7 ms·

Not meaning to demean anyone's hard work with psychology, but last year I changed my diet and my depression went away almost completely. From routinely wishin

Not meaning to demean anyone's hard work with psychology, but last year I changed my diet and my depression went away almost completely. From routinely wishing to be dead -> to walking a part of the camino trail in europe and being able to hold a job. Turns out, that all symptoms return when I eat carbs or fiber. But even after the depression gone away there are still some issues in thinking and moving slowly, which could be addressed by therapy. But I'm kinda mad that no doctor ever told me about diet and gut-brain connection.

jyriand 8y ago
What did you change in your diet? Changing a diet seems like a hard thing to do while you are suffering from depression.
- kzrdude 8y ago
  Diet changer here, the first rule of diet, before you even look at what you eat, is that you need to eat. I started eating breakfast consistently. Often eating filling food like leftovers.
  - gnulinux 8y ago
    I don't think this is necessarily true. For me, eating anything makes me slightly feel worse, either it's feeling a little tired or something else. That's why sometimes, I eat 2 meals a day and get all my calories (~3000 calories) in two meals.
  - astura 8y ago
    And I feel at my best when I eat at most once a day (with regular fast days). When I eat all day I feel gross and sluggish.
anonymouzz 8y ago
Not sure why you're being downvoted. There's research indicating links between gut bacteria and (among others) mental health: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4662178/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4662178/ And of course one's gut bacteria culture heavily depends on what one eats.
- hrktb 8y ago
  Not downvoting as it’s still an interesting comment bringing personal insight. This is an article about a different approach to detect/diagnose depression, and the first comment reads a lot like “this weird trick I used to beat depression”. The “Not meaning to demean anyone's hard work with psychology, but” really doesn’t help. They found a way to beat their depression, what does it have to do with other people’s hard work in psychology ?
ataturk 8y ago
I have a very difficult time believing what you say. You may believe it, and hey, maybe there is some odd causation for you, but in general, if carbs and fiber caused depression, then depression would be massively widespread, especially in the countries where rice is a staple. However, that is not the case.
vegardx 8y ago
But what do you eat? Mostly fat and protein?
- darkhorn 8y ago
  Think about hunter gatherers during the Paleolithic period. Nuts, meat, fat, eggs, bone marrow, liver, berries etc.
  - vegardx 8y ago
    But on that list are great sources for fiber and carbs, namely berries and nuts. So going by the assumptions that we should eat like the early humans did, it makes no sense to avoid fiber and carbs.
  - kbutler 8y ago
    100g Almonds carbohydrate 22g (and lots of paleo friendly fat and protein) 100g strawberries carbohydrate 8g (basically the rest of the weight is water) These are hardly "not eating carbohydrates". Also, considering any product of modern agriculture "paleolithic" is inaccurate. The almonds and strawberries differ greatly from the wild varieties available to primitive hunter-gatherers - largely because they have drastically increased carbohydrates - but even the chickens/turkeys/cows producing meat and eggs are very different from undomesticated animals. Even kale and broccoli didn't exist before about 4000 years go.
    - darkhorn 8y ago
      Still better that consuming bread, sugar and alcohol. I didn't write that you should consume 100% prehistoric food.
  - accnumnplus1 8y ago
    They would dig up roots and tubers as well.
  - astazangasta 8y ago
    With respect, how should I think about them? Just dream up whatever I want? Okay. My Paleolithic people ate mostly fish, and supplemented with breadfruit and coconuts. Is that right? You don't have any idea, because you weren't there. Also, WHICH Paleolithic people? I must imagine that those people ate varied diets that were contingent on their locality. People on the tundra would maybe not be eating so many nuts. Encouraging people to construct their diet by imagining the past is a useless exercise.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
cageface 8y ago
You might want to get some tests done on your gut microbiome. Fiber is really important for long term health. Inability to digest fiber is often indicative of gut flora issues.
- graeme 8y ago
  What tests would you recommend, and what can be done if they show a problem?
  - cageface 8y ago
    Gojiman has some good information about this on his YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/4VeRuSk76hE https://youtu.be/4VeRuSk76hE If the tests do turn up any issues the treatment depends specifically on what the issues are.
- windexh8er 8y ago
  This. Dietary fiber is important to positive gut health (flax is a good place to start if you're interested). While cutting carbs and fiber in the short term may have some positive impact (maybe the OP was cutting out a lot of processed fiber/carbs) I can't imagine this is good in the long run. I'm, personally, surprised the conflated war on "carbs" is still a thing. You can't eat fruits and vegetables without carb intake. Not many people are going to claim the fiber and carbs in Kale is harming them detrimentally. Carbs are not the devil certain fad diets claim. The finger should be pointed at the type of food first by asking a question like: is it whole or processed. But lumping them all together is just spreading a lot of misinformation unfortunately.
gnulinux 8y ago
I have a similar experience. When I start eating carbs (including fiber) I start feeling sad, desperate, inactive etc. I did not stop eating carbs though because I like experimenting with food (I spend months eating different diets) and I don't think not eating carbs is healthy (even though it makes me feel bad). So I still eat e.g. broccoli. Whenever I eat any carb, I experience an inflammatory response which I can tell from my skin being inflated, and I feel ants and needles on my skin. [1] I did see doctor for these symptoms and since they're very mild they usually say "meh, it's probably nothing". But I do correlate it with eating carbs (e.g. I do not get the same response when I eat chicken breast, or it's milder when I eat avocado). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formication
- bitexploder 8y ago
  You should start paying close attention to the carbs. Also Cruciferois veggies can be rough on the stomach (bloating, gad). Just see hat you observe. Carbs get stored readily as muscle glycogen, so maybe something in that process is causing issues for you.
- orasis 8y ago
  Same for me. Cutting carbs, dairy, and alcohol and I FEEL AMAZING. I think vitamin D supplementation is also a big factor for me.
  - naasking 8y ago
    Sometimes that helps, but also consider whether cutting all those food sources is actually putting you into a caloric deficit, and that's having the positive effects you see (assuming you don't have a lactose intolerance of course). Caloric restriction reduces inflammation, and chronic inflammation is a big problem in the first world.
    - gnulinux 8y ago
      > putting you into a caloric deficit No? I still eat the same amount of calories (~3000 calories a day, I'm a male who works put regularly). There are more than enough non-carb sources to get calories from (lean meats (chicken breast, turkey breast, pork), sea food, avocado, nuts)
futurix 8y ago
No fiber? How do you poop??
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
KoenDG 8y ago
Well, the article and the research it discusses is exclusively focussed on language. Of course, there are more factors to depression beyond just language. Your body's internal chemistry is also going to factor in. You say cutting carbs and fibers from your diet helped you. It might help some other people as well. For yet another group of people with depression, such a change might not help at all. There's no magic solution and there are many, many possible causes for why a person is suffering from depression.
SkyPuncher 8y ago
My impression (from my wife who is in med school) is specific diet recommendations are very challenging to properly research and quantify for doctors. Sure we know certain things behave certain ways and some things are objectively bad, but it can be hard to recommend a scientifically back diet. With the proper knowledge, it's relatively easy to identify diet deficiencies (e.g. low iron, calcium, or vitamin D levels) but it can be a lot harder to pinpoint excess as the body generally does a good job ridding itself of too much of something. Effects of diets can also take years and years to study. Look at Keto. Lots of people are claiming to see great results from it. I've tried it myself and have seen the positive effects. The problem is nobody knows what the long term effects of Keto will be. They look great in the short-term, like "curing" diabetes, but the long term results aren't so clear. There's a chance that a Keto diet (or any diet) could be placing significant unseen stress on the body.
- orasis 8y ago
  If you want to run your own experiment try Whole 30.
zach43 8y ago
here's the thing though, i've experienced the literal opposite of what you're talking about: adding fiber to my diet helped with mitigating my depression. i think a lot of this kind of diet related advice is anecdotal and very person-specific. we should absolutely ask people to experiment with their diet more, but depending on the extent of their depression and the amount of flexibility they have in their lives (someone who works two jobs a day might find it difficult to find the energy to change their cooking/eating habits), this could be quite difficult for them and its totally possible that a significant fraction (possibly even the majority) of people suffering from depression will see no major benefits to changing their diets.
astura 8y ago
No doctor would suggest "eliminating" fiber, a low fiber diet puts you at risk for developing a bunch of diseases. A no fiber diet sounds downright dangerous. The composition of the elimination diet almost certainly has nothing to do with the resolution of symptoms, just the feeling of being in complete control. We know that people report a wide range of foods as "bad," and one person's "bad" foods are another person's "good" foods, so any particular suggestions are going to be useless. Its been my observation its entirely about perception, not anything to do with the foods they consider "bad," most people I know with extreme diets that have cured all sorts of illnesses actually eat foods that are on their "bad" list because they don't realize it can fit into their "bad" category.
curun1r 8y ago
Depression can be a symptom of Celiac disease and the effects you've seen from your diet change would be consistent with that...have you been tested for Celiac? Did/do you have any of the other symptoms associated with that condition? If you haven't been tested, you should have your doctor get you the blood test since knowing for sure may point to other things (e.g. beer) that you should stay away from and may inform other medical decisions.

jyriand 8y ago

What did you change in your diet? Changing a diet seems like a hard thing to do while you are suffering from depression.

kzrdude 8y ago
Diet changer here, the first rule of diet, before you even look at what you eat, is that you need to eat. I started eating breakfast consistently. Often eating filling food like leftovers.
- gnulinux 8y ago
  I don't think this is necessarily true. For me, eating anything makes me slightly feel worse, either it's feeling a little tired or something else. That's why sometimes, I eat 2 meals a day and get all my calories (~3000 calories) in two meals.
- astura 8y ago
  And I feel at my best when I eat at most once a day (with regular fast days). When I eat all day I feel gross and sluggish.

anonymouzz 8y ago

Not sure why you're being downvoted. There's research indicating links between gut bacteria and (among others) mental health: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4662178/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4662178/ And of course one's gut bacteria culture heavily depends on what one eats.

hrktb 8y ago
Not downvoting as it’s still an interesting comment bringing personal insight. This is an article about a different approach to detect/diagnose depression, and the first comment reads a lot like “this weird trick I used to beat depression”. The “Not meaning to demean anyone's hard work with psychology, but” really doesn’t help. They found a way to beat their depression, what does it have to do with other people’s hard work in psychology ?

ataturk 8y ago

I have a very difficult time believing what you say. You may believe it, and hey, maybe there is some odd causation for you, but in general, if carbs and fiber caused depression, then depression would be massively widespread, especially in the countries where rice is a staple. However, that is not the case.

vegardx 8y ago

But what do you eat? Mostly fat and protein?

darkhorn 8y ago
Think about hunter gatherers during the Paleolithic period. Nuts, meat, fat, eggs, bone marrow, liver, berries etc.
- vegardx 8y ago
  But on that list are great sources for fiber and carbs, namely berries and nuts. So going by the assumptions that we should eat like the early humans did, it makes no sense to avoid fiber and carbs.
- kbutler 8y ago
  100g Almonds carbohydrate 22g (and lots of paleo friendly fat and protein) 100g strawberries carbohydrate 8g (basically the rest of the weight is water) These are hardly "not eating carbohydrates". Also, considering any product of modern agriculture "paleolithic" is inaccurate. The almonds and strawberries differ greatly from the wild varieties available to primitive hunter-gatherers - largely because they have drastically increased carbohydrates - but even the chickens/turkeys/cows producing meat and eggs are very different from undomesticated animals. Even kale and broccoli didn't exist before about 4000 years go.
  - darkhorn 8y ago
    Still better that consuming bread, sugar and alcohol. I didn't write that you should consume 100% prehistoric food.
- accnumnplus1 8y ago
  They would dig up roots and tubers as well.
- astazangasta 8y ago
  With respect, how should I think about them? Just dream up whatever I want? Okay. My Paleolithic people ate mostly fish, and supplemented with breadfruit and coconuts. Is that right? You don't have any idea, because you weren't there. Also, WHICH Paleolithic people? I must imagine that those people ate varied diets that were contingent on their locality. People on the tundra would maybe not be eating so many nuts. Encouraging people to construct their diet by imagining the past is a useless exercise.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

cageface 8y ago

You might want to get some tests done on your gut microbiome. Fiber is really important for long term health. Inability to digest fiber is often indicative of gut flora issues.

graeme 8y ago
What tests would you recommend, and what can be done if they show a problem?
- cageface 8y ago
  Gojiman has some good information about this on his YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/4VeRuSk76hE https://youtu.be/4VeRuSk76hE If the tests do turn up any issues the treatment depends specifically on what the issues are.
windexh8er 8y ago
This. Dietary fiber is important to positive gut health (flax is a good place to start if you're interested). While cutting carbs and fiber in the short term may have some positive impact (maybe the OP was cutting out a lot of processed fiber/carbs) I can't imagine this is good in the long run. I'm, personally, surprised the conflated war on "carbs" is still a thing. You can't eat fruits and vegetables without carb intake. Not many people are going to claim the fiber and carbs in Kale is harming them detrimentally. Carbs are not the devil certain fad diets claim. The finger should be pointed at the type of food first by asking a question like: is it whole or processed. But lumping them all together is just spreading a lot of misinformation unfortunately.

gnulinux 8y ago

I have a similar experience. When I start eating carbs (including fiber) I start feeling sad, desperate, inactive etc. I did not stop eating carbs though because I like experimenting with food (I spend months eating different diets) and I don't think not eating carbs is healthy (even though it makes me feel bad). So I still eat e.g. broccoli. Whenever I eat any carb, I experience an inflammatory response which I can tell from my skin being inflated, and I feel ants and needles on my skin. [1] I did see doctor for these symptoms and since they're very mild they usually say "meh, it's probably nothing". But I do correlate it with eating carbs (e.g. I do not get the same response when I eat chicken breast, or it's milder when I eat avocado). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formication

bitexploder 8y ago
You should start paying close attention to the carbs. Also Cruciferois veggies can be rough on the stomach (bloating, gad). Just see hat you observe. Carbs get stored readily as muscle glycogen, so maybe something in that process is causing issues for you.
orasis 8y ago
Same for me. Cutting carbs, dairy, and alcohol and I FEEL AMAZING. I think vitamin D supplementation is also a big factor for me.
- naasking 8y ago
  Sometimes that helps, but also consider whether cutting all those food sources is actually putting you into a caloric deficit, and that's having the positive effects you see (assuming you don't have a lactose intolerance of course). Caloric restriction reduces inflammation, and chronic inflammation is a big problem in the first world.
  - gnulinux 8y ago
    > putting you into a caloric deficit No? I still eat the same amount of calories (~3000 calories a day, I'm a male who works put regularly). There are more than enough non-carb sources to get calories from (lean meats (chicken breast, turkey breast, pork), sea food, avocado, nuts)

futurix 8y ago

No fiber? How do you poop??

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

KoenDG 8y ago

Well, the article and the research it discusses is exclusively focussed on language. Of course, there are more factors to depression beyond just language. Your body's internal chemistry is also going to factor in. You say cutting carbs and fibers from your diet helped you. It might help some other people as well. For yet another group of people with depression, such a change might not help at all. There's no magic solution and there are many, many possible causes for why a person is suffering from depression.

SkyPuncher 8y ago

My impression (from my wife who is in med school) is specific diet recommendations are very challenging to properly research and quantify for doctors. Sure we know certain things behave certain ways and some things are objectively bad, but it can be hard to recommend a scientifically back diet. With the proper knowledge, it's relatively easy to identify diet deficiencies (e.g. low iron, calcium, or vitamin D levels) but it can be a lot harder to pinpoint excess as the body generally does a good job ridding itself of too much of something. Effects of diets can also take years and years to study. Look at Keto. Lots of people are claiming to see great results from it. I've tried it myself and have seen the positive effects. The problem is nobody knows what the long term effects of Keto will be. They look great in the short-term, like "curing" diabetes, but the long term results aren't so clear. There's a chance that a Keto diet (or any diet) could be placing significant unseen stress on the body.

orasis 8y ago
If you want to run your own experiment try Whole 30.

zach43 8y ago

here's the thing though, i've experienced the literal opposite of what you're talking about: adding fiber to my diet helped with mitigating my depression. i think a lot of this kind of diet related advice is anecdotal and very person-specific. we should absolutely ask people to experiment with their diet more, but depending on the extent of their depression and the amount of flexibility they have in their lives (someone who works two jobs a day might find it difficult to find the energy to change their cooking/eating habits), this could be quite difficult for them and its totally possible that a significant fraction (possibly even the majority) of people suffering from depression will see no major benefits to changing their diets.

astura 8y ago

No doctor would suggest "eliminating" fiber, a low fiber diet puts you at risk for developing a bunch of diseases. A no fiber diet sounds downright dangerous. The composition of the elimination diet almost certainly has nothing to do with the resolution of symptoms, just the feeling of being in complete control. We know that people report a wide range of foods as "bad," and one person's "bad" foods are another person's "good" foods, so any particular suggestions are going to be useless. Its been my observation its entirely about perception, not anything to do with the foods they consider "bad," most people I know with extreme diets that have cured all sorts of illnesses actually eat foods that are on their "bad" list because they don't realize it can fit into their "bad" category.

curun1r 8y ago

Depression can be a symptom of Celiac disease and the effects you've seen from your diet change would be consistent with that...have you been tested for Celiac? Did/do you have any of the other symptoms associated with that condition? If you haven't been tested, you should have your doctor get you the blood test since knowing for sure may point to other things (e.g. beer) that you should stay away from and may inform other medical decisions.