A new scientific finding is revealing that your mood could be influenced by what you eat. No, it’s not showing the stereotypical ice cream or pizza helping a person through a break-up like in the movies (although, anecdotally, it could help a person in a funk). It’s showing that eating citrus fruits could help prevent bouts of depression.
A Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School study is showing that eating citrus fruits promotes the bacteria in the human to produce the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine. These neurotransmitters are used to help elevate and moderate a person’s mood. The results are such that they say that eating a medium-sized orange per day could help reduce the risk of depression by 20%.
“The effect seems to be specific to citrus,” said Raaj Mehta, the study’s author, to the Harvard Gazette. “When we look at people’s total fruit or vegetable consumption, or at other individual fruits such as apples or bananas, we don’t see any relationship between intake and risk of depression.”
Research found that citrus fruits increased the production of the gut bacteria Faecalibacterium prausnitzii (F. prausnitzii). F. prausnitzii in turn would encourage the body to produce more serotonin and dopamine. Part of the study found in the stool samples of participants that didn’t suffer depression contained traces of F. prausnitzii, and citrus was recorded as a regular part of those participants’ diets.
It should be noted, as Mehta mentioned, that this could help prevent depression, not treat it. Further research needs to be made to make this conclusion more concrete, and it should be stressed that those who suffer from clinical depression should still seek professional help and possible medication to manage it.
In terms of what you can eat to help keep your spirits up, several dieticians, including ones from the Mayo Clinic, CNBC, and Kaiser Permanente have some suggestions. Regarding serotonin and dopamine, other citrus foods include grapefruit, lemons, and limes. Food rich in vitamin B and tryptophan can also increase serotonin levels. These include foods like dark chocolate, oats, and turkey. Fish, tofu, and lentils can also promote dopamine production.
Foods such as barley, grapes, and broccoli can increase melatonin production which can help people sleep better. Fish like salmon and sardines contain omega-3 fatty acids which have been shown to influence a person’s mood. Eating eggs, bananas, and beans promote production of oxytocin, the “bonding” hormone that makes a person feel more socially connected. Endorphins can also boost your mood, and are typically released after intense exercise. However, you can also promote endorphin production by eating strawberries and spicy foods as well.
While food can certainly influence your mood, if you are suffering from depression, you may need to seek professional guidance. If you believe you’re suffering from clinical depression, talk with your doctor to see what options are available to you. If you don’t know where to start, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has a website that could help you get started.
There is hope and help out there if you suffer from depression.Photo credit: Canva
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Pictured: A healthy practice?
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.