Episode #7: Dr. Felice Jacka: The Power of Diet on Mental Health

Imperfect Progress with Anne Guzman

“Half of all mental disorders start before the age of 14, you want to get in and prevent them before they start and that means making sure that kids are getting the right nutrition and physical activity and obviously when they get into adolescence not smoking.”

Dr. Felice Jacka, Director of The Food and Mood Center and founder and president of the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research has dedicated her career researching nutritional psychiatry as well creating programs to mobilize change in our food environment. One of her many goals is to teach the role that lifestyle medicine can play in preventing mental health disorders. With a strong statistics background Dr. Jacka understands how important the role of quality research; intervention studies and meta analysis; will be in influencing change in the clinical practice setting and was part of one of the first studies looking at dietary intervention and depressive symptoms.

“What gets me out of bed in the morning and keeps me doing this with such passion and zeal is the need to address the food environment and the fury I feel that big business has been allowed to sacrifice the health of the people and the planet right across the globe in the pursuit of profits, unimpeded”

In our discussion we cover so many interesting areas:

• Treatment guidelines for mental health disorders: early focus lifestyle medicine
• Nutrition education for physicians
• Gut microbiota and its relationship to our mental health.
• Gut health: why variety of foods matters
• Setting up a healthy food environment for your kids with specific practical examples!
• The SMILES trial: A Randomized controlled trial of dietary improvement for adults with major depression: results and insights
• Obesity: changing our stereotypes about weight and mental health disorders
• The food environment and food policy
• Dealing with adversity and imperfect progress in life - so much wisdom here from an incredibly strong and resilient woman.

Thank you so much for listening to Imperfect Progress. Please share this episode with anyone you believe can benefit and follow here or on your favorite podcast platform for new episodes. Please leave a review! It's super helpful for getting the podcast to more listeners who can learn from these amazing guests.

To connect with and learn more about Dr. Felice Jacka's work, see the links below:

Food and Mood Center: https://foodandmoodcentre.com.au/

SMILES TRIAL: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-017-0791-y

Brain Changer (Book): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42653041-brain-changer

There's a Zoo In My Poo (Kids Book): https://www.amazon.ca/Theres-Zoo-Poo-Felice-Jacka-ebook/dp/B08887C4W3

Twitter: https://twitter.com/FeliceJacka

Deaken University: https://www.deakin.edu.au/about-deakin/people/felice-jacka

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prof-felice-jacka/

Thank you to David Langstaff for his original music.