new study The publication in the Journal of Affective Disorders found an association between a highly inflammatory diet and an increased risk of depression.
The researchers state that their findings will have an impact on public health, as they are an indication that a controlled diet can help people with depression or prevent illness in the first place.
Participants included 30,627 individuals from the United States who were studied in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a program of studies designed to assess the health and nutritional status of adults and children in the United States from 2007 to 2018.
The study aimed to evaluate the relationship between dietary inflammation index (DII)which is an outcome scoring algorithm designed to estimate how diet affects inflammation in the body and health outcomes as a result, in the NHANES cross-sectional study.
Participants were asked questions regarding the foods they had in their diet, and were given a score based on their dietary inflammation, also rated as depressed.
Based on this data, the researchers found a so-called J-shaped relationship, which is defined according to the academics, as a non-linear relationship between two variables and appears as a curve that decreases initially, and then rises to become higher than the starting point, between DII and depression.
Meaning, at a specific point, the amount of inflammation within the body seems to exceed the body’s capacity.
Then, as Figure J indicates, it was found that higher inflammation in the participants’ body begins to be associated with a greater risk of depression for the participants.
This J-shaped relationship showed a positive association between depression and inflammation, which remained intact even after the researchers adjusted for factors such as demographic data, lifestyle habits, disease, body mass index (BMI), and C-reactive protein (CRP). It is the level of a specific protein that the liver produces if the body’s inflammation is too high.
This confirmed the association between severe inflammation and depression in adults in the United States, according to the study authors.
Search High intake of inflammatory foods, such as sugar and fat, and low intake of fruits and vegetables have been linked to chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and coronary heart disease, to name a few.
Meanwhile, other studies showed that the Mediterranean diet, a low-inflammatory diet consisting of large amounts of vegetables and fruits, more seafood than meat and other foods rich in healthy fats such as olive oil, can actually help prevent or improve chronic disease. .
and during the past studies I found that many chronic diseases can get worse as a result of chronic inflammation in the body, which is a favour As a slow, long-term inflammation that lasts for long periods of several months to years, depression can also be exacerbated by this chronic inflammation.
About 280 million people worldwide suffer from depression, to me WHO This rate is increasing annually.
In Canada alone, there is estimated One in four Canadians suffers from depression so severe that it requires treatment at some point in their lives.
According to Harvard Medical School, some high-inflammatory foods should be avoided or limited includesRefined carbohydrates, french fries or other fried foods, pop and other sugary drinks, red meat, processed meats, margarine, margarine, and lard.
Nutrient-rich foods such as leafy green vegetables, nuts, tomatoes, olive oil, fatty fish, and fruits should be consumed as part of an anti-inflammatory diet.
The researchers write that these findings have significant implications for clinical practice as well as public health because diet is a modifiable factor. Therefore, by choosing an anti-inflammatory diet or restricting pro-inflammatory foods, depression can be reduced and prevented, say the researchers.