The FastDay Forum

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle ... une-system

Combine this article with the already established relationships of diet to metabolic syndrome (and obesity), mix in some supportive anecdotal and study-based evidence and it seems that intermittent fasting has yet another dragon it might be able to slay.

Thanks for posting this...I'll be interested to see further studies around this. I suspect it's going to be hard to draw definitive links, but looking back at my own journey, I know some of my worse depressive episodes have been when I've been physically ill too. Of course, you end up with the oil' chicken-egg issue in trying to find out which causes which, but if controlling the inflammatory response helps in treating or preventing depressive symptoms, then it'd be a huge bonus.

Interesting - thank you!

I read this article recently. Thought provoking and makes me want to go out and buy some probiotics for prevention alone.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles ... revolution

Meant to say it is along the same lines as the first article, a physiological link to depression and anxiety.

Did I understand correctly that dark chocolate and yoghurt are beneficial to mental wellbeing? Two of my favourite things so bring it on. I feel happiness coming on

Perhaps some depression has a link to allergies, but there are many other causes.

I inherited a tendency to severe depression linked to the female hormone progestone. I fought serious depression from puberty until my late 40s when my hormone levels started to drop in my late 40s. I can barely remember what it was like to be depressed, but every blue moon I get a day that reminds me. I can recover that feeling by taking any kind of supplemental progesterone, which will get me weeping within a day. So will eating too much soy protein.

Some depression, though it isn't fashionable to say this in this age of medicalizing everything, is due to bad life circumstances and arises when we feel trapped in bad situations. If we take steps to change those circumstance, it lifts. I had even more problems with depression in my 20s than usual because I was working nothing but menial jobs, despite having a good education. When I got my first professional job at age 32, my hormonal depression became much easier to deal with. Bad marriages are another issue. I have seen so many people put on antidepressants who really needed to see a divorce lawyer. Often the antidepressants made them continue to live with abusive spouses because they numbed them out to the emotions screaming "get out!"

Uncontrolled blood sugar is yet another cause of emotional difficulty. They aren't depressing in and of themselves, but they can lead to intense mood swings which can worsen depression in people who have other reasons for being depressed.

Don't fall prey to the media's tendency to oversimplify everything. Right now it is popular to blame all health problems on autoimmunity and/or gut bacteria. This is a research fad and like all such fads will pass. Probably without helping a lot of the people with the condition involved.

I read this article recently. Thought provoking and makes me want to go out and buy some probiotics for prevention alone.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles ... revolution

This is my first post, so hope the text comes out in the right place!

I recently read the book "Gut" by Guilia Enders; it has a good contents list but no index, so when I finished reading it, I started re-reading and adding post-it note markers to index the many points of interest.

Of particular relevance to this thread is the subject of fructose intolerance (Giulia is a German and states that a third of Germans are fructose intolerant). If someone does not have sufficient enzyme to digest fructose, it passes straight through the body. Even a fructose intolerant person should be able to cope with an apple a day, however the fructose present in tomato sauce, sweetened yoghurt etc, takes them over the threshold. Fructose intolerance can affect our mood. The amino acid Tryptophan loves to bond with fructose and so in a fructose intolerant person, this important amino acid is lost to the body along with the fructose. We need Tryptophan to make serotonin - the hormone that makes us feel happy.

From reading this book, I have concluded that, food manufacturers like to con the public into thinking their 'products' are healthy as they contain natural fruit sugars. It is most important to read food labels and may be well worth an experiment to see if cutting down/out fructose improves one's mood.