Herald Sun Article – ‘Diet For Mental Health’

The following was published in today’s Melbourne Herald Sun:

“Doctors could soon be prescribing nutritional supplements to boost the effects of medication for mental health disorders.

Melbourne researchers have led an international collaboration to conclude nutrition is as important to a person’s mental health as it is to their waistline and heart.

With the worldwide increase in mental disorders linked to a shift towards calorie dense diets and sedentary lifestyles. University of Melbourne and Deakin University researchers say there is an urgent need to develop other cost effective ways of improving mental health, given pharmaceutical treatments are achieving limited results.

The lead author of the article, published in the journal Lancet Psychiatry, Dr Jerome Sarris said doctors and patients needed to understand the power of good brain health.

The research team found many nutrients are clearly linked to an improvement in brain health, such as omega 3s, folate, B12, iron, zinc and magnesium”.

Oh really!!!

Whilst I absolutely welcome research such as this, our current system frustrates me. So I have a couple of points to make. I’ll begin with parts of the article in bold and follow with my comments.

Melbourne researchers have led an international collaboration to conclude nutrition is as important to a person’s mental health as it is to their waistline and heart.

It took an international collaboration of researchers to conclude this? It would think it’s fairly apparent that the brain and nervous system is part of the same body or body system as the heart and our fat stores. Why does science want to break everything up into individual compartments? It is my belief that this is one of the major reasons the modern medical and scientific model struggles to find cures for chronic illness. The body is one system. How we live, including what we put into our mouths, affects every little bit of it.

University of Melbourne and Deakin University researchers say there is an urgent need to develop other cost effective ways of improving mental health, given pharmaceutical treatments are achieving limited results. 

Given pharmaceutical treatments are achieving limited results???   Is this an admission??? Do the vast majority of doctors who disregard nutritional and herbal medicine practices (or so-called  natural medicine) admit this also???  The quicker that the modern medicine and integrative medicine (or natural medicine) approaches link together and receive equal regard or respect, the better it will be for the public.

The research team found many nutrients are clearly linked to an improvement in brain health, such as omega 3s, folate, B12, iron, zinc and magnesium.
And where do all of these nutrients come from? Pills? Or the foods we evolved eating over a million years or more? I think you’ll find it’s the foods that we adapted to and thrive on.

Again, whilst I wholeheartedly welcome this research, it frustrates me that it has taken so long to catch on and gain momentum in the scientific and, especially, the medical community. I may sound cynical, however I believe one of the main reasons the medical community (including the pharmaceutical companies) has taken so long is that they can’t own it. You can’t put a patent on good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle. Prevention is bad for business for pharmaceutical companies and doctors, so they don’t spend time promoting it or educating the public about it.