Diet's impact on behavior/personality

[Ten oz]

Recently I was reading about the Carnivore Diet and the various claims people make about it curing depression, ADD, and etc. I do not advocate the Carnivore Diet nor am I on, have ever been on, or am even considering going on the Carnivore Diet. My question is to what extend does our diet, any healthy diet,  impact our mind. Obviously inadequate nutrition can impairs brain function but assuming one is adequately nourished with a healthy combination of fat, protein, sugar, salt, vitamins, minerals, and so on how much impact does the source of nutrition have on behavior, personality, and mood? I have found some literature on the subject relating to children but not adults. 

[iNow]

Diet IMO is less relevant than the gut microbiome. It’s these which matter, and I suspect diets effect on them is where one should focus

Will need to defer to our friends for a more specific researched answer 

[Ten oz]

41 minutes ago, iNow said:

Diet IMO is less relevant than the gut microbiome. It’s these which matter, and I suspect diets effect on them is where one should focus

Will need to defer to our friends for a more specific researched answer 

As mentioned in the OP the  literature I have seen focuses on children. As a parent is this something you have read about or have any personal anecdotal experience with?  

[CharonY]

2 hours ago, iNow said:

Diet IMO is less relevant than the gut microbiome. It’s these which matter, and I suspect diets effect on them is where one should focus

While research is well underway looking at role of the microbiome I urge caution of overinterpretation. The connection is still being examined and the link to complex traits such as behavior is still far off from being figured out. 

There are generally two basic issues with the question in OP. The first is we do not really understand the biological basis of the mentioned conditions. The second is that we also only have a rough understanding of dietary effects in general. Even basic things such as impact of diets on body weight and fat distribution is often not clearly understood (notwithstanding the confidence with which dietary recommendations are made). 

Thus, drawing a direct line between condition at diet, is simply not possible with the level of current knowledge. As a reference, studies with clearly toxic compounds such as lead took a long while to correlate it with neurological issues  in populations (due to lead paint, for example). And even there it is difficult to quantify precisely the impact.

 

[mistermack]

Eating large quantities of high carbohydrate foods, and lots of fats, over an extended period, will inevitably make you jolly.

Unless you are female, in which case it will make you bubbly. 

[iNow]

3 hours ago, Ten oz said:

As mentioned in the OP the  literature I have seen focuses on children. As a parent is this something you have read about or have any personal anecdotal experience with?  

I think a lot of it is about energy levels and whether one is riding spikes and valleys or is relatively consistent and stable.

Its the difference between eating rice, veggies, and fish versus eating candy bars and Red Bull’s, to use an extreme example of my point  

A measured diet full of healthy foods and one that’s well balanced overall IMO helps quite a bit with achieving a balanced mood. As a type 1 diabetic for 3 decades, I know all too well the issues that come with big swings / ups and downs of unstable glucose levels.  

It’s not something we can look at in a vacuum, though, as sleep and exercise and even baseline neurochemistry play critical roles. 

Diet is one piece of a much larger puzzle. Nutrition affects the growth and potential of our bodies, the function of our minds and moods, and (with the important caveats and wholly valid warnings Charon notes above), the composition and impact of our gut bacteria. 

[Ten oz]

@CharonY, thank for the response. Would you happen to know which organizations are doing some of the research on this issue? 

9 hours ago, iNow said:

I think a lot of it is about energy levels and whether one is riding spikes and valleys or is relatively consistent and stable.

Its the difference between eating rice, veggies, and fish versus eating candy bars and Red Bull’s, to use an extreme example of my point  

A measured diet full of healthy foods and one that’s well balanced overall IMO helps quite a bit with achieving a balanced mood. As a type 1 diabetic for 3 decades, I know all too well the issues that come with big swings / ups and downs of unstable glucose levels.  

It’s not something we can look at in a vacuum, though, as sleep and exercise and even baseline neurochemistry play critical roles. 

Diet is one piece of a much larger puzzle. Nutrition affects the growth and potential of our bodies, the function of our minds and moods, and (with the important caveats and wholly valid warnings Charon notes above), the composition and impact of our gut bacteria. 

Right, different foods can increase or decrease certain natural levels of hormones. I remember back in 2013 I took a soy based post workout  supplement for a couple months. My wife noticed that I became considerable me polite and agreeable. No night we were watch a movie, a crappy one I had seen parts of already,and during a dramatic moment in the movie I found myself tearing up. I had known that Soy products increased estrogen levels but hadn't given it any serious thought till then. 

Estrogen levels in a known factor though. In this thread I am trying to  understand unknowns. I go to the grocery store and more and more items advertise themselves as being probiotic. I would imagine that certain type of bacteria and yeast would be better suited for specific diets but I really don't know. It doesn't help that so many foods falsely advertise themselves. One has to read an ingredients list carefully to understand what they are getting regardless of what the packaging says. 

[CharonY]

On 10/14/2018 at 4:36 AM, Ten oz said:

CharonY, thank for the response. Would you happen to know which organizations are doing some of the research on this issue? 

There is a huge body literature looking into health effects on diet to a plethora of health related outcomes. The organization are for the vast majority universities and some national labs. With regard to links between diet and mental health, the majority involve epidemiologists and are in effect association studies. For the most part studies indicate that a healthy diet and exercise are associated with mental and physical well-being. Though it is often difficult to clearly separate those effects from co-factors. For example studies often account for income but even among a given income segment access to good food can be different (e.g. due to distance to quality grocery stores). 

On studies regarding the impact of gut biota, it is a bit of a free-for-all. I have seen folks ranging from  medical researchers, microbiologists, down to environmental engineers working on it. I feel it will take a while longer before the evidence provides a clearer view on the matter.