Change Your Brain Every Day - This is Your Brain on Food, with Dr. Uma Naidoo

Episode Date: July 27, 2020

As the director of nutritional and lifestyle psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, writer for the Harvard Health blog, and author of the new book “This is Your Brain on Food”, Dr. Uma Naidoo is on the cutting scientific edge of how your food affects your brain. In this first episode of a series with Dr. Naidoo, she and the Amens discuss holistic guidelines for keeping your brain in top shape. For more info on Dr. Naidoo’s new book “This is Your Brain on Food”, visit https://www.amazon.com/This-Your-Brain-Food-Indispensable/dp/0316536822

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome everyone to a very special week and a very special guest talking about a topic that is critically important to the Brain Warriors way. we are here with Dr. Uma Naidoo, who is a board-certified psychiatrist from Harvard Medical School, professional chef, I love that, Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, and nutrition specialist.

This is the combination of the future. She is currently the director of nutritional and lifestyle psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital, where she consults on nutritional interventions for the psychiatrically and medically ill. Director of nutrition psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital Academy and has a private practice in Newton, Massachusetts. She also teaches at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts and speaks frequently at conferences at Harvard for Goop audiences. I got to do that. That was super fun. Blogs for Harvard Health and Psychology Today. And she has a brand new book coming August 4th. Thank you. This is Your Brain on Food.

Yes. Awesome. This is Your Brain on Food, an indispensable guide to the surprising foods that we're going to talk about that fight depression, anxiety, PTSD, OCD, ADHD, and more. Wait, this just really couldn't be more. This is just you. I'm so happy to hear that. Thank you for inviting me. Yes. I can't believe this idea of actually working with people with mental health and using food. And that is actually your specialty is so amazing. And I remember when we did many years ago, tried to, well, we did plant food and nutrition into one of the largest chemical addiction recovery programs in the country.

And what a battle it was. Like what a battle it was., what a battle it was. And yet the people actually really understood it. They got it. They got, Oh, if I eat well, I'm going to make better choices. But, but it was really hard with the organization. It was crazy. Wow. But to have Massachusetts general hospital. So great. That's great. How exciting. Dr. Naidoo, talk to us about how you became who you are. I mean,

Tana and I think this is a brilliant combination of specialties. How did that happen for you? Well, first, let me just say, if I can take a second, that it's such an honor to talk to both of you. And it's really just wonderful to be to be I've been excited about this. And thanks, this. So thank you for supporting the book and for hosting me. My story goes back to my family. As a good psychiatrist will tell you, I actually grew up around a lot of food, nurturance and love large extended family and sort of food connection began. They also had many physicians in my family so although we loved delicious food there was a focus on you know trying to eat healthy and understanding that connection and for me in residency especially as I learned to cook I always baked but I learned to

cook then it was the the stress relief at the end of the day for me I looked forward to putting something together experimenting with spices making mistakes mistakes, whatever it was. But to me, that was what I looked forward to. So I began to really think about it more deeply as I saw patients. And as I began to learn about psychiatric medications and prescribing, I felt a real need to also understand the side effects. And there's this particular moment that I talk about in the book where a patient, you know, is pretty upset with me in my community clinic where I was first a resident and came in, you know, in Boston, we love Dunkin' Donuts coffee, and came in with this large coffee and was complaining about the weight gain from a medication I had prescribed only a month before. And I listened

to him and for me, the penny dropped in that moment, because I looked at his coffee, which is a 20 ounce size. And I said, Well, well, tell me, you know, let's call him john. Tell me john, how much of cream and sugars in that he said, Oh, you know, just just like this amount and those number of sugars. And you know, when we broke it down, it was more than a quarter cup of cream, and probably eight sugars. And he drank this every day consistently. And I said, well, it was sort of the beginning of a certain change and shift in my thinking, because I made the connection, I started to talk to him about that. But then I began to be much more observant about this in my patients as to whether they were taking medication or not, what were they eating?

What were they doing in terms of lifestyle, mindfulness, sleep? It all seemed to matter. And over time, the language filled in for me that this was actually nutritional psychiatry, that it was including mindfulness in sort of a integrated, it's almost like integrated psychiatry using a functional model. So always looking for the root cause and trying to figure out what it is that you can help to make a change. Because we know that the diagnostic criteria just do not cover enough people. And there's so many individuals who do not fall into that.

So I really started to explore it. And then I had the opportunity through some good mentorship to start my own clinic and see these individuals in an ongoing way. And in a long-winded way, that was how it came to be. Well, I just think that's spectacular and so important. I remember for me, I had an autistic child. I'm also a child psychiatrist. And when he went on a gluten-free, dairy-free diet in a week, he picked up 50 words. And I'm like, oh, that probably matters. And I've come to believe probably a third of the psychiatric patients we see, it's their diet. And if you get

your diet right, your brain, because your brain is an organ, just like your heart's their diet. And if you get your diet right, your brain, because your brain is an organ, just like your heart's an organ. And then if you don't eat it right, you won't feel right. It seems like clearly there are some people who there are other factors going on. But food, you know,

making your diet clean is certainly not going to hurt it. But cleaning up your diet, definitely in many, if not most cases, is going to help. Well, but cleaning up your diet definitely in many if not most cases is going to help well i'd like i like exactly what you said and and um and and the reason is that it doesn't it doesn't harm you you know if you clean up your diet you're only going to feel better in some form and for for people who sort of you know question well is it is it this kind of science that you

know we went through a lot of research to to get to the factors we put together in the book. And we looked at 700 articles and we condensed them to more than 550. And the only reason I'm saying that is because people sometimes say, oh, it's food, it's nutrition, we all eat, it's soft science. It's actually not, as you well point out. There's a real connection. And when you see it live, you see it happen in patients, you know that it's something we need to investigate and explore more.

I love this. And you've got a picture of a fork on the cover of your book. And it's interesting. Your book's coming out. I have a book coming out in January. And I was worried about it because the times are unprecedented. And I'm like, oh boy, all of the post-election just chatter is going to make it difficult. And I'm sure you're probably a little bit worried about the same thing. Yours is coming out August 4th.

There's just so much going on. It's hard for people to settle down and see stuff like this. But the truth is there's not a better time. Because right now people are, even people who aren't normally anxious, who aren't normally depressed, they are right now. I'm not normally anxious and I'm really anxious right now. And so people are in trouble sleeping. And right now there's not a better time while we are all home.

There's not a better time. What did we hear about COVID-19? It's the 19 extra pounds that people are exactly on their body because they're eating and what we know for example is that sugar boosts serotonin in the brain that having an insulin response pushes tryptophan into the brain and you feel good so the dunkuts, short-term happy, long-term sad. And so really understanding that. Before we go to the second episode, can you give us four or five just big tips? And then in the next episode, we're going to talk about foods to fight things like depression, anxiety, and OCD.

So, you know, some of these guidelines really come from my belief that it's truly an integrated and holistic model. So it is how you eat. It's mindfulness. I know we'll go into specific foods later on, but it's mindfulness in terms of how you approach your meals. It's, you know, always good hygiene around the meals that you're eating. You know, we're checking emails.

We're answering the phone. We're watching what's on the news. We're eating you know be checking emails we answering the phone watching what's on the news we're looking at the COVID-19 reports it's no one can sort of settle down and you're absolutely right the people who were not anxious before are more anxious so part of it is framing when you have your meals and how you have them and I think this is an opportunity this cause is an opportunity for us to reset those things in our families, if we're on our own, whatever your situation might be. Because, you know, the stress eating happens and the stress response as it gets activated, we understand that it impacts how we eat, impacts our sleep. So I would say pay attention to how you're eating and when

you're eating. Be mindful of the outside activities and include really healthy whole foods in your diet, whether you plant-based or whether you keto, whichever diet you follow. I'm not so much of a proponent of a specific diet. I will work with you on whatever the food is that you're eating and try to help you make these tweaks. So things like added sugars, processed foods, preservatives are the big ones. We know that those are not good. The bad fats, we know those are not good. They harm, you know, all of the different conditions in different way. Paying attention to some sort of movement.

And if you're severely depressed and you're not feeling good, think about something you can do to motivate yourself a little bit until you feel better. And food is one of the things that can get you to that place. And emotionally as well, as long as you're not severely ill, and you know, needing to be in a hospital, we can help you in those ways. So having some form of movement, paying attention to good sleep hygiene, and then mindfulness. So all some form of mindfulness that appeals to you, maybe that's a breathing exercise, maybe it's a short relaxation exercise, maybe it's listening to music or some sort of sounds or instructions on an app that help you. Those for me are almost the tenants of how I try to work with people to set up

a good, a good, a good nutritional psychiatry plan. It also has these pillars of, of care involved in them as well. She actually has like, I just opened the book menu for ideal sleep patterns and lower fatigue. So the breakfast on the go scrambled eggs in a mug. I love that. I have eggs almost every morning snack, banana, almond butter over cottage cheese, spicy shrimp, but also actually really similar to the way we talk. All right, when we come

back, we're going to talk about foods that can fight depression, anxiety, and OCD. I can't wait. And if you have learned anything, and I want you to learn. So one of the professors at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Harvard is food is important to your mind. Pay attention to that. Post it on any of your social media sites. Go to brainwarriorsway.com. Leave a review, a comment, or a question. We'll enter you into a drawing to win either the Brain Warriors Way cookbook or my new book, The End of Mental Illness. But you can also pre-order This Is Your Brain on Food, or if you're listening to this after August 4th, you can pre-order This Is Your Brain on food. And Uma, what is the website people can go to? The website is umanaidomd.com. That's

U-M-A-N-A-I-D-O-O-M-D.com. And you can get it there as well. Thank you. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements

from BrainMD, you can use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.