Your mental health shapes your quality of life. In many ways, it IS your quality of life, as it rises out of and feeds back into the physical, mental, and emotional you. 

The main pathway that mental health is shaped is via the gut-brain axis. Your gut-brain axis much like the captain of a ship, steering the holistic expression of who you are and how you’re able to show up in your life. 

You can think of the whole of your mental health as rising out of the complex combination of your diet, your neuroplasticity, and your detox pathways - one feeding into the other in a closed loop. If one of the three goes out of balance, they others will follow. However, if one of the three begins to return to equilibrium, the others can follow.

The Physical Component to Mental Health

It’s important to prioritize the physical aspect of mental health, as it lays the foundation on which your mental and emotional health are built.

Here, we’re honing in on your brain, specifically its neuroplasticity, ie. your brains ability to maintain or change function, and even structure, to help you maintain, degrade, or upgrade your ability to act, respond, heal and thrive. 

Your physical brain, and the functions it performs, are the result of a very beautifully orchestrated relationship between your microbiome, blood circulation and the quality of nutrients it delivers, neural tissue, nervous system (especially your vagus nerve), hormones such as dopamine & serotonin, fatty acids like omega-3s, and antioxidants. 

Your main goal when seeking to achieve mental wellbeing should be to optimize your brain health by providing your body with the nutrients and microbiota it needs to make it all possible.

7 Superfoods to prioritize in your diet when seeking mental wellbeing:

1. Healthy Fats - specifically essential Omega-3s that you have to get from your diet. Essential Fatty Acids build and maintain the structure and fluidity of the grey and white matter of your brain. They support neuroplasticity and modulate the release and functional quality of important hormones like dopamine and serotonin, produce anti-inflammatory compounds like resolvins and protectins, and promote neurogenesis.
   
   Maintaining a diet rich in healthy, fresh Omega-3s guarantees your brain has what it needs to maintain its quality of structure, size, and function.
   
   Fatty fish are the best source of Omega-3s.
   
   Some other healthy fats we encourage are butter, coconut oil, and avocado oil. Avoid seed oils!
   
   
2. Antioxidants & Bioflavinoids - These neutralize oxidative stress in your brain by protecting its tissues from free radical damage. In the subtle structures of the brain, free radicals can do a lot of damage. These free radicals steal the energy from your healthy cells, will damage the DNA, proteins, and lipids present in your neurons, and trigger the death of healthy neural cells.
   
   Antioxidants protect your brain from this degradation in cell quality by promoting healthy genetic expression. They will also modulate the anti-inflammatory process by toning your brains detox pathways, maintaining the quality of your blood-brain barrier, and enhancing cerebral blood circulation.
   
   Dark, richly colored berries are a fantastic source of antioxidants & bioflavonoids. They also provide necessary prebiotic fibers and genetic material that promote the health of your microbiome.
   
   
3. Leafy Greens - They contain vital vitamins and minerals like folate and vitamin k that are essential for the healthy expression of hormones, and maintaining the quality of the sheathing that surrounds your nerves.
   
   Leafy greens also contain: chlorophyll that aids in your energy expression and tones your detox pathways, fiber that feeds your microbiome with the food and genetic material it needs to produce short-chain fatty acids, and vital chemicals like magnesium to support hormone metabolization.
   
   Moringa, Dandelion Leaf, and Nettle Leaf are fantastic choices of leafy greens.
   
   
4. Nuts and seeds - These provide a fantastic source of antioxidants, healthy fats, and circulation augmenting nutrients. By promoting healthy circulation in the brain while supporting brain structure and lowering inflammation, nuts & seeds offer something for every aspect of brain health. Just be sure to avoid old nuts & seeds as their fats tend to have gone rancid, and can turn them from ideal superfood into a liver and brain toxin.
   
   Hemp seeds & Pumpkin Seeds are our favorite choices. Along side fresh almonds, cashews, pistachios, & pine nuts.
   
   
5. Dark Chocolate (aka Cacao, Cocoa) - When it is above 80% Cacao, dark chocolate offers a huge spectrum of helpful compounds, from flavonoids; alkaloids like theobromine and anandamide; and anti-inflammatory compounds.
   
   Dark chocolate also boosts blood flow to the brain, aids neuroplasticity, encourages endorphin release, and protects neurons from damage caused by free-radicals and stress.
   
   Cacao Base Protein Powders, and Dark Chocolate Bars are a great way to get this medicinal food in your life!
   
   
6. Turmeric & Black Pepper in Combination - These two superfoods, especially when used together, lower inflammation in the body, balance blood sugar levels, reduce stress, anxiety, and even depression.
   
   
7. Probiotics & Fermented Foods - Chronic brain inflammation is often connected to gut inflammation. By working with your gut to propagate the ideal strains and ratios of microbiota, heal your leaky gut, and lower inflammation in the gut lining, you are in directly working to do the same in your brain. Further, the majority of your serotonin is made in your gut, and fermented foods and probiotics help promote its healthy genesis by modulating your microbiome.
   
   Neuroinflammation can occur when your immune cells begin to attack your own neural tissue, disrupting neural signaling, and degrading synaptic plasticity. Often times, this inflammation develops peripherally in the gut and then travels to the brain, crosses the blood-brain barrier and begins to affect the brain.
   
   
8. Bonus foods for brain health include Medicinal Mushrooms & Adaptogens. This foods are incredibly intelligent at helping to heal your hormones, your nervous system, and your brain!

Mental & Emotional Health

Out of the physical health of our brain and gut rises our emotional space, and rest our mental space.

The container of our body holds echoing space of our mind. Over time and after experience this space will become crowded with remnants of old thoughts. 

Just as a beautiful room needs a dusting, so does the space where our mind resounds from. Learning to soften and lengthen your breath, learning to witness your thoughts, and then combine the two activities is a great way to give the mind a good cleaning.

The mind is as much a producer of thoughts as it is a recipient of them. External stimulus can collect and ring in the mind to become thoughts. One of the most powerful external stimuli is the state of our physical body. If our brain or gut become inflamed this inflammation will quite literally climb its way into our thoughts to become them. Further it will climb through our thoughts like a ladder or tunnel to become our emotions.

Have you ever been around someone who has sharp mood swings? Have you been that person? 

Often times what’s actually going on with them at a fundamental level is brain and gut inflammation. One culprit behind much of our mood swings is an atrophying of our insulin sensitivity. Blood sugar swings, and a rogue immune system turn into u-turning emotions, ready to turn on a dime, fired up by the inflammation that has found its home in the brain.

Inflammation, insulin resistance, and an imbalanced microbiome will drive our hormones out of wack leaving our mind and emotions to spin out of control in an instant.

Depression, anxiety, loss of ambition, memory loss, lack of motivation - all of these things have real, measurable representations of themselves in the brain. Impaired nerve function and chronic brain inflammation will disrupt neuronal signaling and damage synaptic plasticity.

Oftentimes this inflammation is the result of an immune response that is arising peripherally in the body. The over active immune response will rise out of the gut into the blood, journey its way to your brain, cross the blood-brain barrier and start doing its damage.

Long story short, gut inflammation will create vagus nerve and brain inflammation.

For example, depression & anxiety are associated with a loss of synaptic connections between neurons. This loss of connections leads to noisy and inefficient communication between neurons in the prefrontal cortex, the hippocampus, and beyond.

Dopamine genesis and metabolization will suffer. Further, most of your serotonin is made in your gut, greatly depending on the health of your microbiome. So if your sleep, ability to rest, or your ability to land in your parasympathetic nervous state are waining, consider taking better care of your brain and gut.

Chronic stress, a poor diet full of processed foods and gluten, antibiotics, and exposure to herbicides and pesticides will damage your microbiome and eventually your brain.

So if your mind and emotions feel out of whack, low, and / or empty. Focus on rebuilding your gut and brain health. Overtime you will see a change, and a return to the real you.

Finally, make sure you are getting regular exercise. The movement of your limbs, digits, and eyes tones your nervous system and tones your brain tissue. Second, the health of your body and brain depends on the lactic acid you produce after exercising your muscles.