How do you counsel patients who are interested in dietary approaches for managing major depressive disorder?

While balanced nutrition supports overall well-being, we must be cautious about narratives framing diet and exercise as outright replacements for medical psychiatric care. Overemphasizing diet risks setting patients with major mood disorders up for self-blame and perceived failure when lifestyle twe...

In integrative medicine literature, there is some evidence that following an anti-inflammatory diet can improve mood symptoms, including MDD. I imagine this would be a good place to start, and certainly, keto diets are considerably less inflammatory than sugar-based diets with high levels of simple ...

I always start my conversation about a patient’s lifestyle with an element of curiosity. I ask questions about their day, what they eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, to gather important information about their food preferences. Then I carefully evaluate their understanding if they see the connec...

I determine each patient’s nutritional needs in their intake, labs, and history and make specific recommendations. For example, for perimenopausal women, I definitely don’t give them general recommendations; women of child bearing definitely different, and older men and women as well.