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Areas › Your body › Food, caffeine and fuel
You do not have to establish which came first. Easing the pressure on your nervous system helps digestion, steadying what you eat helps mood, and either one loosens the loop a little. Pick whichever is more within reach this week rather than waiting until you can do both properly.
People, eat what is good and lawful from the earth (Quran 2:168). The instruction about food is put to everyone as a plain matter of course, so attending to it is basic care rather than a fringe concern.
البقرة
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّاسُ كُلُواْ مِمَّا فِي ٱلۡأَرۡضِ حَلَٰلࣰ ا طَيِّبࣰ ا وَلَا تَتَّبِعُواْ خُطُوَٰتِ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنِۚ إِنَّهُۥ لَكُمۡ عَدُوࣱّ مُّبِينٌ
People, eat what is good and lawful from the earth, and do not follow Satan’s footsteps, for he is your sworn enemy
Qur’an 2:168read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Be careful with what gets sold on the back of this. Pooling 34 controlled trials, prebiotics showed no effect on depression or anxiety and probiotics showed only small effects, several of those coming from low quality trials. The gut and mood connection being real is not the same as a supplement being the answer. Ordinary food, sleep and stress load are the better bet.
Liu RT, Walsh RFL, Sheehan AE. (2019). Prebiotics and probiotics for depression and anxiety: A systematic review and meta-analysis of controlled clinical trials.. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Because the traffic runs both ways, a change on either side takes load off the other.
The pull towards bread, pasta and biscuits when you are low is not simply greed. Carbohydrate makes it easier for the brain to get hold of the raw material it needs for serotonin, so it gives a real if short lived lift.
The studies linking pesticide levels to ADHD are tangled up with income, since families least able to buy organic differ in plenty of other ways too. If organic food is affordable for you, fine. If it is not, you are not failing your child.
Most claims about food and behaviour rest on weak studies. The ones worth taking seriously give each person both the real thing and a dummy at different times, with nobody knowing which is which, so that hope and expectation cannot do the work.