This Is Your Brain on Food - An Indispensable Guide to the Surprising Foods that Fight Depression, Anxiety, PTSD, OCD, ADHD, and More by Uma Naidoo MD
Product Details
Web ID: 14737298Really helpful
This book was incredibly helpful in understanding which foods to pack for my kid's lunch, as well as what we should all be eating to make the most of each day. I was amazed at some of the correlations between foods and moods that I'd never realized.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Great intro to nutritional psychiatry
Really enjoyed this quick glimpse into the super complicated field of nutritional psychiatry! Dr. Naidoo does a great job of breaking it all down in a digestible format and I've suggested it to several of my friends who struggle with anxiety and other mental health conditions.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Great book for improving mental health!
A great reading if you're struggling with anxiety or depression and want to improve the symptoms with food. Wow!! Shocking improvement!
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Good ideas undermined by weak epidemiology
I recently listened to a very interesting conversation on the Doctor's Farmacy podcast with Dr. Uma Naidoo about nutritional psychiatry. I actually found this discussion interesting enough to buy Dr. Naidoo's new book, This Is Your Brain on Food: An Indispensable Guide to the Surprising Foods that Fight Depression, Anxiety, PTSD, OCD, ADHD, and More. Unfortunately, after reading the book, I now wish I hadn't wasted my time or money. When I was about an hundred pages into the book, I decided I'd only finish the book to write a review to share on Amazon. At that point, an hundred pages in, I was going to give the book 3 stars. But the more I read of the book, the fewer stars I decided to give it. I actually broadly agree with many of the points that Dr. Naidoo argues for in the book including that one's diet directly affects one's mental health, there's a connection between gut health and brain health, and modern Western or standard American diets aren't healthy. Though, we don't fully agree on what makes a Western diet unhealthy. Psychiatry today also tends to look at and try to ameliorate symptoms, rather than find and address underlying causes. So, I actually commend Dr. Naidoo for exploring diet and its impact on the gut, brain and mental health as an underlying factor affecting mental health. Poor diets, sleep disorders, malocclusions, interrupted circadian rhythms, environmental toxins, trauma, etc all impact one's brain, gut health and hormones. Sadly, many of these factors aren't fully explored before psychiatrists prescribe pills in our drug happy system of medicine. Unfortunately too, whatever broad general agreement I had with Dr. Naidoo is severely undermined by her reliance on very weak confounded epidemiological and rodent studies as well as her repeated inconsistent nutritional advice including her inconsistent saturated fat phobia, her misrepresentation of Mediterranean diets, and a few other cringe worthy things that I'll quickly touched on below. Plus on top of that, some of the misrepresentation and or lack of critical analysis of the research cited was downright disturbing. Why? She either didn't understand what she read or was dishonest about what she read to further her dietary biases. Let's start with epidemiological studies, where she hyped low relative risk numbers enough times to make me wonder whether or not she knows the difference between relative and absolute risk. Stating that there's a 20 percent (relative risk) increase between the subject and control groups in a study doesn't mean much of anything without knowing the absolute risk. Such small R/R's typically are so confounded as to not really demonstrate anything. Small R/R's also often have absolute risks that are very small in the less than one or two percent range. I think she's spent too much time at Harvard where fear mongering with very weak and confounded R/R's seems to be the modus operandi. Correlations and associations do NOT necessarily equal causation. Dr. Naiboo also repeatedly cites rodent studies to typically berate high saturated fat diets. But she doesn't seem to be aware that the high fat rodent chow diets usually consist of soybean or corn oil and sugar. These diets aren't natural diets for rodents to consume. Plus such rodent chow diets are quite a bit different than the healthy fats (including saturated fats) eaten in the context of LCHF, keto, paleo, or similar diets. So holding out rodent studies- without breaking down what the rodents actually ate- to prove high saturated fat diets are bad is either naive or dishonest. For example in chapter six, on dementia and brain fog, in back to back studies she cites rodent studies as examples of harmful high saturated fat diets in footnotes 16 (Menay et al 2010) and 17 (Wu et al 2014). In Menay et al 2010, the rodent chow for the high fat diet is specifically noted. This rodent chow #D12266B consists mainly of sugar and corn oil (over 75% corn oil with the remaining fat from butter, a saturated fat). The author falsely describes this rodent chow as primarily a "high saturated fat diet". In Wu et al 2014, the specific chow isn't noted. However the high fat diet is specifically described as being high in both saturated (SFA) and monounsaturated (MUFA) fat made from lard and corn oil. Lard from factory pigs is a mix of approximately 40% SFA, 50% MUFA (oleic acid) and 10% poly-unsaturated fat (PUFA). Corn oil is nearly 60% linoleic acid (an Omega 6 PUFA) and 28% oleic acid (MUFA). So is the oxidative stress and other maladies, that Dr. Naidoo attributes solely to the "bad" saturated fat, caused by the SFA or the other "healthy" fats (and sugars) in the rodent chow in this study? Due to how the study was designed including what the rodents were fed, there's no definitive answer to this question because of the confounders.... despite Dr. Naidoo's claims to the contrary. In general, with saturated fats, Dr. Naidoo is kind of silly. To her, saturated fats are "bad fats". However, she recommends avocados, avocado oil, and coconut oil as "healthy fats". The most common avocado is the Haas avocado, which consist of 25 to 30% palmitic fatty acid (a saturated fat) and around 30 to 35% total saturated fatty acids. (Some other kinds of less common avocados, like Pinkertons, have less saturated fat- around 20% SFA's). Coconut oil is largely lauric, capric and palmitic SFA's. So coconut oil is over 80% SFA's. But similar fatty acid compositions in red meats per her repeated assertions are "bad unhealthy fat". She doesn't seem to understand that most sources of fat consist of different ratios of saturated, mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated fatty acids. I've seen pastured lard as high as 60% oleic fatty acid, a mono-unsaturated fatty acid (olive oil is around 70 to 75% oleic fatty acid). Pastured tallow is also primarily monounsaturated/poly-unsaturated fatty acids with guess what saturated fatty acid? Yep, you betcha.... palmitic fatty acid. Guess she didn't take any lipidology courses when she got her nutritional degree. But that's not the only inconsistency regarding red meat. She also notes not to eat grain finished red meat because of its high Omega 6 to 3 ratios (around 15 to 1) yet writes to eat "healthy fat" from almonds as well as eat almonds in general. Hmmm....all beef (whether grain or grass finished) has fairly low amounts of omega 6's and 3's, so it's not a good or bad source for either. But almonds, on the other hand, are really high in Omega 6's and their ratio of 6's to 3's is around 2000 to 1. Many nuts and seeds are high in Omega 6's and very low in 3's including Brazil nuts (1000 to 1), and pumpkin seeds (175 to 1). Funny too she advises against eating wheat bran because it's high in phytates (phytic acid) that will block mineral absorption. She makes this recommendation almost immediately after suggesting to eat other foods like pumpkin seeds and Brazil nuts... that are guess what? Yep you betcha again, very high in phytates that block mineral absorption including zinc, selenium and iron. Brazil nuts are one of the highest nut sources of phytic acid. (Vegans are routinely deficient in zinc and iron. It's not from not eating enough pumpkin seeds. The zinc, and iron in nuts, seeds and many plants just aren't very bio-available since phytates - as well as oxalates- are chelators that bind minerals). But the many inconsistencies don't end there.....She advises people not to eat foods that easily oxidize, but suggests people should eat canola oil instead of soybean oil due to the Omega 6 to 3 ratios. Well guess what? When canola oil is expeller pressed and hexane extracted, it's oxidized so much during production that it has to be deodorized to mask the rancidity (see video below). Some of her recipes also use canola for cooking. When polyunsaturated fats are heated during the extraction of the oil or during cooking, the bonds break and the oils form plant sterol oxidation product [POPS]. These POPS effect membrane function and cause inflammation, thus they have been connected to arteriosclerosis (Vanmierlo et al, 2012). Furthermore with canola oil, she also mentions a "Norway Diet" that uses canola oil instead of olive oil. Canola oil wasn't even created until the 1970's so there never was any Norwegian diet that ever relied on canola oil as its primary fat source. There also was no single Mediterranean Diet. Whether you're in Italy, Spain, France, Turkey, Greece, etc, there are multiple Mediterranean diets many of which include a lot of cured meats (salumi, charcuterie) , fermented dairy (cheese, yogurt), pork, lamb and fish. These are not "plant based" diets. France eats a ton of butter as well yet somehow doesn't have high heart disease or more mental health disorders than other European countries. As it turns out, the make believe Mediterranean Diet that the author espouses, that no one actually eats in this region, is a fabrication of Walter Willett, who concocted this fantasy in 1993 at a conference sponsored by the olive oil industry. Continued........
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Informative
Dr. Naidoo is uniquely qualified to write this book: she not only trained as a psychiatrist, but also attended culinary school and studied nutrition. She discusses how the gut is intricately involved with what goes on in our brains—and how what we eat is important to this “gut-brain romance.” Each chapter reviews case studies of the particular condition (depression, anxiety, OCD, dementia, bipolar disorder, PTSD, schizophrenia, ADHD, fatigue, insomnia, and libido) and makes nutritional recommendations based on both studies and her own experience treating patients. (I especially liked that each study specifically mentioned the name of the lead investigator, and was pleased to see that many were women.) At the end of the book, she guides us through what might be needed in the beginning kitchen, recaps the foods which are basic to a healthy diet, and offers some recipes to incorporate them. I read a lot of books on nutrition, but this one absolutely stands out for its accessible writing style, clear organization, and invaluable information. Highly recommended.
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Food as Brain Medicine
A groundbreaking guide for eating well for mental health from just the right writer. Uma Naidoo, nutritional psychiatrist and professionally trained chef, shows how food is medicine for a range of brain disorders from depression to dementia, OCD to anxiety. Explains nutrition science and the ability to both prevent and treat brain illness with food. Examples: For PTSD, eat blueberries. For anxiety, up your Vitamin D. Skip salami to avoid depression and caffeine to lessen dread. I especially loved the author’s personal story about boosting treatment for her cancer and anxiety with a healthful diet. She has such a warm conversational style that I found myself trusting her completely, which enhanced my reading. While COVID deaths are rising again, we can treat our angst with the meals we eat, using this easy-to-read text as guide. Includes case studies, cheat sheets on what to eat or avoid, plus delicious nutritious recipes. Highly highly recommended! 5 of 5 Stars Pub Date 04 Aug 2020 Big hugs to the author, Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley for the review copy. Opinions are mine. #ThisIsYourBrainOnFood #NetGalley
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com