FAQ on Mood, Constipation and Protein
A friend reached out recently with some questions. Since I have heard these questions many times, I decided to try to address them in this post.
I think I’m clinically depressed, but can’t take antidepressants.
Think about increasing your serotonin levels through your diet. Serotonin is sometimes called the happiness hormone, but it can’t cross the blood-brain barrier. Therefore, dietary sources of serotonin can’t get into your brain, but an amino acid called tryptophan, can do it.
In the 1980s, tryptophan supplements caused a rash of deaths, so that wasn’t a good strategy.
Well, what about just eating high-protein meals? That strategy failed, also. The amino acids in those protein-rich foods just crowded out the tryptophan in their access to the brain.
Then it was found that eating high-carbohydrate meals shunted the amino acids out of the bloodstream and into the muscles, thus allowing tryptophan into the brain. Higher tryptophan levels were found after a breakfast of waffles and orange juice than after a breakfast of turkey, eggs and cheese.
By eating even a single carbohydrate-rich meal, it has been shown to improve depression, anger, sadness, fatigue and alertness. This result is consistent with studies which have found better moods and less anxiety in populations who eat diets higher in carbohydrates and lower in fats and protein.
If you include sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, butternut squash seeds or even pumpkin seeds in your plant-based diet, you will likely see an improvement in anxiety and mood within a few weeks.
What can I do about bad constipation?
According to Dr. Michael Greger,
“Constipation can be considered a nutrient-deficiency disease, and that nutrient is fiber. Just as you can get scurvy if you don’t get enough vitamin C, you can get constipation if you don’t get enough fiber.”
Fiber is only found in plant foods. There is zero fiber in animal foods, including beef, chicken, fish, lobster, eggs, milk or cheese. White rice and flours have been highly refined, which means most of the fiber is removed in the manufacturing processes. Another item that can cause severe constipation in some people is dairy protein, such as using skim milk on your cereal.
Most people on the standard American diet, only consume 6 to 10 grams of dietary fiber a day when the recommended amount is 30 to 100 grams a day. When you get such a small amount of fiber in your diet, you will have constipation.
So, the more plant foods you eat, the more fiber you consume. To read more about fiber, click here.
Do you have to have legumes and grains in the same meal to have a complete protein?
Food proteins are said to be of different quality. There are about eight amino acids that are needed for making protein that must be provided by our food. They are called essential because our bodies cannot make them. This is where the word quality comes in: it is the ability of food proteins to provide the amino acids to make new proteins.
Animal foods are considered the complete proteins, but there is much compelling evidence that shows that “low-quality” plant protein, is the healthiest type of protein because it allows for slow, but steady synthesis of new proteins.
According to Dr. T. Colin Campbell,
People often believe they must meticulously combine proteins from different plant sources during each meal so that they can mutually compensate for each other’s amino acid deficits. We now know that our bodies do not require eating higher quantities of plant protein or meticulously planning every meal. The human body can derive all the essential amino acids from the natural variety of plant proteins that we encounter every day.
Many people think that they must eat protein-rich animal foods to become bigger and stronger. However, people who eat the most animal protein also have the most heart disease, cancer and diabetes. People can achieve their genetic potential for growth and body size, yet remain healthy, by consuming a plant-based diet.
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©2020 Melinda Coker
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