The Foods You Eat (or Drink) Impact Your Moods

From breakfast until bedtime, your daily diet delivers a pharmacy full of foods whose natural chemicals influence your mood by interacting with neurotransmitters. These are chemical messengers that ferry electrical signals between the neurons i.e. nerve cells that control everything from your mind to your muscles, as well as organ functions, a job essential to your body’s function.

Perhaps the best-known neurotransmitter is Serotonin, which helps regulate mood, sleep patterns, sexuality, anxiety, appetite, and pain. A second neurotransmitter, histamine, is in charge of wakefulness, how you handle food, and your motivation to go about your day. Dopamine is part of your “reward” system, enabling you to experience pleasure, get excited, and learn new things. Finally, epinephrine (also known as adrenaline) and norepinephrine are responsible for your body’s so-called “fight-or-flight response” to fear and stress.

For centuries, millions of people have used specific foods to influence neurotransmitters, primarily to wash away negative feelings and turn a bad mood good.

Start with the world’s most famous mood food, that first cup of hot coffee (or tea) whose caffeine tells your brain to wake up and face the world. It also speeds up the passage of food through your gut but that’s a tale for another day.

Later on, the alcohol in a cocktail hour’s moderate glass of whiskey or wine soothes the day’s tension. Teetotalers can substitute a chocolate bar which delivers a serving of anandamide, a cannabinoid many studies show boosting your ability to concentrate and focus–which may or may not be soothing. just before you turn off the lights, the relaxing amino acid tryptophan in a glass

Finally, just before you turn off the lights, the relaxing amino acid tryptophan in a glass of warm milk will ride glucose from a companion cookie into your brain. The cookie’s carbs appear to help tryptophan cross the blood brain barrier where it increases the production of serotonin, easing your passage to dreamland. Caution: Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Judith Wurtman, co-author of The Serotonin Power Diet, warns that carbs can be “a double-edged sword.” She explains that many of us learn to rely on carbs, especially snack foods, to lift our spirits. The result is likely to be extra pounds, a situation needing a mood lifter of its own.

Other mood modifiers include high protein foods such as fish whose omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids New Zealand researchers label effective mood stabilizers. Protein-packed beef, chicken, turkey, and eggs are all linked to higher levels of dopamine and norepinephrine. For vegans, the choice choices are chickpeas, lentils, and tofu. Folate-rich foods including spinach, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, various beans, beets, papaya and tofu have been reported to relieve some people who suffer from depression. For those who prefer pills, studies suggest that taking folate supplements (there’s a day’s supply in most multivitamins)

Wait! There’s more on the menu. Sweet potatoes are rich in magnesium, another anxiety antidote, and believe it or not, walnuts seem to improve cognition, i.e., your memory, attention, and language while reducing your craving for starchy and sugary foods.

All that being true, while no single food will change your personality or heal a mood disorder, as Cleveland Clinic psychologist Susan Albers notes, lots of foods do make you feel better. “Make it a goal,” she writes, “to add one of these foods a day and over time, you’re going to see an improvement in your mood.”