Evidence Connecting Food Choices to Brain Health

C-L psychiatrists may be overlooking easily treatable, micronutrient deficiencies in patients, such as ‎iron which is associated with anxiety, says Uma Naidoo, MD, FAPA, director of Nutritional, Lifestyle & Metabolic Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Naidoo will describe how patients can prepare healthy dishes—with data supporting the value of ingredients—including her Anti-Anxiety Nutritional Psychiatry Plate.

Drew Ramsey, MD, founder, The Brain Food Clinic, will describe how mental health clinicians can incorporate nutritional assessment and ‎guidance into clinical care. Several randomized controlled clinical trials have explored the use of nutrition interventions in ‎the treatment of clinical depression. Helping patients make healthy ‎food choices is an increasingly evidence-based intervention.

And Philip Muskin, MD, MA, FACLP, professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University, will reveal How this stuff actually works. “I will review what the science of epigenetics is revealing about ‎the mechanisms by which exercise, nutrition, and stress impact on our genome.‎”

Objectives of this invited presidential session Nutrition and Your Brain (Body Too), are to:

• Learn recent evidence connecting food choices to brain health.
• Understand clinical implications of epidemiological studies on dietary patterns and psychopathology.
• Learn proposed molecular pathways involving inflammation and neurogenesis that relate to food choices, and obtain clinical pearls that merit dietary intervention for C-L psychiatrists to use at the bedside.