition.

We start with her own health journey and integrated practice before getting honest with a few familiar faces in our cupboards at home – coffee, alcohol, sugar, seed oils, etc. – myth busting and truth telling on what’s good, and what isn’t, for our mental wellbeing.

We all know the difference between feeling good after eating good, and feeling bad after eating poorly. Listen in to get the science on why that happens, and how we can design our diets (not restrict them) to unlock our best selves. 

We also talk about:

• Relatively new field of nutritional psychiatry 
• A lesson from a patient 
• Uma’s cancer diagnosis and treatment
• Precision-based integrated nutrition 
• Connection between mental health and food
• Toxicity of a leaky gut (and fixing it)
• The brain chemistry of stress and sugar
• Fast food and marketing messages
• The serotonin hypothesis
• Pros and cons of coffee
• Nutrition in schools, then and now
• Gaps in the current medical system 
• Eat the rainbow 

Resources:

• Read: This Is Your Brain on Food
• Website: umanaidoomd.com
• Instagram: @drumanaidoo

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