Instant Genius - Eating for your brain, with Kimberley Wilson

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

Kimberley Wilson, a psychologist, nutrition expert and Great British Bake Off finalist, explains what we should eat to keep our brains healthy. Once you’ve mastered the basics with Instant Genius, dive deeper with Instant Genius Extra, where you’ll find longer, richer discussions about the most exciting ideas in the world of science and technology. Only available on Apple Podcasts. Produced by the team behind BBC Science Focus Magazine. Visit our website: sciencefocus.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Terms apply. This podcast is sponsored by name, audio and focal. Streaming has made music more accessible than ever, but true listening is about more than ease. It's about quality. British audio experts name audio, alongside French acoustic specialist focal, combine handcrafted tradition with cutting-edge innovation and high-end materials,

delivering digital precision with analogue warmth, so you can experience exceptional sound at home. Music just as the artist intended. Visit name, audio.com to learn more. Hello and welcome to Instant Genius, a bite-sized masterclass in podcast form. I'm Aliceipscomb Southwell, the managing editor at BBC Science Focus magazine. In this episode, I talked to Kimberly Wilson, a chartered psychologist and visiting lecturer

based in London. She's a former finalist on the Great British Bake-off and an award-winning food producer with a degree in nutrition. In this episode, she tells me all about the link between food and mental health. Kimberly, you're a psychologist, but you've also got a background in nutrition, and you've combined both those things to look at how food and mental health are linked. So can you tell us a little more about how much food can affect our mental health? Actually quite a profound effect and in different ways. So I think when people ask that question, they often think, oh, just the kind of immediacy,

but I always want to take them back to the beginning and remind you, all very gently, that your brain is made of food, right? And in fact, of course, we are made of food when we were just stating in utero. Your body was being made up of all of the component parts of your mother's diet. So little bits of you might have been, you know, a piece of chicken or a slice of ham or, you know, and all these dietary components got broken down and then reorganized into cells that became you. And this is exceedingly the case in the brain because the brain is made up of nutrients that you can only get. through the diet. So there's essential fatty acids,

the omega-3 fatty acid, which must come from the diet, so oily fish and seafood, form about 30% of the outer membrane of your brain cells. So if you're not eating those foods, and already your brain cells and your brain function, therefore, are compromised. So

diet affects the brain and mental health, first of all, in terms of structure and structural composition. But then, of course, your neurotransmitters are made from nutrients. So things like serotonin are composed of tryptophan, which is an amino acid, so from protein, but also calcium, phosphorus, vitamin B12, B6, iron. So you need these nutrients to make the chemical signalers to send the signals between the brain cells that are made of food. So food is absolutely

essential. And then on an even shorter scale, we know that food in the immediacy can affect our mood. So anybody who's had a couple of glasses of wine or a cup of coffee know that there are compounds in food that can very quickly affect our brain's functions, whether that is a sense of elation or focus and concentration in the case of caffeine or relaxation in the case of alcohol. So we can see that happen acutely with those substances, but we also know that other nutrients over time can help essentially improve the conditions for. better focus, better tension, and better mood. You often find, though, that maybe people who are struggling with their mental health often eat poorly and sort of which way around does the causation. So is their mental health making them eat poorly or they're eating poorly and that's affecting their mental health?

As with so many things in biology, it's a bit of both. You end up in this feedback loop of poor nutrition and poorer, particularly in the case of depression and poorer mood and brain health outcomes. So mood-impairing food choices so that we know that when you're feeling low, when you're feeling tired, and we see that also when people are feeling ill, you just don't have the energy almost to be up and cooking complex meals. Also, the lowering of a sense of pleasure that comes with things like depression means that other features of your lifestyle that are pleasurable and hedonistic, such as highly palliative. foods become more enjoyable. There might also be a way in which the quick hit of sugars from a highly processed food can give you a bit of a boost if you're feeling particularly low so that

it does increase dopamine. High carbohydrate foods can increase the availability of serotonin in the brain. So these kind of very quick release energy comfort foods or highly processed foods can give you a short-term boost. In the long term, they end up not being associated very good health outcomes, but that can be one of the reasons that people turn to these foods. And on the flip side, we know that a poor diet is a modifiable risk factor for mood disorders, so much so that the New Zealand and Australia Psychiatry Association has just updated their guidelines for mood disorder maintenance and treatment to include diet and exercise. And that's around the availability of certain nutrients.

around potentially the inflammatory profile of a poor diet, as well as things like the omega-3s that I mentioned earlier on. So it becomes this feedback loop. We're in poor diet, leaves it poor mood, leads to poor food choices, and back again. I think you briefly touched on that about depression and anxiety can be helped by the foods you could eat. So what particular foods are there that could help with those conditions? So I guess it's worth saying that in the acute phase, so there's nothing that you're going to eat now that's going to make you feel better in half an hour. In all of the clinical studies that we're looking at, we're talking about overall dietary improvement over a case of, you know, eight to 12 weeks. So in that sense,

we're talking about really improving the nutrient profile of your diet. So increasing omega-3 fatty acids. So those oily fish, salmon, mackerel, anchovies, trout, herring, sardines, that sort of thing, as well as, you know, muscles and the kind of bivales, clams and that, you know, very rich in minerals that are important for the brain as well. Leafy green vegetables, they have been associated with slower brain aging. And polyphenol rich food, so those brightly colored fruits and vegetables, your really berries are the top of the chart for those. And what they do for the brain is increase the flexibility of your blood vessels,

which means more blood can flow through. And because your brain is such a hungry organ, it's, you know, plowing through tons of nutrients and energy, glucose, that having a good blood supply means that your brain will simply just be able to work more efficiently, you know, get more nutrients, glucose and oxygen in through a healthy blood supply

and you'll get a kind of a better brain function both in the acute phase and long term. So it's really, you know, it's the things that we're told, which is fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and that's largely to support your gut health and essential fats.

And yeah, I guess the other side of it is the things that you should eat less of, which is a slightly different story. So from the sounds of it, it sounds very much like fish is brain food. He's got all these essential fatty acids in it, omega-3s, which are really important for your brain health. What if someone was unable to eat fish or if they were a vegan or vegetarian, is there anything else that could be just as good that wasn't fishy? So yeah, so lots of people are, you know, whether you're vegan or vegetarian, and don't like the taste of fish or allergic to fish.

You have concerns about the accumulation of maybe toxins and that sort of thing. Lots of people are eating less fish. The recommendations are that we should still be eating at least one serving of oily fish per week. And the belief, certainly in the literature, is that the benefits outweigh the risks. Because your question was anything that is as good as fish. And actually, you can supplement with. an algae-based DHA. So if you don't eat fish and seafood, that would be your second best bet.

But I wouldn't say it's as good as eating the whole food. You know, with anything, your nutrients work in synergy. And the nutrients that come from whole foods work with the other nutrients in that food or the other component of your meal. And that's how we evolve to make use of nutrients and to digest our food. So taking discrete single individual supplements, isn't really ever for whatever nutrient we're talking about going to be as good as eating the whole food. But if you don't eat oil efficiency food and you really must be getting these fats in for your brain health, then you're looking at an algae-based, so not a chi or a walnut seed-based omega-3, an algae-based omega-3 supplement to get your recommended daily amount.

I think you mentioned that some of those foods might take 8 to 12 weeks to have an effect. So if I wanted to be feeling really alert tomorrow for work or something, I couldn't have a meal of fish and vegetables tonight and then tomorrow I'll be all raring to go. Well, I mean, in terms of mood, we're talking about several weeks, but there are some foods that have shown acute, as in kind of within 90 minutes' effects, on things like alertness and short-term memory. And they tend to be the polyphenol rich food. So in studies where you get someone to drink a drink that is composed of, you know,

the equivalent of 200 grams of blueberries, either as an extract or as powdered blueberries, or a cherry drink or a polyphenol enriched orange juice. Against placebo, the people who eat the polyphenol rich food or drink will have faster reaction times, faster information processing, more attention, more sustained attention in a cognitively fatiguing task. so a task that is meant to be boring and difficult, like counting backwards from a thousand by seven, you know, that kind of thing. So actually, though in the short term, you can get boosted attention from polyphenol rich food. So, you know, if you were going into an exam and you

wanted to, you know, know, know, know that your brain was going to be at its fighting best, as well as having eaten very well for the previous three months, you might want to either have a coffee and or, you know, a punnet of blueberries on your way into the example. So say you've had a very horrible day in work and you get home from work and you eat a big bowl of ice cream or a donut or something. So even though these comfort foods might not be good for you, are they actually having a positive effect on your brain to boost your mood? Well, I mean, I guess there's a question about what we call positive. So they will be boosting your mood. So for a couple of reasons. So one is that hedonic response. So ice cream.

and that lovely combination of fat and sugar, which hits the bliss point, which just kind of lights up your soul, but also your brain, you know, and we'll promote the release of dopamine and other kind of pleasurable at signaling molecules. So you will get a boost from that. We know that just anything that tastes sweet

tends to make us feel a little bit happier and or a little bit more relaxed. And so in the short term, There's no, I don't think there's a real problem with doing that. You know, if you want to, you know, if it's raining and your shoes are wet, you want to come home and have like some lovely cheese on toast or a cup of tea and a biscuit just to warn me through. The issue becomes on the kind of long-term basis. You know, what are you eating consistently?

If your only way of coping with stress is to have a bowl of ice cream, then we have a problem that needs addressing. But the occasional bowl of ice cream is going to be fine. And yes, it will have effects. like I said, both idonically in pleasure, but also increasing the availability of serotonin and the brain, which can make you feel a little bit better in the short term. So are there any foods we should definitely be avoiding then? You've spoken about the foods we should definitely be eating. Are there any that we need to just say no to?

Well, kind of, yes. And I try to have a kind of food positive approach to things. But if I was being very strict, looking at the literature, there is essentially no good news about sugar, sweet and beverages. So whether we're talking about fizzy drinks, whether we're talking about energy drinks, that big shot of free sugar that is very quickly absorbed into your body is essentially bad news. There is sugar sweetened beverages are essentially the most processed food we could possibly eat. You know, there isn't a similar beverage in nature. that comes like that. You know, it's either water or milk, really, in nature where we'd be consuming, you know,

where we're getting our liquids and both of those are fairly low or zero sugar content. So sugar sweetened beverages are very quickly associated with increases in inflammatory markers and impairments in hippocampal function and size. Alongside that, another study found that essentially the Western diet, so a diet, a diet, that is high in processed foods, high in refined sugars, high in salts and saturated fats, and low, you know, the corollary of that is low in fibre, low in vitamins and nutrients, within a week impaired memory function. If there was one thing, if people were saying, you know, I want to cut back on something,

just switching, if you regularly eat a sugar sweetened beverages, switching one of those out for tea, ice tea water, sparkling water with a twist, of lemon would be probably a good thing. What could some people do who maybe, you know, they really want to eat well, but potentially may maybe find it a struggle to afford to buy lots of fruits and vegetables, you know, oily fish? Is there any particular foods they could be looking at or a bit more affordable? Well, I think I would always say don't neglect the freezer section. So yes, like fresh fruits and vegetables and fresh fish can be quite expensive, you know, and also they take time, you know, boiling serving of beans takes time and energy. But frozen fruits and vegetables are just as good. And

you can get lots of different packs of ready chopped onions and frozen spinach. I always have frozen spinach in my freezer. Frozen berries. So never neglect the freezer section. They're usually frozen at peak. So they're often in terms of quality. They're absolutely fine. The texture will be slightly different, obviously, compared to fresh. But quality should be, there should be no difference. And, you know, they last longer, there's less waste, cheaper, so that can be a very economical option. I really like those little grain pouches that you can get. They are, I mean, they vary in price, but what's great about them is that they are shelf stable. Again, they're not going to kind of go off and you can open them and have a meal within within a minute, I think,

if you cook them in microwave. Tinned fish as well. So tinned fish, I think sardines, and, and mackerel and salmon all come in somewhere around or just under a pound. And one or two tins of that a week, you could bulk it out by stretching it into a tomato sauce to serve with pasta or with rice. I had that yesterday. For dinner yesterday, I had tinned pilches and tomato sauce with rice. So, yeah, don't neglect. You know, not all processor canned foods are bad.

And so tinned fish, some tinned vegetables, certainly tinned beans, tin tomatoes, and the fron. vegetable section is great if you're trying to save money. I wanted to touch on something that I saw in your book where you've talked quite extensively about how some research was carried out where they found that in prisons, if people were fed a different diet that had more nutrients in it, then actually prisoner violence could be reduced.

Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Gladly, this is my soapbox. Strap in, let's have a little chat. because this is some of the most profound nutrition research, kind of on the planet, because lots of people are asking, you know, what shall we eat to improve mood? But we have an intervention, a nutritional intervention that can reduce violence. And I think that's incredible. So the first study was conducted in 2002, it's known as the Aylesbury study,

and it looked at young offenders, young men, quite violent young men, being held in a young Offenders Institute. And in this trial, they improved, and it was, you know, it was a gold standard in terms of, you know, our clinical research, which is it was a double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled trial. We had one group who were taking a placebo, an inert supplement, and another group who were taking the nutrients. And those on the nutrients, at the end of the study, so by eight to 12 weeks had 37% fewer, well, 37% fewer objective incidents of violence. And when we say objective, it wasn't just kind of how angry are you feeling today? Are you feeling like you might punch someone? It was looking at, in every prison at the end of every wing is a book and the officers keep a note

of the things, you know, the goings on, the activities on the wing. So if someone gets into a fight, if someone threatens an officer, if someone barricades their cell, they take a note of that. And so it was just the difference was looking in the logbook of the wings of the two groups of men, and those who took the nutrients were 37% less violent, which is the really important part, because it's interesting having one study that shows this. But when you only have one study, it could just be an artifact. It could be, there could be bias. There could have been something particular about this group of men.

But we now have international replications of this study in the Netherlands, in Singapore, and another smaller study that was done in the UK. And all of them have found the same thing, on average, 30% less violence with improved nutrition by supplementation. So, yes, this is incredible research. And it's very strange to me that we're not doing anything with it. Yeah, because you'd think it'd be quite affordable as well to give a supplement in prisons. Well, it's incredibly affordable, and especially compared to how much it costs to house a prisoner. To house a prisoner, it costs somewhere between 50 and 86,000 pounds per year, depending on the category of the prison and the, you know, the dangerousness of the offender.

And that includes, you know, managing healthcare, their nutrition and the meals, obviously staffing, all of that stuff. And certainly with the first study, the 2002 study, when they did an economical assessment, what they found is that it would cost, if you, implemented this across the entire prison estate, it would cost less than 10 pence a day, so 40 pounds a year per prisoner to roll this out in terms of nutritional supplementation. And that was 20 years ago. So we know that, you know, everyone in their nan has a supplement out nowadays. So we know that the cost of supplements has come down. And so we can imagine that that would be much less if we were to implement that now. And then when you think about the long-term improvements in terms of prisoner safety, obviously officer safety, because it's the morale and staffing in prisons at the moment is so low because they're unsafe. They're overcrowded. They're violent. They're dangerous. Nobody wants to work there. So you'd be making the working conditions better for the officers and other staff. But also, if you have someone who is safer on the inside, they're much more likely to be safer on the outside. Once you're they're released from prison. So we're looking at improvements for the public as well. So in terms of a

cost-effective, low risk, because when you're giving supplements, the main risk is just that people are better nourished and accessible. You know, this isn't something we're going to have to kind of dig out the ground or is hard to come by. When you think of the benefits versus the risk, it's very, very strange that we're not implementing this across the estate and I think in other institutional settings like schools and hospitals. Yeah, I was going to ask that. Has there been any connections as well with children who maybe struggle with things like ADHD or bad behaviour in schools of if they could have a supplement that might improve

that at all? Yes, so there's been some research, particularly on omega-3 fatty acids, that have looked on behavioural outcomes either across the board, so all children or in children with ADHD. And certainly in the studies that have looked at children with ADHD, they found improvements both in attention and externalising behaviours. So externalising behaviours are kind of of children kind of lashing out and maybe getting into fights or being irritable, not being able to sit still, acting up, all those sorts of things. So you see improvements in those behavioural outcomes as assessed by teachers and parents. In other studies, simply feeding children, you know, so school breakfast

clubs, so a child who is hungry is a child who can't concentrate, who can't sit still. When you're hungry and your blood sugar drops, your cortisol increases. And the job of cortisol is to release sugars into your bloodstream to feed your brain because your brain is so hungry. So if you're not eating enough, you don't have enough energy coming in, your cortisol will go up to compensate. And we all know that if we're feeling, you know, when there's cortisol is running through our bloodstreams, we all feel a bit agitated. That's what we call being hungry, right? You're a bit grumpy or you're a bit irritable, you can't focus. And so we found that not we, I didn't do the study, but the studies have shown that giving children breakfast improves their educational outcomes.

Children who don't have breakfast lose about an hour a day of their learning time. So sufficient nutrition and enough food makes a professional. profound difference both in terms of behaviour, but also the academic achievement of children. And so when we think about it like that, then we're really thinking about nutrition being a social justice issue, because if you've got a group of children who are lagging behind simply because they're hungry, not because they're not capable, not because they don't have the ability, but simply because they're too hungry to concentrate, then that is a fairness issue for the adults around them, for the policy makers around them to help these children have the same opportunities

in life. It's a social justice issue. What about going further back? You spoke briefly about when you're in utero, your brain is building itself and all this. Is there some things that maybe pregnant women could certainly look to eat to maximise the chances that their baby's going to be born with your great brain function, improved prospects? Absolutely. And the big concern has been that there are a lot of nutritional deficiencies in pregnant women that they don't realise it is affecting the brain development of their children. But not even the brain development because when you give women omega-3 supplementation, actually you increase the birth weight of their babies. The babies are less likely to be born premature. And when a child is

born closer to term, then they already have better outcomes anyway, just because their bodies are more developed and ready to go, so to speak. So yes, so there have been associations in the literature between deficiencies in the omega-3, or low levels, because we don't actually have an RDA in the UK of omega-3 fatty acids, but low levels of omega-3s in the mothers. Also iodine. So iodine, our most common food source of iodine is milk. And as people turn to plant-based alternatives, and especially if they haven't been fortified with iodine, then, we're going to be looking at impairments in iodine availability. And both of those have impacts on behaviour and IQ in the children.

And in fact, even in early childhood, iodine deficiency can make a difference of 12 IQ points in children's intellectual outcomes. So an iron, iron is the most common nutritional deficiency. Most women are iron deficient, if not fully anemic. And iron plays a role in a synthesis of not just brain cells, but neurotransmitters, as I mentioned earlier. So there are a range of nutrients. Very commonly, magnesium is another one that women are deficient in. And I think it's also important to know that certainly with amygote three fatty acids, the woman's amygic three fatty acids status at conception seems to play a role as well. So it's not just about as soon as you get pregnant, now it's time to supplement.

It's anybody who's thinking of conceiving, trying to conceive, needs to be on board with making sure you've got sufficient nutrients and hopefully your GP or your midwife or, you know, whoever's kind of taking care of you during your pregnancy will be able to advise you on that. But making sure that you're aware that, like I said, your baby's body and brain is being made of nutrients. You will need to be taking enough nutrients for you and your developing baby. And that starts preconception. What's the smallest change that I could make that would make the biggest difference? So that really, it kind of depends on what the problem is, I think. The biggest change in terms of population intake of the nutrient, and obviously I have to admit my bias, it is a nutrient that I kind of think about a lot is Amiga-3s. You know, we are getting less than a third the recommended intake of oily fish in the UK. So where the NHS says two portions of food. fish per week of which one should be oily. Most adults in the UK are getting less than,

you know, one portion of oily fish every three or four weeks. So we're not hitting that threshold. And less than five percent, few than five percent of children in the UK get their oily fish recommendation either. So we have at the moment, so that study was done in, were published in 2017, that survey. So we have an entire generation of children who, unless they're all supplementing, and I certainly doubt that they are, are literally not getting the building block fats in their diets to make their brains. So that's a huge concern for me. And I think the population, the low population intake of these fats, I think is part of, not the whole story, but it's part of the story of our increased vulnerability to psychiatric and psychological

illness that we're seeing. We're just much more vulnerable. So, I would probably start there, to be fair. Have a portion of macro once a week. Yeah. And that's the thing, because when I say this, people start thinking, oh my God, I'm going to have to be like eating, adding fish to my porridge. And it's, you know, it's not even that. We're talking, when we're saying getting enough Amiga 3,

in terms of the clinical amounts, we're talking about one portion, one 140 grand portion of macro per week. So we're talking just literally that one serving. If you have that for lunch or for dinner, you're done for the week. You don't have to think about it again, but we're not even getting that. And that's quite concerning in terms of what your brain needs to have structural integrity. And also that means that if you're maybe already older, then starting now, that could improve maybe outlooks for things like dementia and Alzheimer's. Absolutely. So what we see in terms of the correlation is that older people who have higher intakes of amygens,

of oily fish or higher blood levels of omega three have larger overall brain volumes, larger overall hippocampal volumes. And the hippocampus is the area of the brain that is most associated with memory and organizing memory is the area that is most damage in Alzheimer's disease. And they also have a reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease. And in particular, when you combine omega-3s with B-vitamins, you actually get a reduction, a halting in the rate of brain aging and atrophy. So your B-vitamins is absolutely crucial to your brain health. A deficiency in B12 can start to mimic dementia. That's how important the B vitamins are to your brain health.

And in studies that have looked at supplementing older people with B vitamins, those with the highest blood levels of omega-3 had the most protection from subsequent brain aging and brain atrophy. So, yes, essentially, you can start right now. Up until the point even that you are diagnosed with, moderate illness, there is scope for you to do something, you know, whether you take a supplement, whether you go, you know, the other lifestyle factors go for a walk, you know, get some resistance exercising, all of these things have been shown to improve brain health outcomes. But yes, even older people,

even in older people with risk factors for Alzheimer's disease, improving nutrition can slow or halt cognitive decline. So I have one last question. You can have a bit of a think about it, if you like. it was what three things do you wish people knew about food and mental health? So I wish, yes, I wish people knew that their brains were made of food. It's not just because we think about food in terms of energy, how many calories does it have or does it not have? Will it make me fat? Or we think about it in terms of just vitamins and minerals. We think we're just extracting things from food and then, you know, those little nutrients or energy and then get rid of the rest.

but actually we are composed of our food. Basically everything except the fibre gets broken down and absorbed. You know, the proteins, the fats, the carbohydrates get broken down and become you. And that includes your brain and absolutely those essential fats are part of those building blocks. I wish just increasing triptophan isn't really going to do it for you in terms of serotonin. So people always think, oh, maybe I just eat more triptophan. take more triptovan supplements to improve my mood. Actually, in terms of serotonin production and taking care of your mood, the best things that you can do is to get a sufficient intake of

nutrients. So, for example, broad spectrum nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and omega-3s can help reduce your risk of subsequent post-traumatic stress disorder following a natural disaster. So the biggest things you can do to help improve your, kind of resiliency is kind of improving your overall nutrition, not necessarily focusing just on tryptophan and managing your stress because your stress will deplete your nutrients. Stress, yes, maybe that's the final thing actually. Stress depletes your nutrients. Being in a stressful situation, long-term stress depletes your nutrients. So when you're in a stressful situation, a stressful time, looking after your nutrition is going to help you have more stress resiliency

and reduce your risk of subsequent mood and anxiety disorders. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius. That was Kimberly Wilson. You can check out her book, How to Build a Healthy Brain, which is available now. You can also listen to her on BBC Force Made of Stronger Stuff podcast, or tune in to her own podcast, Stronger Minds. Or, to hear even more from her right now, head over to the Instant Genius Extra podcast.

The latest issue of BBC Science Focus magazine is available now. pick up a copy in store or visit sitesfocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analog warmth. Alongside French acoustic specialist focal, name creates high-end audio systems, combining innovation with craftsmanship, so you can listen to music.

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