© Getty images/Joy Skipper
You feel at the end of your rope -- foggy, tired, irritable, flat, and constantly worried. About. Everything. It seems like the world is coming at you, every pixel of it, at 1 million miles per hour, and you just need to press pause, but you can't. Your internist recommends that you see a psychiatrist, you make an appointment, and after 45 minutes, you leave with a Lexapro prescription. Before you walk it over to CVS, try these three dietary changes for 2-4 weeks. See what happens:
1. Eliminate GMOsGenetically-modified foods are chemical/biological products that are laced and saturated with complex toxic herbicides, and because they are largely unstudied by objective researchers, we are only now beginning to understand how they do their damage, and the
relevance of the gut to mental health. We know that the modification of plant genes using animal, insect, and bacterial DNA is a highly unpredictable process that:
-- Disrupts that plant's natural development (lowers its nutritional content and raises its allergy content).
-- Introduces novel proteins, antibiotic resistance genes (built into "Bt corn!") and the potential for transfer of genes to our own gut bacteria.
-- These plants are modified, not for any reason that would ever benefit you or the planet, but so that they can better withstand more and more glyphosate-containing Roundup herbicide (produced by the same company that modifies and sells the patented seeds). This chemical has the following undesirable effects as reviewed in this
seminal paper.
- It kills beneficial bacteria through its interference with the "shikimate" pathway.
- The interference with this bacteria promotes "dysbiosis" and the creation of inflammatory compounds from important amino acids like tryptophan.
- When it is broken down by the gut, it produces ammonia.
- It blocks an enzyme that converts testosterone to estrogen, aromatase.
- It chelates/binds calcium, magnesium, zinc, iron, and cobalt.
- It interferes with sulfate availability, critical to cholesterol metabolism and cellular function.
- It interferes with liver enzymes responsible for breaking down other toxins, amplifying their effects.
Comment: Despite recognizing that vegetable oils are, in fact, quite damaging to health, mainstream nutritional science seems completely unable to check their assumptions at the door and look at the problem with an open mind. Animal fats don't need to be replaced with anything as they are highly nutritious in and of themselves. As long as stable saturates are being replaced with delicate, and more often than not, over-processed polyunsaturates, it doesn't matter what ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 you have, the results will be disastrous.
See Probably More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Fat and Thought You Already Knew, But Didn't for more.