hi I'm dr. Tracy marks a psychiatrist and I make mental health education videos in a previous video I talked about the Mediterranean diet and how it has been shown in studies to improve depression well those studies show how following the diet helps your brain but they don't really speak to why that diet helps and here's why and this is one proposed mechanism and not the only answer it has to do with oxidative stress what's that there's different types of stress mental stress comes from external pressures like deadlines expectations demands you can also be stressed physically
from things like infection or surgery and these processes weakened your body's defenses but there's another type of stress that occurs at the cellular level and it's called oxidative stress oxidative stress occurs when you get free radical formation that causes tissue damage think of it as your body's rusting process you can see this on a macro level when the paint on your car starts to fade over time from exposure to oxygen in the air and Sun well a similar thing happens in your body at a cellular level and we see the effects of oxidation with aging
cancer heart disease and many other diseases but it's also been linked to psychiatric illnesses like autism ADHD bipolar disorder depression and schizophrenia oxidative stress affects all of the cells of your body but the brain is particularly sensitive to oxidative stress so let me show you what this looks like so you can better understand what this term means your body organs are made up of trillions of cells yes trillions inside of each cell you have the cell components called the organelles the mitochondria is one of these organelles that generates energy it's the cells engine I don't
know what that mean now stick with me here I'm almost there so the mitochondria take nutrients from the food that we eat and convert into energy and this chemical reaction uses oxygen and produces free radicals as a by-product think of it as a manufacturing plant putting out harsh chemicals into the atmosphere inside the mitochondria these free radicals damage the DNA and proteins inside the cell certain nutrients neutralize free radicals and these are called antioxidants so if the food you eat contains enough antioxidants then the mitochondria Factory doesn't produce as much toxic waste that's the deep-dive
explanation for why what you eat matters here are some antioxidants that are extracted from your food vitamin A which you can get from dairy eggs and liver vitamin C which comes from most fruits and vegetables especially berries oranges and bell peppers vitamin E which you can get from nuts and seeds and green leafy vegetables beta-carotene you get this with brightly colored fruits and vegetables like carrots peas spinach and mangoes lycopene which comes from pink and red fruits and vegetables including tomatoes and watermelon luteum and selenium selenium comes from rice corn and greens as well as
nuts eggs cheese and legumes the more colorful your diet the better and some of these nutrients become more bioavailable if they're cooked versus raw and tomatoes are an example of this the lycopene from the tomatoes become more available to your mitochondria when they are cooked I have a download for you on how to eat your veggies it includes a list of these antioxidants and which vegetables are best cooked versus raw you can get it from my website and the link is in the description as well as in the corner of this video there's no signup
required but if you're already part of my email community then you already have this in your inbox a word about supplements there's a debate as to whether or not vitamin supplements really make an impact on changing the course of disease and this may have something to do with the bioavailability issue the supplement form may not be processed the same by the mitochondria as when it comes from food also high doses of supplements like vitamin E and beta carotene are linked to increased risk of tumor growth so the answer here is that it's best to get
your vitamins from foods you just can't get the same results by eating fast food and chips and then popping a few supplements to even it out and one more thing there are external factors that increase free radical production inside the mitochondria and these are things like pollution UV exposure and cigarette smoke so another thing that you can do to reduce your oxidative stress is to reduce your exposure to UV light by wearing clothes that protect your skin and sunblock you should also minimize your exposure to cigarette smoke inflammation is an internal source of free radical
production and your diet choices affect inflammation things like fried foods and high sugar and processed food increase inflammation so reduce your oxidative stress to improve your overall mental functioning so if you haven't already check out my video on the depression diet see you next time
