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Areas › Your body › Food, caffeine and fuel
People who have been disbelieved by doctors are very sensitive to this, and with reason. The choice usually gets offered as either it was all in your head or you are permanently broken, and most real stories sit somewhere between. Try describing what changed and what did not, rather than reaching for a verdict. That leaves room for the difficulty to still show up on a bad week without it meaning nothing has moved.
For those who can fast only with extreme difficulty, there is a way to compensate (Quran 2:184). A genuine limitation is taken seriously and provided for, without being turned into a permanent verdict on the person.
البقرة
أَيَّامࣰ ا مَّعۡدُودَٰتࣲۚ فَمَن كَانَ مِنكُم مَّرِيضًا أَوۡ عَلَىٰ سَفَرࣲ فَعِدَّةࣱ مِّنۡ أَيَّامٍ أُخَرَۚ وَعَلَى ٱلَّذِينَ يُطِيقُونَهُۥ فِدۡيَةࣱ طَعَامُ مِسۡكِينࣲۖ فَمَن تَطَوَّعَ خَيۡرࣰ ا فَهُوَ خَيۡرࣱ لَّهُۥۚ وَأَن تَصُومُواْ خَيۡرࣱ لَّكُمۡ إِن كُنتُمۡ تَعۡلَمُونَ
Fast for a specific number of days, but if one of you is ill, or on a journey, on other days later. For those who can fast only with extreme difficulty, there is a way to compensate- feed a needy person. But if anyone does good of his own accord, it is better for him, and fasting is better for you, if only you knew
Qur’an 2:184read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Modest and honest is usually the right register with this evidence. In middle aged and older adults, longitudinal studies link better diet to a lower incidence of depression, and the effect sizes are small. Real, worth having, not a cure: that is the shape of most of what is known here, and saying it that way is more useful than either dismissal or overstatement.
Matison AP, Mather KA, Flood VM, Reppermund S. (2021). Associations between nutrition and the incidence of depression in middle-aged and older adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective observational population-based studies.. Ageing research reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Precise words about what changed protect you from the two stories that are hardest to live with, that it was nothing and that it is forever.
Water, sleep, food and digestion are not the boring preamble to the real work. When those are running badly, everything else you try has less to work with.
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.
When researchers ran DNA testing on 13 herbal products, only 2 contained the plant on the label. Three had none of it at all, and several were padded out with rice, soy or wheat that nobody had declared.