SENIOR CARE

Healthier Eating Can Help Seniors Beat Depression

By Temma Ehrenfeld @temmaehrenfeld
 | 
September 29, 2015
Healthier Eating Can Help Seniors Beat Depression

Diet coaching can prevent mild depression from getting worse, reducing symptoms by as much as 50 percent. The keys? Cooking at home and eating less processed food.

Maybe you know your mother is bored and lonely and eating cookies all day, but you haven’t had luck encouraging her to socialize more and eat fewer sweets.

You might ask her doctor to have a word with her about her diet or see if she’ll meet with a diet coach or group.

For older adults, especially, diet coaching can prevent mild depression from getting worse, research suggests. An entire field, called “nutritional psychiatry” has grown up, documenting the impact of food on mood.

 

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Diet’s effect on depression

Older adults with mild depression have about a 25 percent chance of developing major depression over the next year, which can cause other health problems as well.

In a study in Pittsburgh, researchers randomly assigned mildly depressed seniors to either therapy or dietary coaching. The team considered the group getting diet coaching as a control since these participants would be receiving regular attention like the therapy patients but not specific help with their emotions or social problems.

After answering questions about their diet, people in this group received instructions about how to eat healthier, such as cooking more often at home and eating fewer processed foods and less fat.

Six half-hour sessions over nine weeks were followed by booster sessions at longer intervals over the next two years. Most participants kept up with the visits, although generally patients drop out of programs treating minor depression.

To everyone’s surprise, after six weeks the patients that were counselled about their diet on average had a 40 to 50 percent reduction in depression symptoms, the results lasting for two years. This compared favorably with many therapeutic interventions to prevent serious depression.

Eating healthily is preventive medicine. A variety of studies suggest that healthy eating can help stave off depression. Eating a variety of vegetables, for example, helps maintain a healthy balance of microorganisms in the intestines. A growing body of science is showing how our gut affects our moods.

The researchers profiled a 71-year-old widow, “Ms. J,” who had been diagnosed with mild depression after she was disabled with chronic lymphoid leukemia. She was fighting with her son, who was using crack cocaine and living with her, along with his girlfriend. She had also gained 22 pounds over the previous two years.

In the diet coaching program, she received basic advice to eat more nutritious food with fewer calories, drink water, and exercise.

Ms. J decided to cook at home more often, bake foods rather than fry them, cut back on junk foods, and rely less on protein shakes. She received a copy of “Heart-Healthy Home Cooking, African American Style” and expressed her appreciation for its suggestions.

By the fifth session, she reported that her cholesterol level had dropped into a healthy range, and that she was moving from whole milk to 2 percent and from butter to margarine.

Her white cell count had also increased, and she and her doctor were in a period of watchful waiting to see if this would signal a recurrence of her chronic lymphoid leukemia.

About four months into the program, her leukemia recurred, and she began chemotherapy. But her scores on the Beck Depression Inventory dropped from 14 to 8 over the next two years, along with her body mass index.

What you can do

See a psychiatrist or take the Beck Depression Inventory and score it yourself to decide whether you are at risk of depression. A score of 11 to 16 is considered a mild mood disturbance; from 1 to 10 is normal. Scoring higher than 16 indicates depression.

Other research has supported the idea that diet coaching can stave off depression. Overweight people who are already more depressed than Ms. J also often see their moods improve when they lose weight.

It makes sense — we all like to see tangible results of our efforts and to feel that we’re doing our best to take care of ourselves.

The surprise here is just how big a mood booster a change in diet can be, even when life isn’t easy.

 

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Updated:  

January 12, 2023

Reviewed By:  

Janet O’Dell, RN