Depression-relieving fruit

No fruit can directly treat depression, and there is no special "anti-depression fruit", but some fruits rich in special nutrients can be used as an auxiliary diet choice for clinical treatment of depression and daily emotional regulation, which has a certain positive effect on improving emotional state.

I met a sophomore with moderate depression when I was following up in the nutrition department. She just started taking SSRIs drugs, with side effects and depression. She only ate one meal a day for a week and even felt tired after drinking water. We didn't make a complicated menu for her, just asked her mother to pack her a small box of cleaned berries every day, add a banana to her bag and eat it whenever she wants to bite two. Two weeks later, when she visited again, she said that although she still often didn't want to talk, at least she could think of eating something every day, and the number of times she collapsed seemed to be less-I can't tell whether it was the fruit or whether she could think of her mother washing the fruit every time she ate it.

At present, there is no completely unified conclusion on the relationship between fruit and emotion in academic circles. Most of the research in the mainstream nutrition field points to relevance: for example, a cohort study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2023 showed that people who eat berries rich in flavonoids more than four times a week have a lower risk of long-term depression than those who don't. The logic behind this is that the anti-inflammatory effect of flavonoids can reduce neuroinflammation, and neuroinflammation has been proved to be related to the pathogenesis of depression. However, some researchers of evidence-based medicine have suggested that this kind of research cannot exclude the influence of other variables-for example, people who often buy fresh berries may have healthier living habits and better economic conditions, and these factors themselves will reduce the risk of depression and cannot directly attribute the credit to fruits. As for the saying that "banana supplemented with tryptophan can resist depression" which is often spread on the Internet, the controversy is even greater: some researchers have calculated that it is totally unrealistic to eat more than 12 kg of bananas at a time to achieve tryptophan intake that can affect the level of 5- hydroxytryptamine in the brain. Its function is more to supplement vitamin B6 and magnesium, help relax nervous tension, improve sleep and indirectly relieve the state of depression.

I've compiled the references of fruits with relatively sufficient research evidence that can help improve mood. You can choose according to your own situation:

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It's interesting to say. Before, there was a patient who didn't like berries, but liked to chew oranges. He peeled three oranges every day, saying that when his nails broke the orange peel, the fragrance rushed out, and his chest could be looser after being suppressed for a long time. We later found out that limonene from citrus peel can really affect the activity of amygdala in the brain through olfactory pathway, and reduce the anxiety level. You see, sometimes you don't have to eat the nutrients at all, and you are comfortable to eat and happy to smell, which is better than anything else.

Don't think that eating fruit will be useful. Last month, I stayed up for two weeks to catch up with the project. I was so depressed that I didn't even want to go out. I bought two boxes of raspberries and put them in the refrigerator. When I remembered, they were all broken. Or my friend came to my house with a bag of sugar oranges and sat with me for half an hour to peel oranges before I recovered. Others say that eating sweet is in a good mood, but it also depends on the situation: if depressed patients with gluttony tend to eat too many high-sugar lychees and durians at one time, the sudden rise and fall of blood sugar will aggravate the mood swings, and the guilt after eating will even make the state worse.

To put it bluntly, fruit is at most a "hand" role in emotional regulation. You can't expect to recover from depression by eating two Jin of blueberries. You should take medicine and consult. If you are in such a bad state today that you don't even think of your bed, but you are willing to reach for the orange beside your bed and peel it, then the role of this orange has been achieved-after all, it can make you get a little more pleasure in a bad day, which is very meaningful in itself.