High-fat diet and depression?

(Cancer Fighting Ketovore :)) #1

So, I was sent this article…it talks about how high-fat diets can lead to depression. I didn’t see any mention of whether or not the diet also included high or low carbs…

Thoughts?

#2

Okay, I am not a professional, and have no expertise on this matter, but it seems to me we have plenty of people with depression, on low fat diets, too.

(Cancer Fighting Ketovore :)) #3

Yeah, there is that. My family is just concerned.

#4

Well, from the article, they source another article from the University of Glasgow, still haven’t seen a link to the actual study though. Maybe I missed it.

Now, in a new study led by the University of Glasgow in collaboration with the Gladstone Institutes, and published today in Translational Psychiatry, scientists have been able to demonstrate the links between the consumption of diets high in saturated fats that lead to obesity and the development of depression phenotypes. (emphasis added)

So it seems there’s more of a link between obesity and depression than just the fats we’re eating.

An image from the University of Glasgow article:

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“We often use fatty food to comfort ourselves as it tastes really good, however in the long term, this is likely to affect one’s mood in a negative way. Of course, if you are feeling low, then to make yourself feel better you might treat yourself to more fatty foods, which then would consolidate negative feelings.

It just looks like a lot of carbs to me. They keep saying “fatty foods” but they’re not defining this very well. Unless this picture is the definition.

(Cancer Fighting Ketovore :)) #5

That’s what I was thinking too.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #6

From the study paper itself:

Obesity predominantly develops in response to increased consumption of energy-dense diets and a sedentary lifestyle . . .

No, obesity predominantly develops from high carbohydrate intake being forced by the concomitant insulin response to be stored as fat. I stopped reading there.

I suspect that the absence of insulin would go a long way to rebalancing the brain hormones, especially where the re-uptake of serotonin is concerned. Since the brain is made almost entirely of fat (and contains something like 25% of the body’s total amount of cholesterol, to boot), I doubt seriously that it is fat intake per se that is the problem.

For those who want to see the actual study, it’s A high-fat diet promotes depression-like behavior in mice by suppressing hypothalamic PKA signaling.

(Carl Keller) #7

Every time I eat salmon, it rains the next day… therefore eating salmon causes rain.

(bulkbiker) #8

" that mice given a high-fat diet displayed depressive behaviors until microbiome-altering antibiotics returned their behavior back to normal"
If you’re a mouse then maybe some cause for concern if you aren’t then read some Georgia Ede or L Amber O’Hearn about mental illness and keto.

#9

Wasn’t there a study at one point that showed a correlation between consuming saturated fats and increased serotonin production?

Anyways, since high-fat diets help stabilize blood sugar fluctuations, that alone has helped my depression some. And I think the reason so many overweight people are depressed is primarily because society treats them like crap.

#10

:rofl:

I was thinking maybe it was the suspended tail test, or forced swimming test. That would depress me.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #11

Well, that too, but the lowered cholesterol from a high-carb, low-fat diet is strongly associated with depression and death from suicide.

(Empress of the Unexpected) #12

Though they did not mention what foods they were talking about, I could almost guarantee they were not talking about healthy fats. No one has ever suggested that avocados and olive oil are “comfort foods“

('Jackie P') #13

Being fat made me depressed! Eating fat and getting thin(ner) has made me happy☺

(Full Metal KETO AF) #14

While there was an initial depression that happened during carb withdrawal keto has made me not have depression since I started 8 months ago. I really can’t remember a depression episode since last summer. That’s like a miracle for me. So when they talk about people eating high fat in this study they aren’t taking fat eaters like we are. :cowboy_hat_face:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #15

I also suspect that it was high fat in the context of high carbohydrate, and I would just bet that would have something to do with it. A lot of the rules seem to change when we go keto.

(Cancer Fighting Ketovore :)) #16

Yeah. I just don’t have a good way to refute the article yet. The article was definitely lacking in details. I think its just the “high fat is bad” mentality rearing its head again, but in a different context, and of course family is concerned.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #17

As I posted above, the study authors are starting from the gluttony/sloth perspective. I didn’t expect it to go anywhere useful after that. :frowning_face:

(Cancer Fighting Ketovore :)) #18

Yeah. I’m going to respond back to the family member (in more detail than just saying it was an interesting article and that it didn’t specify if the food was low or high carb)

#19

I see trans fats.

#20

Think this is it, it was buried down the bottom of the linked article. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-018-0086-5

…a high-fat diet (Open Source Diet, D12492; Research Diets ) containing 60% of calories from fat, 20% from protein, and 20% from carbohydrates for 6 weeks.

Now I know from previous looking into mouse diets, the High Fat chow is standardized with some hideous PUFAs and sucrose etc. But unless they specify the brand of chow it’s difficult to pin down this information and all the media outlets see is HIGH FAT OMG! This particular chow used both sucrose and Lodex 10, which is a proprietary maltodextrin. Maltodextrin is infamous for having a glycemic index above that of pure sugar.