“Transformational” Breakthroughs In Our Understandings of Nutrition and Brain Health
“We live in a transformational moment for understanding the etiology of mental disorders,” stated a team of researchers led by MIA Blogger Bonnie Kaplan of the University of Calgary publishing in Clinical Psychological Science.
The current revolution, they wrote, is being driven by “the rapidly accumulating knowledge of how inflammation, microbiome imbalance (gut dysbiosis), oxidative stress, and impaired mitochondrial output affect brain function.” The researchers reviewed the scientific literature on each of these topics in relation to the causation of experiences of depression, bipolar, psychosis and overall brain health.
“The mechanisms reviewed in this article constitute a new model for understanding the etiology of the symptoms of mental disorders,” they concluded. “A bright new future of understanding, preventing, and treating mental disorders awaits us, and these advances surprisingly will return us to what our ancestors knew and accepted a century ago.”
Kaplan, Bonnie J., Julia J. Rucklidge, Amy Romijn, and Kevin McLeod. “The Emerging Field of Nutritional Mental Health Inflammation, the Microbiome, Oxidative Stress, and Mitochondrial Function.” Clinical Psychological Science, February 2, 2015, 2167702614555413. doi:10.1177/2167702614555413. (Abstract and full text)