Dr. Chris Palmer: Your Diet Could Be Causing Anxiety, Depression & Brain Fog (6 Simple Changes to Make Today)

**Chris Palmer** (0:00)
Most psychiatrists or neuroscientists will say, there's no way that what we eat would play a role in something like depression, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. When you actually start to pull back the curtain, it's horrifying.

**Jay Shetty** (0:16)
How do we know if our metabolism is healthy or unhealthy?

**Chris Palmer** (0:19)
How's my mood? How's my anxiety? How's my ability to sleep? Any of those things should be at least warning signs that you may have impaired metabolism somehow or another impacting your brain.

**Jay Shetty** (0:37)
Chris, it is so great to have you here today, and I'm so excited to ask you so many questions. Thank you for making the time and thanks for being here.

**Chris Palmer** (0:44)
Thank you so much for having me on.

**Jay Shetty** (0:45)
Chris, I want to start with something that I watched a part of recently.
You recently addressed the Senate, and I thought it was a really powerful speech you gave, and I just wanted the audience to get context. What was the thesis or what was the main approach for that presentation and speech?

**Chris Palmer** (1:05)
The overarching theme of that roundtable discussion was that here in the United States, and actually throughout the world, we have an ever increasing chronic disease epidemic. So many people focus on the epidemics of obesity and diabetes, and there's no doubt that those are skyrocketing in prevalence. And I was there to represent the mental health epidemic that is occurring concurrently, that we really can't separate physical health and mental health, although many people want to. But I think that as we have these escalating rates of obesity and diabetes, we have escalating rates of a broad range of mental illnesses, neurodevelopmental conditions, mental health conditions, mental disorders, whatever term you like, even though those things mean very different things to a lot of people, we have escalating rates of things like autism, ADHD, anxiety disorders, depression, bipolar disorder, substance use disorders, eating disorders.
It's across the board, across a wide range of diagnoses. And the bottom line is that what we're doing to address these chronic diseases isn't working, and we need a paradigm shift.

**Jay Shetty** (2:29)
And what are some of the surprising sources of what's happening in the world? I think we all know that social media and the advancement of technology has some responsibility. We all know that our lack of movement and lack of connection and isolation has partly a responsibility. But what are some of the more surprising or some of the ones that you think we need to take more serious note of?

**Chris Palmer** (2:53)
I think probably for a lot of people, one of the more surprising things for mental health is that the same factors that can play a role in obesity, for example, can also play a role in mental health. And the one that gets overlooked most often is the role of diet or nutrition. If you talk to most psychiatrists or neuroscientists and ask them, does diet play a role in mental health?
Most of them will say probably not, that the brain is just a really complicated organ, and there's no way that what we eat, nutrition, would play a role in something like ADHD or even depression. And certainly not something like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.
By and large, most people in the mental health field believe that those are either genetic, biological disorders, or they are largely due to psychological and social factors, trauma, stress, social adversity. And that those are the causes. But people leave out what we're putting into our mouth every day that actually becomes our brain, becomes the neurotransmitters, influences the way every cell in our body functions. And yeah, I just want to point out, because this is really difficult for some people to grasp, and they think that I'm making stuff up, or they think that there's no way that can be, or this is highly speculative, this must be speculative. And what I'm here to say is that if you actually do a deep dive into the neuroscience literature and the cell biology literature of the mental health field, researchers have been struggling for decades, actually over a century, to figure out what exactly causes mental illness. But numerous lines of evidence have all converged on this thing called metabolism or metabolic dysfunction in cells appears to come up again and again across a wide range of mental health conditions. And those same metabolic kind of biomarkers or studies come up for things like obesity and diabetes and cardiovascular disease. And in fact, people with those metabolic disorders are more likely to have mental health conditions, and people with mental health conditions are more likely to have metabolic disorders. And so it's really a way to begin to put the science together. And more importantly, help people truly heal and recover sometimes.