Anxiety and Nutrition

How many times have you been told that you just have anxiety and that’s why you are feeling the way that you do? You have a high heart rate – Anxiety!

You feel dizzy? – Anxiety!

You have a weird skin rash today, but it disappears tomorrow? Anxiety! What if I tell you that your anxiety could potentially have much more to do with your diet and eating habits than you think?

Yes, we all know that ultra-processed foods and high amounts of sugar are bad for us, and we’ve also heard it somewhere down the line, that they are not good for people with ‘mental health issues’...

But have we really clocked that? What about all the other people? What if the anxiety and mental unclarity are actually caused by the food we eat? 

Now, before we continue, I just want to disclaim that obviously, if you are experiencing any of these symptoms regularly, you must check them with your GP before blaming it on your diet and turning to a nutritionist.

I also must state that I am no mental health expert, and I do not claim to be one.

However, as a qualified nutritionist, I aim to raise awareness about the emerging evidence linking diet, gut health, and mental wellbeing. There are new studies pointing out the very scientific explanations and pathways which happen in our brain on a chemical and metabolic level, when it comes to anxiety that might be caused by an unhealthy diet.

Of course, anxiety can have many causes, psychological, genetic, and environmental, but nutrition is increasingly recognised as one of the contributors. 

I also want to mention something regarding anxiety from personal experience.

I had a long health journey, which is part of the reason why I went to study nutrition, and I have the vision which Whynutrition starts slowly to embrace and put to life...I have a heart condition called MVP (Mitral Valve Prolapse). Thankfully, mine is under control with some medication, and if I keep my potassium levels normal, I haven’t had the need for surgery so far.

However, after an episode with symptoms unstable heart rate, etc. which was caused by a heavier workout and exhaustion due to sleep deprivation, I spoke with a few doctors and did my own research, and found out that my anxiety is closely related to this heart condition, and it is absolutely normal in this case.

Not a mental health issue, not emotional instability – simply signals sent to my brain when my heartbeat becomes a bit irregular, and the blood pressure drops.

This connection is well-documented: MVP can stimulate the autonomic nervous system, leading to anxiety-like symptoms even in the absence of psychological stress. All this made me think about food’s effect on anxiety, as I definitely felt some uneasy symptoms from the heart including some weird skin rashes from time to time after eating certain foods, which on its own term will lead to anxiety, especially if I am in the office, in the middle of the day, and all I want to do is drink lots of water and go home.

But I have to keep it together, because I like my job and my manager probably will not understand the situation, or he does not have time for this in between his meetings, and I also have a team to look after myself.

Anyway, it took a lot of time to track which foods were making me feel that way and to stop experiencing these symptoms. 

Back to anxiety and food – fast forward to today, me writing my post – I now know that:

• Histamine intolerance could be a high cause of anxiety
  Although research is still limited, some evidence and case reports suggest histamine build-up in sensitive individuals may contribute to anxiety-like symptoms.
• The sugar high that we all seek, from time to time, depleted from dopamine and overly stressed. Some researchers have proposed a link between nutrient cravings and neurotransmitter imbalances.
• A diet low in nutritional value but high in saturated fats and sugars...
• Consumption of fried food too often – all these lead to guess what? ANXIETY.

Because ANXIETY is a symptom.

A symptom of dehydration (salty, fried foods); a symptom of alertness and dysfunction in stress responses (histamine acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain affecting all these, therefore, if for some reason there is a histamine build-up period in our body, due to reduced breakdown by the enzymes, we go into fight or flight mode, the release of cortisol and adrenaline is higher).

As we said, histamine is neurotransmitter and immune modulator; its role in stress response is being explored, but is not yet fully understood. The ONLY symptom of a histamine intolerance can be anxiety.

We all know that higher consumption of sugar gives us anxiety, but even if we eat healthy, we might still be eating more sugar than we are supposed to, because there are around 264 names for sugar in mass food production, and some of them are found in products like ham, salami, ready-made sauces, etc. 

The idea of this post is not to focus on the scientific information – I will create an additional one explaining those pathways with a full list of references, and upload them on Whynutrition’s blog. 

But today I just want to raise some awareness – the more we know about nutrition science, the more we actually realise we know nothing.

Not to be discouraging, though – quite the opposite. At least we are starting to get the bigger picture now.

At least we are not afraid of eggs anymore! Working with a qualified nutritionist or dietitian at some point in your life is vital for our future health and disease prevention, and the nutrition field will evolve further-which is very exciting.