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The Overshadowed Correlation between Metabolic Health and Mental Health - by Robert Reyes

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    • Robert Reyes at Pima Community College
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    Metabolic health can be overlooked by many people in the world, especially in the west. Obesity Is not only bad for your health in general, for example, but you might also have an increased chance of diabetes and various cardiovascular diseases. However, I believe there is a silent killer that can be overlooked. I believe that for some people, metabolic health is correlated to mental health.

    Metabolic health relates to the overall state of condition of your body that has to do with what you are metabolizing. For example, eating anything that would get you having a blood sugar, waist circumference, blood pressure, cholesterol. In contrast, if you were to be metabolically unhealthy, then all the examples I mentioned, would be unstable. Furthermore, typically when you are metabolic unhealthy, it is most common that one would be obese. When you are obese or overweight, I think naturally you lose self-esteem. This would be obvious for some people, however, I believe that when you consume a bad diet, for some people it negatively impacts your mental health, such as having anxiety or depression. Anecdotally, I have seen people and myself with prominent conditions, which I will not name for personal reasons. Moreover, I also believe that it is vague on what is healthy and what is not. I find it odd that people and society will demonize fats when it is important for us to have and live because it is one of the building blocks of our body, but they will promote an excessive amount of carbs. Obesity in America, to me, is very common, and obviously fat free foods are not helping at all.

    Furthermore, What I have seen in my own experience, is that an excessive amount of sugar or carbs does not sit well with some people. Many people do not know this, but in your abdominal region which covers your stomach, is a nerve called the vagus nerve. This nerve connects to your stomach and goes to the central nervous system and into the brain. This is important because if your stomach or body does not respond well to certain foods hypothetically speaking, then it might cause some repercussions such as conditions like anxiety or depression.

    Furthermore, I earlier stated that it was with some people. I believe that in general there should be more research on added sugars and man-made fats, which most likely impacts anyone negatively, however, I believe for certain, that some people do not respond to sugar or carbs well and it might be one of the reasons for your condition. For example, it is like a person who is lactose intolerant. He cannot drink milk because he does not have the necessary enzyme to break it down. So, like sugar, when people eat sugar or carbs it results in those conditions. If you want to test to see if there might be something in your diet that your nervous system does not respond well to, then I would either do an elimination diet and slowly start to add food and see which one does not respond well with your body. For example, keto and carnivore would be good options as both eliminate a substantial amount of food and it is easy to look up the rules for the diet.  However, most importantly, you should check in with your doctor to see if you are deficient in anything or if there is something wrong with you in general.

    Lastly, I would recommend with people who have an uncontrollable condition, to try to eat low carbs and make protein and maybe fat your priority to see if it helps you. I can say it has helped me tremendously, however, I also do not think that this condition is solely just metabolic health as I think it is a combination of different things that accumulate and lead to the same results. For example, having low vitamin d. Hoped this helped and would also recommend everyone try a low-carb diet to see if it makes you feel better.  

    Citations

    Rhee, E.-J., Lee, M. K., Kim, J. D., Jeon, W. S., Bae, J. C., Park, S. E., Park, C.-Y., Oh, K.-W., Park, S.-W., & Lee, W.-Y. (2014, May 28). Metabolic Health is a more important determinant for diabetes development than simple obesity: A 4-Year Retrospective Longitudinal Study. PloS one. Retrieved October 31, 2022, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4037196/

    Norwitz, N. G., & Naidoo, U. (2021, February 12). Nutrition as metabolic treatment for anxiety. Frontiers in psychiatry. Retrieved October 31, 2022, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7907178/

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