#256 The link between inflammation mood, dementia and how to calm your mind with food, with Dr Uma Naidoo

17 Jul 2024

Dr. Uma Naidoo has spent her life exploring the unique connection between food and brain health. Her first book, 2020’s groundbreaking This Is Your Brain on Food, offered readers around the world a better understanding of the many ways our diets impact our mental, emotional, and cognitive wellbeing, and provided a useful blueprint for working through conditions like depression, OCD, PTSD, dementia, and more.

Her next book “Calm your mind with food” is a deeper exploration of this. Today we talk about:

  • How inflammation affects everything from anxiety and depression to Alzheimer’s disease
  • How the trillions of bacteria living in your gut are key to controlling anxiety
  • The six pillars for calming the mind
  • What to eat to balance the appetite hormone leptin, a key link between the central nervous system and metabolic processes
  • How to incorporate anxiety-busting foods into your diet, from ashwagandha to vitamin C

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REFERENCES

GUEST: Dr Uma Naidoo

Michelin-starred chef David Bouley described Dr. Uma Naidoo as the world’s first “triple threat” in the food and medicine space: a Harvard trained psychiatrist, professional chef graduating with her culinary schools’ most coveted award, and a trained Nutrition Specialist. Her nexus of interests have found their niche in Nutritional Psychiatry.

Dr. Naidoo founded and directs the first hospital-based Nutritional Psychiatry Service in the United States. She is the Director of Nutritional and Lifestyle Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) & Director of Nutritional Psychiatry at MGH Academy while serving on the faculty at Harvard Medical School. She was considered Harvard’s “Mood Food” expert and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal.

Dr. Naidoo is also the national bestselling author of This Is Your Brain On Food. In her book, she shows the cutting-edge science explaining the ways in which food contributes to our mental health and how a diet can help treat and prevent a wide range of psychological and cognitive health issues, from ADHD to anxiety, depression, OCD, and others.

with Dr Uma Naidoo
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