Perspective: 'Mum loved to cook, until depression laid her low. Could the right foods cure her?'
By Anthea Rowan March 10 at 10:30 AM As a child, food was a thing of happiness; every meal was taken at a table properly set and the cooking of it became central to my growing up. At my mother’s side, standing on a stool, I learned to carefully weigh ingredients, artfully separate eggs and beat them with a fury until they stood obediently in snowy peaks, handle pastry dough with a light touch. Our kitchen sang with voices, was scented with sweetness and was always warm from the oft-used oven.
When it was apparent Mum’s misery was here to stay, and when we had spent months seeking elusive answers to recovery everywhere — on the psychiatrist’s couch, at her counseling sessions, in the pharmacological cocktails of SSRIs and lithium and tricyclic antidepressants — I trawled the Internet for a solution. And food, I read, apparently could be much more than sustenance.
Michael Gershon, professor of pathology and cell biology at Columbia University and author of “The Second Brain,” is often called the father of neurogastroenterology for his work examining the connection between the GI tract and the brain. He acknowledges the link between what we eat and how we feel, but says it would be impossible to eat ourselves out of a depressive episode: “One of the transmitters in the brain, serotonin, is made in the body from tryptophan, an amino acid.
But, of course, it wasn’t just my mother’s appetite for food that vanished when she got sick, it was her appetite for everything — for cooking, for laughing, for living. And I am struck by the word “inertia.” I asked my mother one day, “How are you, Mum?” I am inert, came the answer. There would be no cooking that day.
But, she says, depression is a complex condition “characterized by feelings of disinterest in activities, low mood and changes in sleep and appetite.” Mark Hyman, director of Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Functional Medicine and founder and director of the UltraWellness Center, says: “Diet is not the solution to healing depression, but it is one important piece of the puzzle.
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