EP 13: Bonnie Kaplan and Nutritional Treatments for Mental Health

If we had a new antidepressant that resulted in a 1/3 remission in just 12 weeks, with no side effects, except having more energy, sleeping better, having better bowel functions etcetera, it would be on the cover of Time magazine. But nobody knows about the nutrition research because the media won't cover it. 

Bonnie Kaplan is a radical. She's a maverick who holds one of the best kept secrets in mental health: that a major player in mental health is nutrition. Over and over agains she's seen how simple it is to dump the nasty side effects of psychotropic chemicals and receive incredible improvements in mental health by changes in nutrition. Talking with her was energizing. She's as charismatic as she is knowledgeable. 

In this episode we talk about: 

• How nutrition affects mental health 
• The connections between nutrition and trauma treatment
• Where most of the serotonin in your body is made, and which body part uses serotonin the most
• How the big leap isn't to a special diet, but to start cooking in general
• The types of problems most impacted by a micronutional approach
• How to help kids struggling with pill swallowing
• The role of knowledge translation
• Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point
• E Fuller Torrey The Invisible Plague

I'm contemplating this quote from our talk:

One group got dietary counseling... and the other got social support. Now we know social support is very good for people with depression. So of course lots of people in both groups got better. but when they looked at rates of remission (for major depression} in just 12 weeks {meaning no longer qualified for Major Depression}  thirty three percent, a third of them who got diet counseling, were in remission.  and 8 percent who got social support. 33 percent compared to 8 percent and all they were taught was how to eat whole foods, how to cook from scratch, how to eat a mediterranean type of diet. 

You can learn even more about nutrition and Bonnie in the links below:

• For the facebook scroller: https://www.facebook.com/nutritionandmentalhealth/
• For the curious grazer: An introductory 12-min video on the role of nutrition for stress, PTSD.
• For the interested student: TEDx talk by Prof Julia Rucklidge, of Univ of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
• For the hard core believer: A 3-part lecture series “Nutrition and Mental Health,” part of a Continuing Medical Education series run by Mad In America
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Ps. If you enjoyed this check out this podcast. It's about another radical in the field. 

Listen HERE on iTunes