Chelsea, MA Unsorted, 7 Feb 2023

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From YouTube: Community Health Education on Cable - Food is Medicine 2023

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City of Chelsea, MGH Chelsea Health Care Center

A

A

Happy New Year everyone, the Chelsea community health education, cable, show, is back I'm, Juliana, Morris I am a doctor at the MGH Chelsea Health Center and I am the new physician Champion that will be helping run. This show that was run by a deck for a decade by Dr Hong Chung with me is Jennifer vettry pep Vicente and Maria Perez.

A

So we're going to be spending the next few minutes discussing the connection between mental health and food and we'll be sharing information through a list of questions we prepared and pep has the list of questions and will help ask these questions.

B

Hello, everyone and Welcome to our show uh hello, Dr, Maurice and Welcome.

A

B

Fella, how are you I'm.

A

Good, thank you. How are you.

B

Good good, so, as you said, I have a few questions for you. The first one is mental health is always an important Community, Health topic we hear and treat at our health center. It has become even more important and challenging in the past three years, with a covet pandemic going around Dr Morris. Can you share your thoughts about mental health? What does the two Wars really mean now? Are there any new aspects to mental health? Our patients should be aware of and understand.

A

Yeah, it's a really great question, because traditionally, in Western medicine, mental health was seen as an imbalance in the brain chemistry, but we're learning more and more that it really has to do with the whole body. The environment we live in, and the community we're a part of so promoting mental health has more to do with overall well-being. How we're eating, how we're exercising our healthy relationships and promoting mental health also has to do with promoting Justice and fairness in our communities.

A

um It's interesting because this is not actually new knowledge. Many cultures and Indigenous healing practices have known for thousands of years that the holistic approach is the best way to address mental health, and now it's very exciting that in medicine we're able to integrate some of those perspectives as well.

B

Great, thank you. What are some of the most common mental health conditions or complaints? Do you hear from our patients these days yeah.

A

So at the health center I see many many patients with anxiety and depression, as well as PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder and some of the symptoms that people are coming in with include insomnia, difficulty, sleeping racing, heartbeat uh fatigue, tiredness also headaches, stomach, pains and decreased interest in activities, and really it's it's Norm. It's important to remember that it's normal to have an emotional reaction and to have some of these symptoms when you're confronted with stress and in our community.

A

We know that so many people have lost loved ones during the pandemic are dealing with issues with housing, employment problems, family issues, so we're really as a community facing this Collective trauma and not everybody who faces these challenges ends up developing a mental health problem, but it certainly increases the risk. So it's understandable that the rates in our community are going up.

B

See we hear more and more that food is medicine. These days is, is food really medicine? How do we understand the meaning of food? Is medicine.

A

Yeah, it's a great question, so, at the most basic level, food provides us with the nutrients vitamins, minerals that we need to keep going and the fuel and energy to get through our days, and it's really tragic that so much of the food that's marketed to us.

A

These days is has so many harmful chemicals, and although it makes a lot of money for the companies that market these Foods, it ends up harming our health, whereas the food, if we can learn from the traditions of our ancestors, that I was mentioning earlier having whole grains having vegetables fruits legumes.

A

These foods are so nutritious to our bodies and, depending on what medical condition you may have, you can actually adjust your diet to help your health. So that's another example of how food can be medicine. And, lastly, food is such an integral part of any culture and being in community so being able to really enjoy food share food and that's all very important to our overall wellness and our health as well.

B

What evidence is there to pinpoint the connection between food and depression, one of the most common mental health conditions.

A

um One just to Define it depression is a disorder that causes prolonged sadness and decreased interest in activities, and there are many causes for this, and there are some links with stressful experiences, and but we also know that so many aspects of how we live, our day-to-day lives can influence depression, and one of these is the food that we eat.

A

So there is evidence to show that eating highly processed foods like foods that come in packages and fast foods, and also eating foods with high carbohydrate content and high sugar content can end up over time, increasing the risk for depression.

A

uh Depression itself also causes changes in how we take in food, so some people will experience increased appetite and increased eating and other people will experience, decreased appetite and not eating enough. So treating depression as I have mentioned, really involves a holistic approach and being able to increase healthy eating and make sure that you're eating on a regular schedule is an important part of the treatment.

B

Thank you very much, Dr Morris for your insights and now we have a few questions for Jennifer, hello, Jennifer, hello. How.

C

Are you great thank you? How are you good.

B

Good, thank you welcome to the panel again. Thank you. So uh the first question for you is what are some of the common foods that help us feel great when we include them in our daily diet. Well,.

C

I think to help us to feel great. It's best to always choose a balanced diet. A balanced diet will have plenty of plant-based products, including fruit, including vegetables, legumes and lentils and whole grains. It also have healthy fats like olive oil, canola oil, avocado, fatty fish like salmon, let's say low fat or calcium-rich foods with low-fat Dairy and as well as just some lean protein with our meals and examples of lean protein would be chicken without the skin fish, again.

C

Beans, peanut butter, any kind of nut butter or low-fat Dairy and an easy visual is to think about what we call the balanced plate and a balance plate. It will have an imaginary line that kind of runs down the center and then another imaginary line that cuts across the plate and basically the biggest part of the plate should be vegetables, think bright, colors or think about a rainbow and then one third of the plate.

C

We want to put a protein, preferably a lean protein like chicken again or fish or egg, but the size of the palm of your hand and then the other third, a small amount of a carbohydrate or grain, and preferably we want to choose whole grains whenever possible.

C

So a whole grain would be brown rice, for instance, instead of the white rice or something like quinoa, which is a great whole grain with protein and fiber, and there's also some of study that showed a large study, primarily with women, or particularly with women, that when we ate foods that were really high in vitamin D, like eggs or fortified milk or yogurt or fatty fish, that there was a much lower incidence of depression compared to people who didn't eat those Foods I.

B

See and conversely, what are some of the foods to avoid to for better mood and mental health? Well,.

C

Our foods are what we eat are so closely connected to how we feel sometimes we eat when we're sad, we eat when we're happy, we eat when we're bored feeling depressed or anxious and foods can be comforting for us and what we know is we don't eat just when we're hungry we eat for all those other emotions that I just mentioned, and I try to encourage the patients that I work with to think about food as our bodies Fuel.

C

And what will happen is when we put mostly healthy foods into our bodies, then we'll have better energy and we will tend to feel better as well, but technically, while all foods can fit, there are some foods, as Dr Morris mentioned, that we do really want to try to avoid or limit in our diets as much as possible. Typically animal fats, which we call saturated fat, those are the bad or unhealthy fats like butter or red meat or cream or full fat Dairy.

C

Those Foods we want to limit, as well as the Sugar Foods, your think, sweets.

A

C

Soda sugar, sweetened beverages like soda or juice, and we also want to limit the high salt or highly processed foods in our diet, I.

B

See I happen to like some of the foods that in what you just discussed, what can I do about it are there strategies I can try to reduce what they eat.

C

Absolutely so the first important thing to remember is it's okay to eat everything all those foods that I just mentioned, even though they're not as healthy for us as many other Foods, they absolutely can fit in our diet. The key is moderation and what moderation basically means is choosing something.

C

Sometimes if we know that it's not necessarily the healthiest for us and trying to keep our portion to small and to answer your question, there are other second question: there are many strategies that we can use to help us to eat less one practice that we work. A lot with our patients on is called mindful eating or intuitive meeting eating, and it's even though it's a fancy word.

C

It's they're just strategies to help us to eat less, for instance, focusing on what we eat when we're eating and really trying to listen to our bodies and eat when we feel hungry instead of for all those emotional reasons, also really trying to take our time. It takes our brain, sometimes 20, minutes to realize that we're full.

C

So when we allow ourselves 20 to 30 minutes to enjoy a meal and focus on that meal, thinking about the texture, the color of the food, how the food tastes that can also help us to eat less another part of mindful or intuitive eating is thinking about where you eat so many times we're eating at places that we really shouldn't be thinking about food. At the same time like in our bed or watching TV try to really eat at the table, you can also use a smaller plate.

C

You can also put your fork down between each bite and take a big sip of water, and that should help you to eat less I.

B

See I see for some of us who have a sweet tooth, sugary Foods attract us even more when going through a rough day. Can you explain what goes on here? What can you recommend that we do to have a healthier limit eating sweets? It.

C

Is very common for us to crave sugar or want sugar when we are having a bad day or even a good day, and some of us might crave salty foods or greasy foods, and that's okay too, but there are some certain reasons why we tend to be attracted more to sugar part of it is we all know that Sugar tastes good? Also, we know that sugar is digested very quickly by our bodies and sometimes what happens when we eat sugar is soon after we feel hungry again.

C

There's also been quite a lot of research that has shown that when people eat sugary Foods, we tend to crave sugar more and you know ways that we can help cut back on sugar first would be instead of gravitating towards sweets. You could replace it with fruit for one also by pairing a little bit of protein with your sweet when you want that Sugar craving can help. So, let's say: if you wanted a cookie, you could have a handful of nuts with it and the protein and the nuts can help you to feel satisfied longer.

C

Also, it's really helpful for us to try to avoid those sugar sweetened drinks as much as possible. Things like the soda and juice that so many of us are having often I, usually tell people to look at the labels. Look at the calories and try to choose drinks that have a 30 calories or less that usually will be considered a diet, drink or a drink. That's made with a sugar, sugar-free substitute or without sugar, and then, most importantly, is portion. Control I really encourage people to listen to your body.

C

Sometimes we have those Cravings like we just talked about that are all normal and we might want a piece of cake and rather than try to eliminate it or avoid it and feel bad if you have it enjoy it, just try to focus on the moderation and having just a little bit.

B

um And salt, how much is too much salt? Where are some of the healthier options other than Salt? Well,.

C

The daily recommended intake or limit of salt or sodium is less than 2300 milligrams and, to put that into perspective, it's just one teaspoon of salt each day it's a tiny amount and most people, unfortunately, are having much more than that each day. So salt also, we want to think about where it's found. It's found, mostly in processed foods, things that maybe frozen meals, frozen dinners, canned Foods canned soups. Also anything often that's in a package whether it be snack foods, certain breads, cured meats, deli meats, for instance, So reading the label is really important.

C

You can look at the sodium, which is the salt and the label if a food has less than 140 milligrams per serving that's considered to be a low salt food. You can also look at the percents. The percent daily value, which is usually it's always listed on the right of the label in any food that has less than five percent daily value, means that it's low or any food with 20 or more means that it's high and to reduce fat I would I mean reduce sugar.

C

Rather sorry, I would definitely recommend that people avoid using the salt shaker at home when you're cooking, try not to use salt when you're eating, try not to add salt to your foods and really choose a more of those Whole Foods those Natural Foods again the fruit, the vegetables, the whole grains, because they will naturally be low in salt.

B

Wonderful. Thank you so much for your very informative answers.

A

Right well, thank you learned a lot, and so today we learned about the connection between food feelings and mental health and that there really is a tight connection between all of these things and there's a lot we can do with food and eating in our daily life to improve how we feel for better Mental Health. So, together we can improve our personal health and our community health. Thank you so much for watching the show see you next time.