We are living under chronic stress, grief and moral injury. It is feeling like the world is on fire and that is completely changing how you take care of yourself, the foods that you’re eating and your hunger cues. I’m Dr. Drew Ramsey. I’m a board certified psychiatrist. I’m a nutritional psychiatrist. I’m used to working with people in times of chaos and times of crisis in their life. This video is to help you understand what’s going on right now in your brain and with your mental health and how that’s affecting things like hunger cues and what you’re eating. We’re going to talk about solutions to make sure that you remain in the stance that you need to be in to get through times like this. Trust me, I’ve spent a lot of time with people at moments of extreme chaos and crisis in their lives. Some of the basics are to make sure we stay, as we say in my field, in our stance, meaning that we are empowered, we’re making choices and decisions, we’re facing our challenges with our head up, using all of our resources and all of our strengths. This is how we maintain hope and I hope this video is going to give you a lot of that.
First, I want to point out this isn’t a personal failure. If you’re struggling right now, it likely has nothing to do with your sense of discipline. What’s happening right now is our bandwidth is getting overwhelmed. And because of the chronic stress, because of moral injury, because of your individual history with trauma, with oppression, with bullying, your biological cues are almost going haywire because so much is true. You might be having a good day at work and see something online that horrifies you about the state of our country. You might have a great interaction with a colleague and then be seeing the most vitriolic comments from somebody that you thought was a friend on Facebook. All of this is swirling together.
I see so many people who consider this a personal moral failure. They lack discipline, they’re off their game. I think it’s very important for you to recognize this and take a step away from feelings of guilt and shame, except for how they help motivate you to take a step towards more mental fitness. We’re going to talk about some details of nutritional psychiatry. We’re to talk about things that you can do today to take a step towards more mental health, more brain health, and having your chin up with some hope and all of the force of you to take on these challenges that are in front of us and in front of our country.
So quick note about the biology of what’s happening. We can talk about all the neurotransmitters and cortisol, but I really think what’s important right now is for you to focus on function. There’s a couple of biological functions that get affected by stress and everyone’s a little different. Some of you have horrible insomnia. You’re worrying, you’re seeing images, you’re really needing to do things like up your exercise, decrease meals in the evening, watch your caffeine intake. That’s very different than those of you who have more of a defense to sleep a lot and that you’re avoiding, you’re numbing. I’ve heard this from a number of patients this month, boy, “the only time I’m finding peace is right as I’m falling asleep.” So those are very different examples of how our biology is individual in response to stress. The other part of this, of course, are hunger cues. Some of you watching are anxious, you’re triggered, you’re not eating, you’re getting to the end of the day and you’re irritable, you’re sad, you’re really struggling and you think back to what did I eat, what did I have for breakfast, for lunch? And maybe it wasn’t much, maybe a latte. So if that’s you, getting meals in the calendar with an alarm right now for a few weeks might be important. Others of you are struggling with sleep and your carb craving and you’re dealing with anxiety by going back to those comfort foods and those junk foods.
Who here has not been hitting the fast food places a little bit more or ordering in a little bit more or the one I hate where I’m standing and I’m looking at my fridge at night and I don’t know what to do for dinner and I can’t think of anything else that people eat other than hamburgers or pizza and whatever these leftovers are in my fridge. It’s like a state of confusion. Again, it’s one that I really try to recognize in myself and help my patients pinpoint so we can be responding less kind of on how we feel and on those natural biological cues and recognize that’s really being challenged right now. So instead we’re responding to our schedule, we’re responding to the things that we know keep us well, we’re engaging in the things that we know nourish and feed our mental health.
Let’s talk about some of the solutions, what I do in my own life when I have a lot of stress or when I’m really upset by what’s going on in our country and in the world, and what I advise to my patients. Our first step in this is that self-awareness, understanding where you are, how you specifically are being activated or triggered, how your biology is really shifting some of these basic cues and making it harder to care for yourself.
Let’s start with the basic rule of nutrient density. This means that you want to be getting a lot of nutrition for every calorie, for every bite. The reason is that oftentimes as our appetite is shifting, we’re having more of a craving for junk food or we’re just not feeling as hungry because we’re really upset. You want to make those bites count. And so this is where a lot of those classics of nutritional psychiatry come in. Things like soups and smoothies, things that are easy, like a kefir smoothie is a great example where you’re getting some great fermented foods in. There’s some data that fermented foods help us with the regulation of anxiety and our response to stress. So I like eating those good bugs or drinking those good bugs. It helps a little bit with the placebo effect almost or what I call the foodcebo effect, which is in the midst of all this chaos, in the midst of all of the distressing images we’re seeing in our country, I’m doing something that I know is great for my microbiome. It’s great for my mental health and it helps settle and calm me. So again, knowing that I’m making an active choice.
Another set of meals that are great and are very comforting are from your personal history. One that’s strange in my life, is I like toast with butter. It reminds me of my mom. It settles me down. Other people tell me they love things like fruit or cheese, things that are maybe from your culture of or things that maybe you and your parents or your family of origin always enjoyed together.
I want to talk about a few other easy meals that I love and to remind you again of that great nutritional psychiatry tool, the simple swaps. If you love pasta and you’ve been eating a lot of pasta with red sauce and you like pesto, wow, you just tripled the nutrient density of your pasta meal. Put a little pesto on there. Maybe add in some small fish. Increase the nutrient density of those comfort meals. If you’ve got to have french fries, what about sweet potato oven baked fries? These are all some of the techniques that we use when we’re working with patients who are in distress and they’re having a mental health crisis. When maybe they’re not having an appetite or maybe they’re really having to struggle with organization around their food. Some of the tools that we use in our practice, like simple swaps, finding something that’s a little bit healthier is often helpful.
Another very important tool that we use in mental health is around the idea of harm reduction. I think about that with food too, that we can eat in a way that increases our stress, increases our guilt, feeds into the problems that we’re having, or we can eat in a way that has more intention, more engagement with what we need and what our bodies need right now. This is one of the real powers of nutritional psychiatry and mental fitness that in the midst of no matter what is happening in our lives, in our country, even in our immediate community, we’re able to take a step back and eat and live our lives according to a set of values that ground us and that calm us. And so I hope that this helps you think about meal choices and foods that are helping you right now and to give you more structure and organization. Have a time that you’re going to the grocery store. If you’re feeling very anxious and worried about crowds, go when there aren’t going to be as many people there. If you’re worried about your finances and your budget, your food is a great place to address that. So many of our favorite brain foods are great on the budget. Things like lentils, beans, whole grains, frozen fruits and vegetables. These are all wonderful things that you can add on a budget.
Those are some of the tips. Another one is around decision fatigue. A lot of you might find yourself kind of standing looking at the fridge. I find this happens to me and I’m like, what food is there in the world other than hamburgers and pizza? And I’m looking at a lot of food, but somehow my brain’s not working. Again, that happens during the swirl of emotions when we’re worried so much about the state of the world or the country or your family. This is where the tool of organization comes in again. So many of you have great skills, whether it’s batch cooking, being really efficient with leftovers. Spotting what we call the low hanging fruit, whether its noticing you keep ordering pizza or you keep going out for fast food. Instead, finding time where you go to the grocery store, get those nutrient dense foods, focus on the food categories that we talk about. I have more blog posts with resources for this and also in my books, particularly Eat Complete, my cookbook is all about nutrient density and the foods that have the most of these nutrients like magnesium, thiamine, omega-3 fats.
There’s a lot of information. I hope you hear my encouraging, helpful and hopeful message to you that there are things you can do even as simple as what you eat to help yourself during times of stress. When I wrote Healing the Modern Brain, part of the modern world that’s coming for your brain is all of this increased stress, the increased bandwidth of information, the more awareness we have about outrage, injustice, violence, and oppression that’s going on in our world. With that comes some responsibility and with that certainly comes us responding as an organism and having a lot of shifts and how we care for ourself and how we eat.
I hope this video helps you settle down a bit and know that there are steps ahead, there are things to do, there are things medically, clinically and in the evidence that when we engage in, they help us face our challenges. If there are people in your life and in your community, who are going to benefit from your good cooking, your smile, or a neighbor who could use your help with groceries, remember, this is one of the best ways that you can settle down is when you get a little bit regulated, pass it on. And when you get a little bit of nourishment, pass it on. There are people right around you in your family, in your community, in your friendship circle who need your strength right now. I hope this video helps you get there. Please share it with anyone who needs it. I look forward to seeing you all in the next video. Hang in there. I’ll see you soon.
