Nutritional Psychology is an exciting and newly emerging field that studies how our cognitive choices influence nutrition, psychological health and overall health. Nutritional psychology, at its core, seeks to understand the relationship between nutrition and well-being.

Is nutrition impacting our mental health?

OR

Is our mental health impacting nutrition?

While it’s commonly known that nutritional deficiencies can cause physical illness (think diabetes, celiac disease, etc.), there hasn’t been much focus on how nutritional deficiencies can be linked to mental health conditions such as stress, anxiety, depression, ADHD, and Autism Spectrum Disorder to name, a few.

Modern medicine is so focused on treating the symptoms, yet neglects investigating the root cause, leading to millions of dollars being spent on continued health care and procedures. It’s strange to me though although we’ve made so many advancements in modern medicine, many Americans remain chronically ill.  It makes sense to me that rather than focus on reactionary medicine, perhaps the focus should be preventative. One way to do this, is to start identifying the root cause of symptoms rather than the one-size-fits-all band-aid approach.  This isn’t to say that modern medicine is terrible— that would be farther than the truth, but in my opinion the focus needs to be on treating the whole person and trying to identify the root cause of what’s going on and hopefully precluding return visits to the doctor’s office for the same issue.

Okay, off my soap box…..

Nutritional Psychology explores the possibility of how nutrients, lifestyle, and behaviors can be causing and/or exacerbating those feelings of stress, anxiety, depression.  Although sometimes certainly needed, why take Adderall for ADHD when you can really treat the symptoms through diet and lifestyle changes?

Interested? I can’t wait to share more.