How to Eat Your Way to Mental Clarity, with Nutritional Psychiatrist Drew Ramsey
Most of the foods we consume are created for the supermarket shelf, not for our health, says psychiatrist Drew Ramsey. But you can boost your brain function and overall well-being with this one very low-tech, analogue tool: your grocery list.
If you have an appointment with psychiatrist Drew Ramsey, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to walk out of there with a bottle full of pills. Sometimes you’ll emerge with a recipe for a blueberry-avocado-kefir-nut smoothie. Or a shopping list for how to make kale pesto. Ramsey is leading the charge in a relatively new branch known as nutritional psychiatry. Physically, we can see the difference between someone with a good diet versus a poor diet, the external symptoms of nutritional deficiency are obvious, and so you don’t have to stretch the imagination too far to imagine the difference it might make internally, particularly to your cognitive abilities and your mental health.
How To Conquer Depression Through Diet
The way to a healthy mind is through the stomach, according to psychiatrist Drew Ramsey. The right foods can decrease your risk of depression by 50%, and treat clinical mental disorders.
Psychiatrist Dr. Drew Ramsey, the guy who brought the world incredible catchphrases like "You can’t fail with kale" and "Some people are big pharma – I'm little farmer", is back with some incredibly interesting data on the relationship between mental health and diet.
The Key to Mental and Cognitive Health Is Diet — This Diet
It's official - it's a food intervention. Psychiatrist Drew Ramsey is going to be supportive, but he's also going to tell you to clean up your diet, and eat right for brain health.
Like the rest of the human body, our brain depends on good nutrition. In fact, it’s where everything starts and from where everything flows. Lack of certain vitamins can lead to drops of mood, cognitive ability and physical functionality. For these reasons, when getting a psychiatric evaluation it makes sense to call a nutrition intervention to make sure slumps in vitamin and nutrition levels aren’t the cause of common mental diagnoses such as depression and anxiety.
Dr. Drew Ramsey is a psychiatrist, author, and farmer. He is one of psychiatry’s leading proponents of using dietary change to help balance moods, sharpen brain function and improve mental health. He is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and in active clinical practice in New York City where his work focuses on the clinical treatment of depression and anxiety. Using the latest brain science and nutritional research, modern treatments, and an array of delicious food he aims to help people live to their happiest, healthiest lives.
He is the co-creator of The Brain Food Scale, co-founder of National Kale Day 501(c)3, and a member of the medical review team at Dr. Oz’s webportal ShareCare. He frequently speaks and conducts workshops nationally, including two recent TEDx talks BrainFork and Brain Farmacy on food and brain health. His work and writing have been featured by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, Atlantic.com, Prevention, Lancet Psychiatry, and NPR, which named him a “kale evangelist.” His recent bestseller 50 Shades of Kale has made this superfood accessible to thousands. His first book, The Happiness Diet: A Nutritional Prescription for a Sharp Brain, Balanced Mood and Lean, Energized Body explored the impact of modern diets on brain health.
Dr. Ramsey teaches and supervises Psychiatric Evaluation and in the Columbia University Adult Psychiatry Residency Program. He serves as a thesis mentor for graduate students at the Columbia University Institute of Human Nutrition where is also lectures on nutrition and the brain. From 2005 to 2008, he directed the Audubon Continuing Day Treatment Program, a bilingual service for the severely mentally ill located in the Washington Heights. He is a faculty member at the Center for Mind-Body Medicine. Dr. Ramsey is a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He completed his specialty training in adult psychiatry at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, received an M.D. from Indiana University School of Medicine and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Earlham College.
