Foods That Increase Anxiety (and Foods That Help with Anxiety) – with Heather Lilico | Ep. 409

In this episode, holistic nutritionist Heather Lilico shares practical insights on how food choices can help manage anxiety, support mental well-being, and create a balanced approach to nutrition.

Key Takeaways:

• Discover four “mood-boosting” food categories that can promote calm and reduce anxiety.
• Learn which common foods may increase stress and how to enjoy them mindfully.
• Get Heather’s go-to recipe for an anxiety-supportive smoothie packed with nutrients.
• Find out how gut health and diet choices are connected to mental clarity.
• Hear Heather’s tips for staying balanced with food choices, especially for those in eating disorder recovery.

How Nutrition Can Impact Anxiety: Expert Tips and Food Strategies

In this episode, we had the pleasure of welcoming back holistic nutritionist, yoga, and meditation teacher Heather Lilico, who shared her insights on how food affects our mental well-being. Heather’s own journey with high-functioning anxiety led her to explore how diet, along with practices like meditation and yoga, can create a calmer, happier life.

Heather sheds light on which foods help support a calm mind, which ones may increase anxiety, and how you can mindfully incorporate these tips into your life. Let’s dive into the strategies and takeaways she shared to better manage anxiety through nutrition.

1. Why Nutrition Matters for Mental Health

Heather emphasizes that nutrition is one part of a larger puzzle in managing anxiety. While practices like meditation and yoga help ease the mind, the food we eat provides the necessary building blocks for mental calm. She encourages us to see eating as an act of self-love and self-care. By nourishing our bodies, we’re also supporting our mental well-being.

2. The “Mood-Boosting” Foods for Anxiety

Heather shares four categories of foods that boost your mood, which help calm the nervous system and support brain health. Adding these foods to your diet can contribute to a more balanced mental state.

Nuts and Seeds

• Rich in magnesium and zinc, minerals that support relaxation.
• Magnesium, in particular, promotes GABA, a neurotransmitter that helps calm the brain.
• Examples: Pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, flax, chia, and hemp seeds.

How to Add Them to Your Diet: Sprinkle these on oatmeal, add them to smoothies, or use them in homemade salad dressings.

Leafy Greens

• Spinach, kale, and other leafy greens are loaded with folate, a B vitamin essential for mood regulation.
• They are also high in fiber, supporting gut health, which is closely linked to mental health.

How to Add Them to Your Diet: Add leafy greens to smoothies and salads, or wilt them into soups and stews.

Bright Fruits and Vegetables

• These foods are full of antioxidants, which reduce inflammation and support a healthy brain.
• Examples include berries, pumpkins, squash, and beets.

How to Add Them to Your Diet: Try adding a handful of berries to breakfast or incorporating colorful veggies into meals.

Fermented Foods

• Fermented foods support gut health, which has a powerful effect on mental well-being.
• Examples include yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, sourdough bread, and kombucha.

How to Add Them to Your Diet: Try a serving of yogurt or kombucha as a snack, or add a spoonful of sauerkraut to meals.

Heather’s Tip: Aim for two servings a day from these categories, or for an added boost, try to get two servings from each!

3. Foods to Approach with Caution: The “Stress Escalators”

While certain foods can boost our mood, other foods might increase stress levels and anxiety. Heather recommends approaching the following with curiosity, not judgment.

1. Caffeine

• Caffeine, particularly from coffee, stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, which can heighten anxiety.
• Switching to tea may be beneficial since it contains theanine, an amino acid that promotes calmness without the jitters.

Alternatives: Herbal teas or dandelion root coffee substitutes can offer a similar ritual without the caffeine. Heather enjoys a morning dandelion root blend that supports her gut health.

2. Alcohol

• Alcohol disrupts neurotransmitters, particularly GABA, and burns through B vitamins, affecting energy levels and mood.
• The “hangxiety” many people experience after drinking is linked to this imbalance.

Tip: Explore your relationship with alcohol, and consider alternative social drinks like mocktails or adaptogen-infused beverages.

3. Processed Sugar

• High sugar intake can disrupt gut bacteria and spike blood sugar, leading to a crash that increases anxiety.
• Alternatives like maple syrup, honey, and agave offer sweetness with a gentler effect on blood sugar.

Suggestion: Swap processed sweets for natural sweeteners and experiment with fruit to satisfy cravings.

4. Dairy

• Dairy may trigger inflammation and gut issues for those with sensitivities, potentially affecting mental health.

Experiment: If you suspect dairy might be affecting you, try removing it for a period to observe any changes in your mood and energy.

5. Processed Meats

• Processed meats can increase inflammation, which impacts brain health and mental clarity.

Alternatives: Consider opting for lean proteins like chicken and fish or plant-based options such as lentils and chickpeas, which support anti-inflammatory benefits.

4. Practical Tips for Eating Well When Stressed

When anxiety strikes, many people find their appetite decreases, making it difficult to nourish their bodies. Heather recommends smaller, nutrient-dense meals and easy-to-digest options to keep energy levels steady without overwhelming the digestive system.

Go-To Smoothie Recipe for Anxiety Support

A nutrient-packed smoothie is easy to digest and perfect for days when appetite is low. Here’s Heather’s go-to recipe:

• Ingredients: Banana, berries, spinach, a mix of sunflower seeds and hemp seeds, a greens powder, and non-dairy milk.
• Directions: Blend everything together and enjoy as a simple, calming meal.

Soothing Soups and Stews

Soups and stews are ideal for packing in vegetables and nutrients. Try adding broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, or celery to a blended soup for an easy, comforting meal.

5. FAQs: Tackling Specific Anxiety-Related Concerns

How Can I Elevate Serotonin with Food?

Certain foods contain tryptophan, an amino acid that converts to serotonin (a mood-regulating neurotransmitter) and later to melatonin, which supports sleep.

• Best Foods for Tryptophan: Nuts, seeds, tofu, salmon, and eggs.
• Heather’s Tip: Combine tryptophan-rich foods with carbs (like rice with salmon) to improve absorption and serotonin production.

What Can I Eat to Manage Anxiety-Related Nausea and Diarrhea?

For anxiety-related nausea and diarrhea, Heather recommends smaller meals with easy-to-digest foods. Ginger and chamomile tea can soothe the stomach and help relax the nervous system.

6. Navigating Food Choices with an Eating Disorder History

For those in recovery from an eating disorder, balancing healthy food choices without falling into restrictive behaviors can be challenging. Heather, who also struggled with disordered eating, emphasizes approaching food with curiosity, focusing on how it makes you feel rather than labeling foods as “good” or “bad.”

Finding Balance and Joy in Your Food Choices

While managing anxiety through food, Heather encourages flexibility and experimentation. Whether it’s finding the right balance of caffeine or adding more mood-boosting foods, the goal is to explore how different foods impact your mental health in a way that feels supportive, not restrictive.

For more insights and support, check out Heather’s Cultivating Calm app, where you can access recipes, meditation, and yoga practices to support a holistic approach to anxiety.

Heather’s insights remind us that nutrition is a powerful tool in managing anxiety. By incorporating calming foods, exploring alternative options, and embracing curiosity in our food choices, we can take positive steps toward a calmer, healthier life.

Transcription: Foods that increase anxiety (and foods that help with anxiety) – with Heather Lilico

 

Kimberley Quinlan is Speaker 1

Heather Lilico is Speaker 2

Speaker 1:
Welcome back, everybody. We are joined again by Heather Lilico. She is almost like our on-staff nutritionist here. Love that. Yes, please, yes, to talk with us. We have so many questions about food specifically and whether it’s foods that increase anxiety or foods that help with anxiety. It’s a topic that I could talk about, but I think you’re better to talk about it because we all seem to wonder about this now. Welcome. Thank you for being here, Heather.

Speaker 2:
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me back, Kimberly. This is so exciting.

Speaker 1:
Tell us quickly a little bit about you and then at the end, you can tell us where people can find you.

Speaker 2:
Sure. So, for those of you who don’t know me, I’m Heather Lilico. I’m a holistic nutritionist and a yoga and meditation teacher. And I’ll just share a little brief background about how I got into this work because I think it provides that context. So, I got into this work through my own experience with anxiety. When I was in university, I started having panic attacks, and I started living in fear of when the next panic attack was going to strike. I had the type of anxiety that was high-functioning anxiety. So, on the outside, everything seemed fine. I was friendly, I was outgoing, and as I started to head into the working world, everything seemed great in meetings. I was well-prepared, I would be willing to take on extra tasks and help out. But underneath that, what was going on was an intense amount of perfectionism.

That’s why I was so well-prepared for meetings because I was terrified of making a mistake or looking silly or having any type of negative feedback, and I would always take on extra projects and help out because I was such a people-pleaser and I didn’t want to disappoint anybody or offend anybody. It got to the point where I was so overwhelmed, I was so on edge, and I was just burnt out and just a ball of anxiety. So, I went on this journey to figure out how I could live a happier and calmer life. I actually started with my diet. I started by tweaking my diet and seeing that when I reduced certain foods and added in other foods, I started to feel a lot calmer. That was sort of one piece of the puzzle. Then the other pieces of the puzzle were learning to practice meditation and feeling more in control of my thoughts and emotions that way, and being able to ride the wave of anxiety, and also practicing yoga and feeling for the first time ever that I was connected to my body and my breath.

This is why I became a nutritionist and a meditation and yoga teacher, because I think it is this holistic combo that all of these pieces of the puzzle work together to help us lead that calmer and happier life. So now I show others the way to do that.

Speaker 1:
So cool. Which is so good because in preparation for this episode, I went to Instagram and asked everybody, what questions do you have? And somebody said, this isn’t a question, it’s a comment. And they said almost exactly what you did. They said, nutrition is a piece of the puzzle. It’s not the whole thing. I think that’s a really great starting point that you’ve already demonstrated is in no way here are we saying this is the cure-all for anxiety. It’s just one piece of the puzzle that you can explore, but also take and leave what’s helpful for you. I know somebody else did say, and I just want to start the episode, that they said, how do we balance… I’m going to start here before we get into specifically the foods that increase anxiety and the foods that help with anxiety. They said, how do we balance healthy eating and not feeding into the idea that anxiety is bad? So, we want to eat to help anxiety, but we don’t want to feed into this idea that I need to run away and try and get rid of it. So, how might you approach that?

Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think it’s such a good leaping-off point because when it comes to food, there’s a lot of shame and judgment and things that get tied up with food. So, we can sometimes adopt this mentality that if I eat a certain food that I know is going to increase anxiety, then I’m going to feel guilty about it. I’m going to feel shame about it. And that’s just not the approach I take. I like to sort of reframe that eating is an act of self-love. I think that eating is an act of self-care, and so it’s a chance to demonstrate to ourselves that we are worthy and deserving of this nourishment. Eating really is about providing us with the building blocks for calm. But I think that’s sort of one piece; eating is an act of self-love and self-care, but we want to leave the judgment out of it.

So, as an example, recently as we’re recording this, we just had Canadian Thanksgiving here, and so I had a delicious meal of acorn squash stuffed with quinoa. It was so good, and dessert came up, and there was raspberry pie for dessert, one of my favorites. I was like, okay, you know what? I could go two ways with this. I could say eating this raspberry pie is going to be more processed, it’s going to be higher in sugar. It potentially might lead me to feeling more anxious, but it’s also something that I really want to enjoy and savor. So, I consciously chose to have the pie knowing that, hey, yeah, this might create a bit of anxiety, but I’m going to take the time to really savor it and enjoy it and leave that shame and judgment piece out of it because we have so many choices that we make in a day surrounding food. And if all of them lead to this like, oh no, what have I done? I’ve increased my anxiety, then I think we’re going to get stuck in that shame spiral. So, I really encourage us today to have this conversation from the lens of curiosity of how might some of these foods affect me? And knowing that, yeah, anxiety, while it’s super uncomfortable, is not dangerous. There are ways that we can create that feeling of safety in the body if it comes up.

Speaker 1:
Amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, let’s do it right to the point. What foods help with anxiety?

Speaker 2:
Yes. Let’s talk about some foods that are great for anxiety. And I’m glad that we’re diving into this because I think that not many people make the link between what they’re eating and how they’re feeling. I really think that the nutrition piece is a piece of the puzzle because providing you with those building blocks for calm, a lot of people get stuck on, okay, we should meditate, and that’s a great piece of the puzzle. But if you don’t have the actual building blocks you need to make your neurotransmitters, the nutrients you need to support gut bacteria, then it’s going to be really hard to be calm. We’re fighting an uphill battle there. So, I think nutrition is such an important piece and there are in fact foods that help with anxiety. So, I’m going to share four, what I call four mood boosters, four mood-boosting foods.

How I came up with this list was first through my own experience of fiddling around with my diet and seeing these trends of when I include these foods in my diet, I feel happier and healthier. And when I was becoming a nutritionist, you really learn about the science of what foods contain? What vitamins and minerals and nutrients are they high in? Then I started to dive into the physiology and see, ah, this is why they relate so much to anxiety is because they’re providing key nutrients that people with anxiety are chronically found to be low in. So, let’s talk about them. The four categories of foods are number one, nuts and seeds. Number two, leafy greens, number three, bright fruits and veggies, and number four, fermented foods. So, I’m going to break down each one of those and give a couple of examples.

So, our category of nuts and seeds, these are going to provide minerals like magnesium and zinc. Magnesium is like our calming mineral. It helps us feel relaxed, it helps promote GABA, one of our main relaxing neurotransmitters, and many of us are deficient in it. So, nuts and seeds, we’re talking like pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, flax, chia, hemp. These are all incredible options and pretty easy to work in. If you’re having a smoothie in the morning, you can dump a lot of seeds in there. If you’re having oatmeal, sprinkle them on top. If you’re doing a salad dressing, you can make that by adding in seeds, doing a blended sunflower seed or hemp seed. So, lots of options to work in leafy greens. These are our foliage, and they are rich in folate, which is one of our B vitamins, incredible for mood. And when it comes to leafy greens, I say the deeper colored, the better.

So, your spinach and your kale, these are going to be rich sources of fiber, which are going to feed your gut. And so, this might look like throwing them in with a smoothie or having a salad out of them. Or as we come into soup and stew season, really great time to be able to pack a nutritional punch and wilt down a bunch of greens in a soup or stew. We have our bright fruits and veggies. So, these are going to provide antioxidants, which are going to help with inflammation and help support the brain. So, think your berries, those are bright foods, pumpkin, any type of squash. Beets are a great one that not a lot of us think about. These rich pigments are going to help support mental health and then fermented foods. So, fermented foods are foods that have live bacteria in them.

Yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, sourdough bread, kombucha, and these are going to provide bacteria that are going to support the bacteria in your gut, and these bacteria, we could do a whole other podcast episode on this, I think. Yes, I thought the same thing, and maybe we should at the future, but the link between gut health and mental health is so big and these bacteria that are in your gut are actually communicating with the rest of your body, and they’re going to help make some of those mood-boosting neurotransmitters. And the sort of formula that I work with, if you wanted to call it that, is to aim for two mood-boosting foods every day. So, this could look like a handful of seeds and a cup of leafy greens. It could look like eating a handful of berries and having a half bottle of kombucha. If that already feels like that’s easy, I could get two checks, no problem, two servings. Then I would say go for two servings of each of those four categories. Challenge yourself to just think a bit more consciously about how to combine things in the day so you can get to all those checks. But those are some of the most incredible foods for anxiety.

Speaker 1:
Okay, amazing. It makes me happy because my favorite healthy cookie to make, and I say healthy is not that cookies are bad or anything. It has all those seeds and you kind of mix them together and bake ’em together, and they’re both basically just a ball of seeds, but it’s with drizzled chocolate on top. Delicious, delicious.

Speaker 2:
Yes. Yes. It sounds like one of those sort of morning glory breakfast cookies where it has everything, and this is why combining all of these different ingredients in a way, so intelligent means that we can get the most bang for our buck when it comes to nutrition. We only have so many chances in a day to get all the nutrients we need. And with anxiety, it can be tricky because appetite can be affected. So, if we’re consuming really nutrient-dense things, then we have a better shot of getting all those nutrients.

Speaker 1:
Yeah, amazing. Okay, what foods increase anxiety? Because we’re really here, I know a lot of people have asked questions about the specific foods that increase anxiety.

Speaker 2:
So, let me share with you what I call the big five stress escalators. So, we talked about the four mood boosters, those categories of foods that are going to help anxiety. Let’s talk about some things that could spike anxiety. And again, we’re coming from that lens of curiosity. Not to say that these are inherently bad. I don’t want to label them as that, but it’s more just, huh, how might these be affecting my mood, and what would happen if I remove or reduce them? And I developed this list because first through my own experience of seeing, oh, when I reduce these, I actually felt a lot calmer, and then heading to the research to see, ah, yeah, there are physiological reasons why these are affecting anxiety. And then I’ve been a nutritionist and a coach now for almost a decade, and seeing that almost every one of my clients does better without these in their diet.

So, the big five stress escalators. Let’s talk about the first one. It’s caffeine, and a lot of people right now are up in arms. Don’t take away my coffee, Heather, and I get it, I get it. But here’s what’s going on. When you’re consuming caffeine, and I call it coffee specifically because tea does have some additional benefits like tea, for example, green tea has theanine in it, which is an amino acid that can help us feel alert but also relaxed, and it’s actually good for anxiety. And tea generally has lower amounts of caffeine than coffee, so I’m going to call out coffee here. But what’s going on is that it’s going to activate your nervous system, your sympathetic nervous system, and so if you’re already feeling anxious, you’re already in that state of fight or flight. It’s like we don’t want to push that pathway anymore.

And so, for myself, I had to give up caffeine because it was leading to panic attacks when I would have it that my heart would start to race, and I would get those sensations of anxiety, and I just had such a hard time coming down from them. And it seems that that’s an experience for a lot of people. And so, this might look like you’re swapping out your coffee for a tea, which has lower caffeine. It might be you’re doing an herbal tea instead, caffeine-free. Maybe you’re doing something personally. Every morning I drink a dandelion root blend because it is stimulating but doesn’t have caffeine in it, and it’s also supportive for the gut. And having coffee on an empty stomach can be really hard on the gut. It can also be really hard on your hormones. Cortisol, your main stress hormone, which we’re already feeling anxious and tending towards that burnout kind of mode.

Then the coffee is just pushing that pathway more. So, coffee and caffeine, that’s the first one we want to consider. The second one I’ll mention is alcohol because alcohol is going to affect your neurotransmitters, specifically GABA, that relaxing neurotransmitter. It’s also going to burn through your B vitamins, which are your energy vitamins, and if anyone has ever had too much alcohol and you wake up the next day and you have that anxiety where that feeling of like, oh my gosh, what did I do? What happened yesterday? A lot of the feelings that are coming up are happening because of that imbalance in the body and what alcohol has tipped the scales in, and it also dehydrates you, which can lead to anxiety. And so, this could look like maybe you’re going to reduce the amount of alcohol you have. Maybe you’re further exploring what are you using alcohol for, right?

Are we using it for some sort of social lubricant because we feel uncomfortable, because we feel judged, and it’s helping with social anxiety, but then in the long run it’s sort of making it worse? These are just things to think about. I mean, the sober curious community is so big right now. I think it’s such an interesting trend now. We see drinks that are sort of mocktails with adaptogens in it like mushrooms and functional ingredients like ashwagandha and ginseng and things that can actually support our mental health. So, I think it’s a really exciting time to explore our relationship with alcohol. And then we have sugar is the next one, and I’m talking about processed sugar. Now, sugar affects anxiety. One of the main ways is because processed sugar is going to affect your gut bacteria. We know people who have high sugar diets have less gut bacteria and less variety of them, which means you have less of those good guys in your gut to help support your mental health, and it is going to spike your blood sugar as well.

So, when we’re having processed sugar, we get this sort of spike. We feel really alert and awake and excited, and then we have that crash afterwards, and when we have that crash, your adrenaline actually has to kick on to bring your blood sugar back up to baseline. And so, that is in the similar realm of anxiety, and there are so many fun alternatives to explore. I’m not saying go sugar-free, but something like maple syrup, honey, agave, these are more natural sweeteners that aren’t going to spike your blood sugar as much and are likely not going to affect your gut bacteria as much. Okay, so let’s talk about the final two stress escalators. So, dairy is one that I mention, and it’s a really interesting one, and sort of like coffee, people are like, don’t take away my cheese, and I get it. I used to absolutely love dairy, and dairy does hit on certain receptors in the brain that are responsible for increasing dopamine.

So, this is why it can be in a way kind of addictive because it’s hitting on these receptors that make us feel more motivated and that reward system. And the reason that dairy can affect anxiety is because it’s one of the top food sensitivities. It is the one I see most often in practice that people have an issue digesting. So, when we have an issue digesting, it means then that we’re going to affect the gut bacteria, it’s going to lead to inflammation, the gut is going to become unhappy, and then it can’t make those mood-boosting neurotransmitters. It can’t support the healthy blood sugar as well as it should. It can’t support immunity. So, it’s something to consider. And I will say that almost everybody that I have worked with, and I’ve worked with hundreds of clients by this point, that almost everybody does better without dairy in the diet.

And there are lots of different ways to get calcium. As an example, if you’re doing a non-dairy milk, it’s fortified with calcium. So, no concern there, but just something to consider of how might it be affecting me? Is it leading to bloating? Is it to irritability? Is it leading to me to feel kind of stuffed up? These are some of the symptoms we might see if it’s associated with a food sensitivity. And what I’ve seen happen in practice is that sometimes people don’t even know it’s affecting them until they pull it out, and then they see, oh, actually yeah, I was just bloated all the time, or I didn’t realize that that’s what brain fog was. Now I feel so much more clearheaded. So, it’s something to experiment with and see. The last one I’ll mention as a stress escalator is processed meats: your bacon, ham, any sort of cured meat.

The World Health Organization has classified it as a group one carcinogen, meaning cancer-causing, and we just want to be aware of what that means in the body, and that means that it’s having a role in inflammation. And so, if our body is inflamed, our brain is inflamed, we’re going to feel anxious as a side effect of that. So, we’re relying on leaner proteins like chicken or having fish or your nuts and seeds or your plant-based lentils, chickpeas, tofu. These are going to provide anti-inflammatory benefits over processed and, to some respect, red meat as well.

Speaker 1:
So interesting. I have a couple of questions. So, this number one, thank you. That’s so interesting. I actually was not expecting you to say some of those things before we move on. I’ve got so many other questions. As everybody knows, I’ve suffered from an eating disorder and I’m in full recovery of that. I don’t eat much dairy. I’ve actually been allergic to dairy my whole life. That’s not a problem. But how might somebody who is sensitive to being triggered to an eating disorder navigate these thumbs up and thumbs down? What would be your advice if I know I can cut out dairy and it not trigger my eating disorder? I have had issues in the past at the beginning of my recovery when I started to eliminate certain foods. Oh boy did my eating disorder love that, and it kind of flared it up. So, how might you encourage someone who wants to eat well and do that self-care for their body? How might they do that in association with their eating disorder or disordered eating recovery?

Speaker 2:
Yes. Thank you so much for this question and thank you for sharing a bit of your story and experience. And it’s something that for myself as well, I struggled with an eating disorder for over 10 years and have been in recovery for a while now, and I think it all comes down to the mindset with which we approach food. If we can get into the thinking of that black and white, that all or nothing kind of thinking of this food is good, this food is bad, then it can lead to some of those troubling thoughts. I think if we come at it more from the lens of how does this make me feel? Does this make me feel happy and calm and nourished, then great include that food in the diet. If this makes me feel jittery and unhappy and bloated or maybe some physical sensations we can draw on, then we’ve kept it out of the realm of it’s a good or bad food and we’re instead just tuning in internally, how do I feel?

Does this feel like a happy food, a supportive food, a nourishing food? Or does this feel like something that doesn’t really feel in alignment with my goals with who I want to be? Then we can start to, and it doesn’t have to be all or nothing, then we can start to reduce. I had a client of mine who was so very addicted to sugar. She loved sugar. She would have multiple bags of candy every day. And so, we said, okay, so what if we reduced it so that you still have candy in the diet, but that evening candy, let’s just change that one to some fruit in the evening so it’s not restrictive, right? You still feel like you’re getting something exciting and you’re enjoying food, but it felt really nourishing to her, she said, and she didn’t feel like it was a diet mentality where you’re either on or you’re off and you fall off of something. It’s just like, no, this is how I’m just going to live my

Speaker 1:
Life, right? I’m like that with coffee. So, just like I’ll share an example is I love cappuccinos. I bought a really good cappuccino maker. I have it with non-dairy milk. I love it, but caffeine makes me so anxious. I feel like I’m going crazy, but I was so disappointed, like, oh no, I bought this really nice coffee machine and now I can’t have it because after about two or three weeks of it, I was like having panic attacks in my sleep. It was like a whole thing. But what I found is I found how to mix a little bit of caffeinated beans with some decaf beans, and still there’s a little bit of caffeine in there, but most of it’s decaf beans, which I’m sure is probably not super healthy for me, but it makes me so happy. It’s all a continuum. It’s all a continuum, right? I’m okay with it. I go to bed so excited about my cappuccino the next morning. So, for me, it wasn’t elimination, it was just finding the balance that allowed me to still live my life without feeling jittery and so uncomfortable.

Speaker 2:
And to pick up on that is that sometimes we want to ask ourselves too, what are we consuming these things for? Because sometimes it’s the ritual, the ritual of having the cappuccino, and it’s just so luxurious in the morning to have, sometimes it’s I need the caffeine because I’m so freaking tired that I can’t keep my eyes open. If that’s the case, great, let’s address your sleep, right? Because why are we feeling like we need the jolt of caffeine to wake us up in the morning? Let’s back up and address that so we can just play around with some of these factors. I think that lead us to wanting some of these

Speaker 1:
Substances. Yeah, for sure. Okay, next question. Can foods elevate serotonin? These are all listener questions.

Speaker 2:
Yes. I’m so glad you put this out to your community because it’s so great that we want to make sure that we’re hitting on the right questions and being, I want to be the most useful as possible. So, yes, foods can increase serotonin and to sort of draw out the pathway for folks so they understand foods contain tryptophan. Tryptophan is an amino acid in the body, tryptophan gets converted to serotonin. If we follow that pathway further, serotonin actually gets converted to melatonin sleep. So, this is why if people are struggling with anxiety, with depression, that they’re also going to have likely sleep issues because these pathways are all being affected. And so, we can consume foods that contain tryptophan to help the body create serotonin. So, these could be things like nuts and seeds contain that, tofu, salmon, eggs, these all contain tryptophan. Something I want to sort of tease out though a little bit is that not many people know this.

So, tryptophan, an amino acid, if we consume a high-protein food, a lot of people think of turkey when they think of tryptophan. If we consume a high-protein food, it’s sort of like imagine being on the highway or the interstate and you’re in a traffic jam. All of these cars are there, it’s so busy that no cars can go anywhere. It’s sort of the same if we have a high-protein food and we’re trying to absorb that tryptophan, there’s so many amino acids, they’re all competing for absorption. The traffic jam, your car is stuck. Now a little hack for everybody. If you want to increase the amount of tryptophan that’s absorbed so you can get more serotonin is to actually add a carb into that meal. So, if you were to have your salmon, but you had it with rice, salmon and rice together, that actually increases your insulin, which increases the amount of tryptophan absorbed. This is also why plant-based sources of protein offer a really great option to increase your serotonin because it’s sort of like you’re now, because there’s not as many amino acids in it, you’re now clearing the traffic jam and picture a car on a back country road like zoom going so fast. There’s not as many cars on the road. You’re not competing as much if you’re having a plant-based source of protein. So, your nuts and seeds. Those are a good way to increase it, right? So good. Is it

Speaker 1:
True that wheat and gluten can cause anxiety?

Speaker 2:
So, this one is so hotly debated, and I’m going to say from my nutritional perspective, there’s nothing inherently wrong with wheat or gluten unless you are actually sensitive to it. So, if you have celiac disease, for example, then yes, you’re not going to include gluten or wheat in the diet. If you have a non-celiac type of gluten sensitivity, then it could affect anxiety, and you would probably see some other symptoms like fatigue, bloating, digestive issues, maybe brain fog, but there’s no actual evidence that if you don’t have a sensitivity, that there’s any type of benefit to excluding wheat or gluten from your diet. And in fact, wheat has a lot of nutritional benefits like whole grains. These have fiber in it that are going to feed the bacteria in your gut. They also are rich in B vitamins, which are your energy vitamins. So, if someone wanted, they could explore removing it for a bit to see if it has an impact on their mental health. But I wouldn’t say that it’s not one of the top ones that I work with playing around in someone’s diet. I think it’s completely fine to have in there unless you have a specific sensitivity to it. But it does get a bad rap.

Speaker 1:
Why? Because it’s funny. Even I follow some medical doctors. I notice who are saying, who are psychiatrists who are like, before I prescribe meds, I take them off gluten. Why is everyone shouting on the gluten parade right now?

Speaker 2:
Well, this is what happens in the nutrition community is that we go through cycles, right? In the eighties we saw no fat, fat is bad, don’t include this. And then we moved on to carbs, can’t have carbs. Carbs are bad. We sort of go through these cycles of messaging, and it’s so unfortunate for our relationship with food, but we’re having a time right now where gluten is under the microscope, and I don’t think that there’s anything inherently wrong with it. And this is where the individuality of nutrition comes in. For some people, they would do better without it in the diet, and they might experience more energy, but for some people, it’s not going to have an impact. But it’s having a moment right now where people sort of latch onto something, but I don’t actually think there’s real evidence behind

Speaker 1:
It. Good. Okay. Thank you. Next question. Do artificial sweeteners like protein bars and gum increase anxiety?

Speaker 2:
So, there are some different artificial sweeteners on the market. We have our sugar alcohols, which are like our erythritol, xylitol. Usually, anything ending in “-ol” is telling us that it’s an alcohol-related sugar, and those could affect mood because the body doesn’t digest those. And so, for some people, it can lead to an issue with digestion. You’re going to have bloating, you’re going to have gas, you’re going to have some uncomfortable symptoms in the bathroom. And so, if that’s the case, then yeah, that could theoretically impact anxiety because it’s going to affect your gut bacteria if you’re continuing to consume those. We have something like aspartame, another common artificial sweetener, and there is a study that I’m aware of that, at least an animal study, showed that it increased anxiety in mice. So, that might be one that we want to watch out for.

And I should note though that in the study where they examined it with mice, it was equivalent to them having a dose of six to eight cans of soda a day for a human. So, that would be a really high amount, but it could. And in terms of stevia, that’s another common one. It’s a little bit mixed evidence on whether it could impact gut health, which means mental health and anxiety. So, I’m honestly curious to see where the research goes in the next couple of years with it. If you like it, then it could be an alternative that’s not going to spike your blood sugar. That could be some of the benefits we could say of some of these artificial sweeteners is that they’re not going to spike blood sugar, and blood sugar going up and down is a big issue for anxiety that can cause anxiety.

I think the most current trendy one that maybe has the best shot at being decent for you is monk fruit sweetener. And that one is natural. It’s coming from a real whole food, very sweet. I find it doesn’t have as much of the aftertaste as stevia does. Stevia I find is really hard to incorporate into things that just doesn’t taste very good, I don’t think. But monk fruit I think is a decent alternative. I haven’t seen any negative reports on it yet, but again, it is new and so we usually, we see this sort of cycle in the nutrition world of “this is really great for you” and then “maybe it’s not so great.” So, we’ll see where it goes. What we do know is that natural types of sweeteners—maple syrup, honey, agave, brown rice syrup, coconut sugar—these I think are going to be our best options because they are fairly unprocessed compared to some of the other options on the market.

Speaker 1:
And is raw sugar a processed sugar or no?

Speaker 2:
So, that would be fairly unprocessed. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
Okay. That’s what I take. That’s good. That’s what I have in my coffee anyway.

Speaker 2:
Check. Ah, in your cappuccino.

Speaker 1:
A really common question that lots of people ask is what can I eat to manage the diarrhea and nausea that accompanies anxiety?

Speaker 2:
Yeah, this is such a big symptom that we have along with anxiety, and I want to flag that because for some people it is just sort of like short-term. We have diarrhea, we have nausea, and then we move on. We’re not anxious anymore and it’s okay, but there actually is a really big link between anxiety and irritable bowel syndrome. IBS. We see about 60% of people with anxiety have IBS. What that means is that there could be more of an underlying issue. The bacteria is out of balance, there’s inflammation in the gut. And so, I just mentioned that to, not to freak anybody out, but just to have people think about, is this just because my nervous system is on or is there something out of balance that needs to be addressed with a practitioner? So, usually we’ll do a gut health protocol that brings in gut-healing supplements, maybe probiotics to help restore the healthy balance.

So, that’s just one avenue to consider for folks that if they’re feeling like this is happening a lot for me and this doesn’t feel good, it’s something I want to, but what can we do in those moments when we’re feeling anxious, we’re feeling stressed out, and really the root of it is that we got to bring the body back into balance. The nervous system is activated, it’s stressed out, and something about it, it’s something about this moment is feeling unsafe. And that nervous system activation, one of the side effects is diarrhea and nausea because your nervous system is all about survival. And so, if you are in that moment where you’re running from a bear, that’s all about survival in that moment, your body wants to excrete all of your liquids that gives you the best shot at survival because now you can run faster, you’re lighter.

It’s just such basic biology is what it comes down to. So, what we want to do is restore safety in the body, and we can do this through meditation. We can do this through going for a walk even. One of my favorite techniques is I just put my hand on my heart and I offer myself some affirmations. I say, you’re safe in this moment. This is really hard right now. This feels like a moment of suffering. And I just offer myself compassion. And I know you are big into self-compassion as well. So, we want to bring safety back into the body and balance, and then we can support ourselves with food. So, if we’re feeling nauseous, we’re probably not looking for a big meal or anything. For most of us, anxiety makes the appetite go down, but we could maybe nourish ourselves with some ginger tea or chamomile tea, something warm and calming. And I mentioned ginger and chamomile specifically because they both can help with nausea, and they’re both good for relaxing the nervous system. So, that might be something that we can turn to without it being too onerous when we’re in that state of anxiety.

Speaker 1:
I know when I had an eating disorder, I had so bad, my IBS was so bad. And what I found a couple of things to be helpful was I wasn’t eating enough. And when I wouldn’t eat because I was anxious all the time and I wasn’t eating enough, it would upset it. So, I had to start to make myself eat small, regular meals. That was super important. But I think a lot of it was learning how to manage my anxiety once it was very much related to, okay, what am I doing in this moment? Am I catastrophizing? Am I jumping to conclusions? What’s going on for me? So, I think that that’s a huge piece of it too. One question I didn’t ask you before, but I will sort of make it more of a comment, is we do a lot of exposure and response prevention in our practice.

So, sometimes we might say to a client, I want you to go and drink a coffee so that you can practice having that feeling of anxiety, especially if they’re doing a lot of avoidant behaviors. We wouldn’t do that unless it lines up with their values and they love to drink coffee. We’ll say, go and have your coffee. So, I just wanted to make sure that we say we don’t want to, as we said at the beginning, in some cases, we choose to have the food because we enjoy it, even if anxiety is the side effect. Next, we’re getting close to the end here. Last question. Tips to get enough nutrition when you’re so stressed and struggling to eat and you are losing weight. Perfect segue from the last question.

Speaker 2:
Yes. And this is such a common, this one is that when we feel anxious, we just talked about how it’s that biological response, that evolutionary response that when we’re in a state of anxiety, the last thing on our to-do list is eat a big meal because it’s not going to help us with survival in that moment. So, this is why for many appetite goes down. And I know for me, this happened the other day when I received a text from a friend that said, Hey, can we chat? It was like that dreaded no context, just, Hey, can we chat? And I was about to eat and immediately I was like, oh, no, I just, I can’t eat anything right now. It’s just put me into that fight or flight state. So, I totally get it. And I want to say that we got to address the underlying root.

It is like, okay, why is the anxiety happening? And of course, that’s a bigger piece, is getting to the root of why am I feeling anxious right now in that moment when I received a text from my friend, it was, oh, no, am I going to be in trouble that perfectionism was kicking in? Oh, not did I do something to disappoint them. People pleasing, coming online, all of that. So, that’s a bigger conversation. But we want to consider having really nutrient-dense meals. If every time we’re eating is an opportunity to supply our body with those nutrients, it needs to feel calm. And if our appetite is decreased, then we got to try to get packed in a lot of nutrition at the meals we are having. And so, as you recommended, this might mean smaller meals throughout the day because it just feels more soothing to eat that way, and that’s all good.

But a couple of options to consider are something like smoothies because we can throw so many things in a smoothie and they’re relatively easy to digest because you have that liquified form already there for you. So, my go-to smoothie recipe that I recommend to all my clients is banana berries because then we got that antioxidant, that bright fruit in there, a handful of spinach. Now we got some leafy greens. I do a little bit of nuts and seeds, usually sunflower seeds and hemp seeds, and then I’ll do a greens addition, like a greens kind of powder to just get more nutrition in there. And then I put some non-dairy milk and blend that all up. And that’s good to go if you’re doing some of your other meals, like soups and stews are great to pack a lot of nutrition in because in a blended soup, we could blend broccoli and cauliflower and zucchini and celery things that we probably wouldn’t sit down to a big bowl of to consume. And so, it’s such a smart, intelligent way to just get more nutrition, and soups and stews are going to be really soothing and warming for the body. So, if you’re in that state of anxiety, it might be that you can tolerate that better. That feels a little bit more exciting to get

Speaker 1:
To. I agree. Smoothies are so big. I remember we once had Evelyn Tribole, I think is how you pronounce her, who did intuitive eating on, and she talked about how she was at her mom’s funeral and she was like, I couldn’t eat, but I knew I needed to eat. That was a gift. So, she said, I had someone make me a smoothie and I just sipped on it throughout the whole funeral. And she was like, I just knew that’s what I needed. And I’ve always remembered that story of just fuel your body in whatever way you can. If that sounds delicious, go for it. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Alright. This is so helpful. So helpful. Oh, I did actually miss a question. Can I ask you one more? Of course. You did kind of talk about this, but what about matcha? Because we talked about caffeine, but someone had asked, does matcha contribute to anxiety?

Speaker 2:
So, let’s break that down a little bit. So, matcha is green tea, and it’s a type of green tea where you’re sort of consuming the tea leaves. They’re ground up. And so, it’s going to provide some benefits that it’s going to be very high in antioxidants. It does contain that compound theanine that we talked about, which is alerting yet relaxing. So, I would say it does a better job at being calming than something like coffee because of that theanine in there. But this is where the individuality of nutrition comes in because for some people, matcha is still going to be too much caffeine in terms of it’s going to lead to those symptoms that feel uncomfortable in the body. And one of the side effects of having too much matcha is going to be diarrhea and also anxiety. So, this is something that maybe you’re exploring what your threshold is, doing some of that exposure therapy and seeing what that looks like for you. Me personally, I don’t consume matcha because it does lead to those feelings of anxiety and I just don’t like it. So, that’s also something to consider is that find something that you enjoy having and that you like, right? If it’s going to be that coffee, but let’s mitigate some of the symptoms of it, have it after breakfast so that you have a more balanced blood sugar. If you’re going to have dandelion root, then great. That’s going to be something that you enjoy. Personally, I do a cappuccino every day with that.

Speaker 1:
You do and enjoy that. Is

Speaker 2:
That delicious?

Speaker 1:
Yeah.

Speaker 2:
Oh, it’s so delicious.

Speaker 1:
Yes. How do you do it with a cappuccino? So you

Speaker 2:
Make, how does that work? Yeah, so I make the dandelion root tea. So, I’ll do a half cup of dandelion root tea. It just comes in a powder and you mix it with hot water. And then I froth non-dairy milk, and then I pour it on top and have a little cappuccino of it. Oh, I will try it. It’s still it. Yes. There you go. Yeah, it’s a great option. But all that to say, I mean, find what you love and what you enjoy and what makes you feel good and what makes you feel nourished. And it’s really an exploration to see how does this food affect me, right? For some, matcha or green tea is just going to be too much and it’s not going to be worth it because it doesn’t lead to ultimate enjoyment. For some, it might be totally fine and below that sort of threshold that they have of whatever type of caffeine they can tolerate. But it is an exploration, and I encourage everybody to bring curiosity to it. We’re not here to judge or I’m not here to prescribe any food specifically. It’s more just, here are some ones that can be really great and support your mental health, and here are some ones that might be hindering your goals. And everybody can just sort of take that in for themselves and see where they want to go with it.

Speaker 1:
Amazing. Thank you. You’re such a power bank of knowledge. Tell us where people can find out about you.

Speaker 2:
So, I think the best way is to connect with me and my community, my app community, Cultivating Calm. This is something that I launched just over a year ago now, and it sort of puts these pieces of the puzzle together. So, we talked today about nutrition. That’s one piece I bring in with recipes on the app and a little nutrition talks. The other pieces on the app are meditation and then yoga as well. And this low-intensity type of movement. So, people can either head to cultivatingcalm.ca and check it out, or they can go to the app store or Google Play and search, Cultivating Calm and download it. And there’s a free trial for anyone who wants to try out this method that I’ve developed that takes just under 30 minutes a day. I don’t think it should be complicated or overwhelming to work on anxiety. I think it should be fun, and I think it should be done in community.

Speaker 1:
Amazing. Thank you so much. I feel like that was, thank you so much. So jam-packed and we got through all of the questions. So good.

Speaker 2:
Impressive, impressive. Such great questions from the community. And thank you so much for having me back on. Thanks for

Speaker 3:
Please note that this podcast or any other resources from cbtschool.com should not replace professional mental health care. If you feel you would benefit, please reach out to a provider in your area. Have a wonderful day, and thank you for supporting cbtschool.com.