Fanny Elizaga is an occupational therapist, certified Neuro-Coach, and trauma-informed mindfulness trainer. Over the years, she has embraced her passion for learning and applying holistic modalities for mind-body healing in her personal and professional life. Fanny is also a Reiki master practitioner and certified instructor in the art of Qi-Gong.
We often think of food in terms of physical health, weight, energy levels, heart function, but what if the food you eat is quietly shaping your thoughts, emotions, and mental clarity? While we rush to fix brain fog with caffeine or treat anxiety with medication, we rarely stop to ask: What role does nutrition play in mental well-being?
“We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine gun.” – George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier
When Orwell forecasted the widespread harm that “tinned food” might cause in 1937, he wasn’t referring to the threat a can of condensed milk might pose to pedestrians if thrown from a fifth-story window.
He wasn’t alluding to poor working conditions in the factories that manufactured canned food (although he was concerned about that too).
Orwell was warning us of the far-reaching consequences of chronic undernourishment.
When you apply industrial techniques to food production, Orwell writes, it provides “cheap substitutes for everything.” Tinned sauce offers an inferior replacement for vine-ripened tomatoes. Tinned milk, stocked with sugar and cornflour, is a poor alternative to real milk. The English habit of eating “white bread and margarine, corned beef, sugared tea, and potatoes,” Orwell observes, leads to a population suffering from sickness and misery.
We are what we eat
Nearly a century after Orwell wrote The Road to Wigan Pier, industrialized food has become the norm. In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan calls it “Our National Eating Disorder.” America isn’t eating “real food.” Instead, we’re stocking our kitchens with products advertised on TV, packaged meals with a long list of ingredients, and snacks made with maltodextrin and sodium tripolyphosphate.¹
Widespread consumption of ultra-processed food has led to high rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.
But our “national eating disorder” affects us psychologically too. Depression, anxiety, autism, and ADHD have been rising steadily over the past few decades. Mental disorders, says Harvard psychiatrist Christopher Palmer in his address to the Metabolic Health Summit, are now one of the “leading causes of disease burden and disability worldwide.”²
Yet, as a culture, we’ve been trained to see our brains as separate from our bodies.
If we’re feeling hopelessly overwhelmed, a doctor may prescribe Prozac. If we have difficulty concentrating, Adderall might seem like the answer.
Rarely do we consider the foods we eat when it comes to addressing neurological wellness.
However, the brain, like the heart, lungs, and liver, is a major organ that depends on converting food into energy for vital cellular function. Comprised of 86 billion neurons and 85 billion non-neuronal cells, the central nervous system relies on the same chemical processes that enable our hearts to beat and our lungs to breathe.
The problem is in the processing
In my last blog post, I shared the science behind sensory processing. Everyone has their own level of tolerance when it comes to dealing with energy in their environment. For a person living with ADHD, autism, or post-traumatic stress, walking through a crowded shopping mall may feel intolerable.
At a cellular level, the term for “processing” the energy of our environment is metabolism. It derives from the Greek word metabolē, which means “change.” Metabolism refers to all the changes that occur within each of our cells, providing us with the energy for vital functioning and synthesizing new organic material. Without healthy metabolism, we couldn’t convert food into energy, eliminate waste, grow, reproduce, or respond functionally to our environment.
Naturally, when dysfunction occurs at the metabolic level, both the brain and body experience it. Whether it’s difficulty converting food into mental energy or managing sensory information, a dysfunctional metabolism not only affects our physical energy over the long term, but it also leads to psychological disabilities and disorders.
The mighty mitochondria
To dig deeper into this fascinating connection between mental and metabolic health, it’s critical to understand a key player in metabolic function: the mitochondria.
Commonly referred to as the “powerhouse” of the cell, mitochondria play a critical role in neuroplasticity, neuroprotection, and neurodevelopment.
If there is chronic mitochondrial dysfunction in your brain cells, it will naturally lead to mental dysfunction. Evidence has emerged that "impaired mitophagy", the process that recycles and removes damaged mitochondria while controlling the biogenesis of new, healthy mitochondria, may contribute to the accumulation of damaged mitochondria in people with ADHD.³
Dr. Christopher Palmer goes so far as to assert that mitochondria “can unify everything we know about the mental health field.”
Palmer notes that mitochondria play a “direct role in the production, regulation, and release of key neurotransmitters, including serotonin, dopamine, and GABA glutamate.” Mitochondrial function in specific brain cells determines whether you feel hungry or satiated and whether you have the energy to exercise. They also play a role in “genetics and in epigenetic expression.” “Sleep, alcohol and drugs, love, heartbreak, meaning and purpose in life, trauma, and loneliness” all affect mitochondrial function.⁴
The positive news is that we can influence the health of our mitochondria. We can avoid drugs and alcohol. We can monitor our sleep and our thoughts. We can practice loving-kindness and seek social connection. We can cultivate healthy, meaningful lives.
Reinforcing a positive feedback loop between our mental activity and metabolic function is within our grasp.
Metabolic medicine
Despite Orwell’s foresight into the harm of processed foods, chucking your tinned tomatoes out the window is not the sole solution to managing your metabolic and mental health.
Eliminating processed foods is a beneficial start, but our metabolic needs are as unique as our neural circuitries. A “one size fits all” approach to diet, nutrition, and lifestyle won’t cut it, despite the “simple solutions” touted by the latest diet fads and wellness gurus.
As Palmer points out in the last chapter of Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More, “in most cases, there’s not a ‘defect’ in the person but in the environment.” He aptly quotes Alexander de Heijer: “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”⁵
I encourage you to read Brain Energy and do your own deep dive into the hopeful research emerging in the field. Successfully supporting metabolic and mental health demands a multifaceted approach; it takes time to find the right treatment plan for your unique metabolism.
Three basic actions, with a focus on neuro-nutrition, to get you started
1. Eliminate the obvious environmental poisons
Abusive living or work situations. Self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. Overindulgence in junk food. It may seem obvious that environmental triggers such as these are unhealthy. But did you know prolonged exposure may result in metabolic and mental dysfunction?
Overcoming dependency on any of the above usually requires careful planning and professional support, including residential treatment and outpatient clinical support.
2. Identify vitamin deficiencies
According to Palmer, deficiencies in thiamine, folate, and vitamin B12 often result in mental and neurological symptoms, including “depression, apathy, loss of appetite, irritability, confusion, memory impairment, sleep disturbances, fatigue, hallucinations, and delusions, to name just some of them.”⁶
If you’re vegetarian or vegan, it will take extra effort to get the high levels of B12 found naturally in meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and dairy. Dietary supplementation can be obtained from fortified foods, such as fortified breakfast cereals and soy milk, or from nutritional yeast. Sources of folate include broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and leafy green vegetables (such as cabbage, kale, spring greens, and spinach), as well as peas, chickpeas, and kidney beans. Thiamine, or B1, can be found in fish, beans, lentils, and green peas.
3. Fill up with fiber
We all know that fiber helps move food through our digestive systems, but did you know that it may play a significant role in your mental health?
Your gut microbes convert fiber into butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid that serves as a primary fuel source for the mitochondria. Research from 2017, published in the journal Diabetes, indicates that butyrate directly influences mitochondrial function, efficiency, and dynamics, which impacts overall metabolism.⁷
Stay tuned for Part 2: How to Supercharge Your Metabolic and Mental Health with Mindfulness.
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Fanny Elizaga, Certified Trauma Centered Neuro-Coach, Mindfulness Trainer
Fanny Elizaga is an occupational therapist, certified Neuro-Coach, and trauma-informed mindfulness trainer. Over the years, she has embraced her passion for learning and applying holistic modalities for mind-body healing in her personal and professional life. Fanny is also a Reiki master practitioner and certified instructor in the art of Qi-Gong. Fanny inspires, empowers, and educates her clients by teaching brain-enhancing tools for self-improvement, expanding out of their comfort zone, and thriving. Fanny is also the founder and trainer of Neuro-Wellness Academy; she is genuinely passionate about creating content and courses based on practical brain science – for wellness, resilience, personal transformation.
Endnotes:
Pollan, M. (2007). The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Penguin.
Metabolic Health Summit. (2024, August 13). Dr. Chris Palmer | Brain Energy: The Metabolic Theory of Mental Illness | The Metabolic Link Ep. 47 [Video]. YouTube.
Öğütlü, H., Kaşak, M., & Tabur, S. T. (2023). Mitochondrial dysfunction in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Eurasian Journal of Medicine, 54(Supp1), S187–S195.
Palmer, MD, Christopher M. . Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health—and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More (p. 5). BenBella Books. Kindle Edition.
Ibid
Ibid
Mollica, M. P., Raso, G. M., Cavaliere, G., Trinchese, G., De Filippo, C., Aceto, S., Prisco, M., Pirozzi, C., Di Guida, F., Lama, A., Crispino, M., Tronino, D., Di Vaio, P., Canani, R. B., Calignano, A., & Meli, R. (2017). Butyrate regulates liver mitochondrial function, efficiency, and dynamics in Insulin-Resistant obese mice. Diabetes, 55(5), 1405–1418.
