How to Curb Our Appetite for Anxiety

With news cycles delivering reports of threats on endless repeat, our psyches tilt towards seeing, noticing, and interpreting many things negatively. Enter anxiety and its alter ego, depression. The American Psychiatric Association estimates that almost 30 percent of Americans will suffer from anxiety or depression in our lifetime.

Our ability to deal with constant stressors is, unexpectedly, related to inflammation. Our immune system is always on the prowl for rogue microbes, but it’s not known for its subtlety. When an immune cell on the beat encounters a microbe inside a cell, it typically kills them both. That does the job—but with some obvious collateral damage.

Worse yet, our immune system can get confused by the fog of war and accidentally attack our own tissues outright, causing autoimmune diseases like arthritis, Crohn’s, multiple sclerosis, and diabetes—further damaging our psyches. The incidence of each of these diseases has skyrocketed since the 1950s.

Our brain responds to inflammation with anxiety to get us agitated—or depression to keep us in bed. These are sickness behaviors that kick in even though we may not be directly conscious of the cause.

Most of the time, the inflammation originates with a leaky gut. Our gut is full of microbes that help us digest our food and perform other vital functions, but if the cells of the gut lining are not bound tightly together, the microbes, along with all manner of other alien substances, leak through and can enter the bloodstream. From there, the heart dutifully pumps them to every organ in the body—including the brain—with the immune system in hot pursuit.

And how does the gut get leaky in the first place? The most common cause is a microbiome in which the balance of component bugs has been thrown into disarray by stress and a poor diet (read: a diet lacking in fiber).

The standard American diet, or SAD—it’s hard to imagine a more appropriate acronym—is notoriously subpar. Add to that the fat-rich, sugar-laden highly processed comfort foods we tend to reach for under stress. Separately and together, they starve healthy bugs of needed nutrients, and the resulting dysbiosis alters the biochemical mix in the gut to affect the way it—and we—function.

Good sleep, exercise, and a quality diet all contribute to curbing anxiety. What may come as a surprise is that all three approaches are linked to gut microbes.

Sleep: Even though the gut microbes live in darkness, they know how to sync up to the daily cycles of circadian rhythm to which our biology is deeply attuned and which underlie human health. If our sleep cycles are not aligned with our microbial cycles, we find it hard to get to sleep and to stay asleep. This can be especially bad news for night-shift workers, who tend to have elevated rates of depression.

Exercise: Exercise improves the cardiovascular system, but it also affects the balance of gut microbes, favoring species of bacteria that produce the short-chain fatty acid butyrate. Butyrate is an important biochemical that nourishes the gut lining to keep cells tightly packed, improves nerve growth in the brain, and tamps down inflammation.

If exercise were a pill, it would be the top-selling drug of all time. Amazingly, you can go for a walk without a prescription—and it’s totally free.

Diet: The most important lever we have over our mental health is our diet. Unfortunately, however, that makes adolescents, who are busily building their bodies, especially vulnerable to mental health problems. Teens need plenty of calories, but only quality calories will keep their gut microbes happy. For that, they need a Mediterranean-style diet that includes plenty of fiber and polyphenols from plants. These substances can’t be digested by our own gut enzymes, but they are ambrosia to our microbes.

Fiber may make you think of tree bark, but in fact many fiber-rich foods (called prebiotics, because they foster the growth of healthy bacteria) are delicious. They include berries, artichokes, onions, and beans. The Mediterranean diet also contains fish, which supplies omega-3 oils that are anti-inflammatory, and fermented food in the form of yogurt, kefir, pickles, and olives. Ferments contain living microbes that create a healthy environment in the gut, boosting beneficial microbes and killing pathogens. These all help to strengthen resistance to stress and anxiety.

Too often, teens have easier access to junk food than to other edibles, which establishes a pattern that continues into adulthood. There are many reasons that the SAD is bad, but the elimination of fiber is at the top of the list.

Studies demonstrate a significant association between junk food and depression. When depressed subjects were switched to a diet high in fiber, their risk of depression fell by 30 percent. That is as good as or better than the standard psychiatric cure rate with medication.

So put down your phone and pick up your fork. You may not be able to change the planet in a day, but eating well may be all it takes to help you bounce back from a world gone mad.

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