Can Nutrition Help or Worsen Depression?

Certain foods that can help are those that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids. We know that salmon is high in them, and there has been a lot of studies to suggest that omega-3 or deficiencies of it can also lead to depression. Eating foods that are rich in folic acid and vitamin B12 and vitamin D so either in the form of supplements, all of these can help try and maintain one from being depression free and a more milder situation.

One of the things that you would want to avoid is alcohol and a lot of us drink in moderation but don't realize that binge shrinking having sort of other for more than three drinks in one sitting for a woman and four for a man, over time can lead to depression. That alcohol is a depressant, it's a central nervous system depressant and also affects every other organ in the body.

So I find that a lot of people particularly dealing with depression or anxiety or trauma, when I was working at the 9/11 mental health program, a lot of people were self medicating, and this is a term that I use when you are using some substance, food, it could be sex, gambling as a way to kind of escape or to treat what you're going through.

But we don't realize that these forms of self medication that independently cause problems. I had a patient who was gambling as way to get out the house he was having a lot of marital stress and would go to the casino and then ended up developing $100, 000 debt, and this was somebody who never had any kind of gambling problem.

So sometimes we're trying to treat one problem we end up creating another.