Nutrition and our Mental Health
SEASON 1 EPISODE 3
with Diana Rosayn
In this episode of Neighbourhood Nutritionist, I had the pleasure of speaking with Diana, a nutrition coach specialising in mental health. We talked about:
Neurotransmitters and how they work in our bodies
Neurotransmitters, hormonal imbalance and disordered eating
Stress, anxiety and depression
The importance of feeling connected with yourself
3 actionable tips to feeling better straight away!
About Diana Rosayn
My experience with nutrition specifically started with the fact that both of my parents started the first Holistic Health Centre on the East Coast in New York. My dad is a psychologist, and my mom is a nutritionist and a massage therapist. And so I was sort of born into this world. But what's really interesting is that my great grandfather is the founder of Nathan's Famous, the hotdog company. And so it's like sort of a teeter on this weird world of being raised by a nutritionist who, you know, always taught us to eat well, and then having a grandfather who fed me hot dogs, you know, almost every single day. And so, by the time I was 12, or 13, I was very overweight. I was actually about 100 pounds overweight, and I was having a lot of physical symptoms: I never was able to sleep, I would go to sleep and I'd wake up like 20 minutes later and just be completely unable to sleep at all. And I was a pretty, you know, active kid, despite my my, you know, being overweight, I was always very active and involved and I was a happy kid, you know, but I would wake up in the middle of the night not be able to go back to sleep, I'd wake up with these horrible sharp pains in my stomach.
My parents being holistic, they took me to an acupuncturist and that was sort of where my understanding of how it works actually affected me and came into play. Unfortunately, the acupuncture didn't really help fully, but it helped me to be more aware of what was actually going on. And what was actually going on was that a combination of eating the totally wrong foods, and having a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety, I was always so fearful of things that I think a lot of kids are fearful of, you know, social anxiety being in school, I was afraid of thunderstorms for a long time. And, you know, we all had our little quirks, of course, but I think that combination really, really hit me hard.
And I didn't know that these physical symptoms that this, um, you know, the fact that I couldn't sleep, or I would wake up with these terrible pains, or, you know, even that I would see multiple doctors, and the doctors would tell me, oh, you know, maybe you're lactose intolerant. Or oh, just try this, you know, and it was very blanketed, it wasn't relating my body wasn't telling me, you know, you have a physical issue that has been created by your emotional issues, your, you know, nobody thought about, my gosh, you're an anxious kid, you can't leave your parents without being concerned or fearful that they're going to get in a car accident, I had these like, ridiculous thoughts I always did.
But, you know, it never was paired together. And so when I was 15 years old, and I started to do my own research, I was like, one of those kids who spent my free time in the school library, I mean, was rather odd, I think, at the time for most people looking at me, but I started to figure it out, you know, and, and I started to make my own changes, I ended up losing 80 pounds. And after I lost that weight, and I started to exercise, I started to eat a little bit better. And, you know, don't get me wrong, I was 15. So I had my fair share of junk food. But, you know, I just was more aware, I was more aware of what I was feeling. And I was more aware of how what I was feeling was affecting my physical health.
And I guess that's really kind of taken me here. And, you know, now I work with a lot of people in that age bracket, I work with a lot of teens, or even like college age kids, and they're all in that period of, gosh, I don't know how to handle these things. Like, you know, I don't, I don't want to go on this strict diet, I don't want to have to cut out my life.
How do Neurotransmitter or other Health Tests work?
Yeah, so this is also not a super new topic. In fact, there's many large brands internationally that do neurotransmitter or even wellness testing. But what's really going on and what I think is a big problem right now is that the idea of your mental health affecting your physical health and vice versa, has become sort of like a fad. It's this thing where it's cool to test your body. And yeah, you know, you don't I mean, where like, people are like, Oh, let me take a quiz online. Am I sick?
I mean, you know, like, how out of touch do you have to be with your body that you have to take a quiz to understand that something's not right. So I started to do a lot of research about labs and which of these fad labs were actually really understanding the person as a whole because it's really it's critical if if somebody is just ordering a test for $300 and, you know, sending it into a lab and the lab doesn't even know who that person is, then I don't see that being effective. So yeah, so I started to research and I just discovered a really amazing way to do this at home. It's a urine sample, it's really easy to do at home. In fact, it's funny because I often will get parents who say, I want to do this for my kid who was diagnosed with ADHD, but he's six. And I mean, let's be serious, a six year old doing any of these things is hard.
But, um, but it's very easy. And it's really fascinating, because what it really shows us and, and I think, I think of it like, like astrology, you know, when you read your astrology chart, and you're like, you're not expecting to hear these catastrophic answers to the world's problems. But what it does is it confirms for you, that might be why this is happening, or that explains that.
And for most people, you know, like most testing, it's an explanation. It's helping them understand, oh, I have terrible anxiety. I have been diagnosed several times in several different situations, but I don't really know why or what it's from.
And so what it evaluates is all the neurotransmitters and how they're working together. So if you're not absorbing your nutrients properly, if you're not taking in the right foods, or the right amount of water, if you're not getting the right type of sleep, it's not even that you're not getting enough - it's the type of sleep. So it really evaluates all of those different pieces.
And then what we do together, is we actually sit down and say, all right, well, this is what's going on. And this is how we can best correct it. And what's really incredible, and I know, we talked when we, when we spoke before, we talked about, you know, amazing stories, and I even still get goosebumps to this day. But what's really incredible is, is the change that it's made on people's lives. I mean, the ability to get up in the morning, the ability to go to a job, things that we probably are like, oh, you know, you get up, you go to work. That's the thing.
So before I, you know, I would call it fixing my own body. I don't think I realised what it was like to wake up feeling fresh, right. And now I can't imagine going back to mornings of waking up, you know, sometimes you go to sleep. And then it's like, you wake up and you feel like it's been three seconds. And you're like, oh, no, like I don't feel rested at all. But I need to start my day all over again.
Wait… What are Neurotransmitters?
When people go around asking how are you or you know, what, you know, how's your day going, and you have that sort of routine? Now, it might be a little bit different, but still, so when you're on group meetings, or you're interacting with a group, you would say, How are you doing? That's actually your neurotransmitters responding to and when people automate so much that they say, Oh, I'm good, or I'm fine. Or even when they say I'm busy, it's their body in their brain, automating that response. And most of the time, it's because we're so tired, that we don't even think twice about how we respond.
All neurotransmitters work together, the two big ones that we always look at and that you know, if you're ever on anti anxiety, medication, anti depression medication, any medication that seeks to eliminate a behaviour, so a mood, a response to your mood, all of those are affecting your dopamine and your serotonin.
Both of those neurotransmitters are messengers to the brain. So they're communicating those feelings and what those pills are what those you know, the the those prescriptions aim to do, is to block those messengers. It's to block what those messengers aim to do. And they have so many different functions in the body and so what often happens is people think of dopamine or serotonin independently. But there are so many different types of neurotransmitters. The main ones that we really look at, like I said are serotonin and dopamine. And both of those really process your all your whole hormones, they process your metabolism, your sleep, really everything, your endorphins, so how much energy you might have how able you are to be really present in a moment.
But what really relates to those things are then epinephrine and norepinephrine, which are your excitatory neurotransmitters. Those are the things that get you really anxious. So most people know that as adrenaline. And so when you have a tonne of adrenaline running through your body, your norepinephrine, and epinephrine are normally pretty out of whack. And those are all affected by your serotonin and your dopamine.
What's really important to know is all of those things stem from your stomach. So whatever you eat, however you eat, and that's important too. Well, those will all affect your serotonin, your dopamine, in fact, 90% of your serotonin is actually in your stomach, not in your brain. And so you can regulate your serotonin and your dopamine, the rest of the neurotransmitters will generally unless you have severe allergies, because then your histamine is a little bit off.
But unless you have any sort of really serious physical health issue, if you can balance the dopamine and the serotonin in your body in your gut, then your brain generally follows.
Relevance to Eating Disorders
Maybe 10 years ago, many of the large organisations like the National Eating Disorders Association, Renfrew, which is a very large centre here in the United States. Those organisations were starting to look at how these neurotransmitters were actually linked to eating, and specifically two disorders. And there's a tonneof research about it. In fact, they found that there's actually fundamental differences in the actual brains of the people who have anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder.
And it comes back to that reward centre. With eating disorders, the brain doesn't function properly in terms of how it regulates our rewards. It doesn't associate feeding with a reward, it doesn't associate energy, even with a reward. And that's where our food comes from. We eat for energy, we eat to live.
But when you have an eating disorder, or even if you just deal with emotional eating, which is something that I really struggled with myself, I'm sure a lot of you and I would say are struggling right now with, I think you actually mentioned that. So when you're stressed, you either eat a lot, or you can't eat at all. And it's that same thing. So any kind of disordered eating, whether it be a diagnosed condition, like anorexia, binge eating, or bulimia will then directly correlate to your serotonin, your dopamine, any kind of any kind of basis for that happiness response, because those are happiness hormones. And we want to make sure that those are regulated.
What are Anxiety and Depression?
Both are stress responses. So when your body's under stress, it reacts and will react in a way that either will be exposed as depression or as anxiety. So you might have heard, and I'm sure many of your listeners might have heard that. Oftentimes, people who have anxiety might also have bouts of depression. And vice versa. It's very, very common. And it's, it's really, because those sorts of mood disorders are stress responses when your body is under stress, it creates a response.
And, you know, relating it back to nutrition and relating it back to these neurotransmitters, your body is actually inflamed. So you know, we all know about cortisol, cortisol is the stress hormone, as as many people would say, It's the reason we all have belly fat, I guess is the more common dietitian world are saying it.
But cortisol is an inflammation, cortisol is your body's response to that stress hormone coming out in droves. And so when we have that stress hormone, oftentimes when we do these tests, with people, and when I have somebody who has anxiety, or depression, we want to understand how the cortisol in their body is affecting their neurotransmitters.
Depression is really just an a response to stress. And so like you said, you know, during these times when the world seems like it's just absolutely destroyed, and we don't know what to do, or how to respond, our bodies know what to do, they'll respond by creating stress, by creating inflammation by you know, sending that alarm.
And it really is, you know, it's, it's funny, because people look at anxiety as this thing that we suffer with. Depression is something that we suffer with. But the body was created to experience anxiety and depression. These are normal responses. It's your body's way of protecting you from stress.
So, you know, we want to be able to really look at what's going on in the world and look at what's going on with your chemicals in your body, with whatever imbalances are in your body, and with the way that your body is responding to stress, with some level of understanding, you know, we have to say, the world is really crazy right now. The world is very stressful right now. So if you are feeling anxious, if you're feeling depressed, to some extent, that's very normal. You should it's, it's very scary. But it's when that stress begins to take a toll on our body so much so that we don't know how to respond to where our body becomes overwhelmed. That's when that dopamine, that's when that serotonin starts to really attack the body. And that's when your anxiety and depression begins to really, you know, just go wild.
Holidays and Binge Eating
Food is always so much tastier when we're on holiday, because usually there is no stress in the picture. And I wonder if that makes everything seem better. And our bodies, you know, taste buds, everything just a happier.
So I had a client once who was very stressed by her family who really hated the idea of holidays, because it meant all of this time with people that gave her a lot of anxiety. It was almost like the opposite of what you're saying. But what was interesting, interesting, but you know, what she used to do to feel better was eat an entire pie. And that kind of gluttonous. So she would just kind of go to town and eat a whole pie. And that kind of gluttonous sort of binge eating, would still release this happiness hormone.
When the body feels more relaxed, more at ease, we feel more open to be able to eat the foods we love indulge. There's also that thought process like this food doesn't count. You know, we often go through that, like, oh, it's one night, we're just going to eat and drink whenever we want. But that still, yeah, thought that thought alone releases a happiness hormone. And so there's absolutely that correlation, no doubt in my mind, and you know, you're validating it.
Key Takeaways
Here are Diana’s three actionable steps for you:
Find what brings you joy.
So the first thing I do with people is to take that thing that brings you joy, and record how your body reacts to it, it's really, really important that we at least know that if I want to have something, this is what will happen when I do and and that you can almost prepare for it.Start to just replace one thing a day.
So if you have a go-to breakfast, if you you know, drink five cups of coffee a day like I used to, just start to replace one cup with a cup of tea, or replace one meal with something that is a little bit more healthy or more conducive to give you energy, especially if it's during the day and you're active.Get outside.
The more that we can connect with our environment, the more aware we are of our bodies. And oftentimes when we're sitting at a desk, and we're staring at a computer, when we're on the phone a lot, we lose touch with how we actually feel. And you would be shocked at how many clients I have, that felt really ill or had a lot of symptoms and their symptoms were simply coming from the fact that they weren't fully aware they were having them.
And it wasn't until they got home and they took a shower and they got in bed for the night that they felt that stomach ache, that headache, you know, whatever twinge. I mean, they were just completely unconscious.
So if we can get outside and be in a different environment, that is extraordinarily helpful.
The One Food That Takes You To Your Happy Place
I feel like I have 25 foods that just bring me so much joy! But my one food is raspberries. And the reason for that is because my my grandmother, who was my biggest fan, my best friend, loves them to death and they actually had a giant raspberry bush, I guess it's a bush on their property that we used to get to to pick together so I have fond memories of these raspberries.
If you're concerned that you're developing a mental health problem, you should seek the advice and support of your GP as a matter of priority. If you're in distress and need immediate help and are unable to see a GP, you should visit your local A&E.
Diana is very kind and is offering listeners of the Neighbourhood Nutritionist podcast the following:
Visit https://rb.gy/ahercj to get the free Brain Bites cookbook filled with easy 30 minute or less brain healthy recipes. And for coaches, therapists and practitioners, you can get access to the Holistic Therapist Guide, an inexpensive step-by-step guide to integrate holistic health in your practice.
Book a FREE 30 minute session with Diana if you want to better understand the source of your symptoms and how your mind and body are connecting or NOT connecting. This will include a review of what might be going on and how you can feel better fast. This can also be for therapists to consult on how you can better use holistic health with your clients. Schedule your session here: https://calendly.com/holistictherapists/freesession
