Diet and Gut flora are incredibly important for mental health and overall well being.
In most 1st world countries, people eat way too much and often, unfortunately a lot of their food choices are heavily processed and cause massive inflammation.
Because he's making glib claims about a very important topic that aren't supported by the evidence. The only studies I could find on keto and depression were conducted on rats; I couldn't find anything on the paleo diet and I'm not even sure we agree on a definition of what paleo is. Veganism may actually make matters worse, because there's a real risk of developing a vitamin D or B12 deficiency if you aren't careful.
The evidence linking diet and depression is really very limited. Serious malnutrition can cause depression, a sensible balanced diet won't do you any harm, but any other statement about depression and diet has little or no basis in fact.
>The evidence linking diet and depression is really very limited.
I’d say the opposite is true there are many available studies on dietary inflammation (ie chronic inflammation) and depression being linked.
See the inflammatory hypothesis of depression, also interesting is data is beginning to reveal a link between inflammation and the 1/3 of patients who do not respond to antidepressant medications. Generally when working antidepressants have an anti inflammatory effects.
It should also be noted that the diets mentioned Keto/carnivore/vegan all generally emphasize the removal of inflammatory foods (ie refined sugars, refined carbs, fried foods, artificial trans fats, etc...).
>I’d say the opposite is true there are many available studies on dietary inflammation (ie chronic inflammation) and depression being linked.
We still don't have any real idea of the causal directionality between inflammation and depression. The best available evidence (and the best available evidence is very weak) suggests that depression causes inflammation rather than vice-versa; depressive illness predicts levels of inflammation markers, but inflammation markers do not predict depression.
Some antidepressant drugs do have anti-inflammatory properties, but the reverse is not necessarily true. Several clinical trials of anti-inflammatory drugs have failed to show efficacy in the treatment of depression.
Presently, the inflammatory hypothesis is distinctly hypothetical; while some basic neurobiological research in mice support it, we have no real clinical evidence to suggest that reducing inflammation has any meaningful effect on depressive illnesses.
This could be telling in a way though, don't you think? Scurvy is a fun example of what I mean. Most people now know that scurvy is just a disease caused by a lack of vitamin c. But for centuries it was not really understood what caused it, and it has resulted in countless millions of deaths throughout the centuries. Some people would discover the cure, but it never really stuck around. Part of this is because it sounds so absurd that e.g. eating limes is a way to stop an otherwise aggressive and deadly disease. Imagine I suggested you eat apples to stave off the flu. Sounds, at best, 'folky.'
And this was also further complicated by the fact that lime juice can lose its nutritional character in some situations (such as certain sorts of storage), and so some experiments in using lime juice as a cure/prophylactic failed. It was also complicated because there's also high quantities of vitamin C in various fresh meats, and so crews that had access to these meats, but consumed minimal citrus, would also never seem to be affected. Tricky to nail down!
As a fun factoid, vitamin c is ascorbic acid, but it wasn't always called that. It was originally named hexuronic acid. It was renamed ascorbic (against scurvy) acid once it was confirmed that it was indeed absolutely what was treating and preventing scurvy. Another fun one is that this is also related to the slang term for a Brit - a 'limey'. The nickname came from the fact that the British navy was one of the first to start dosing their sailors with lemon/lime juice to ward off scurvy.
So the point of this is that if a whole bunch of people are suggesting something works, to the point of it becoming a meme, there may actually be something to it - even if it can be difficult to isolate the exact reason why, or why it may not work in 100% of cases. Definitively solving the mystery of scurvy took about 3,500 years from the point of it being formalized. So a bit of patience is probably justified for these sort of things.
I'm curious why you'd say something so completely wrong so authoritatively. Please do share your motivations and thoughts if you would. The countless deaths by scurvy are some of the most well documented there are. Especially during the age of sail death by scurvy was a regular and inevitable part of attrition. The convenient thing here is that these deaths would occur at sea, or recently at sea, and are heavily documented through captains'/physicians'/etc logs. Literally just about any captain's log from this era and an international voyage will reference large numbers of deaths from scurvy. It was a normal part of attrition.
As literally every single source you might find will affirm this, I'm at a loss for what to cite. Here [1] is a source that seems well written and informative, including some of the countless first person accounts as well. You can also look up the voyages of any famous trader/explorer/voyager you might be aware of. For instance Vasco de Gama, Magellan, Columbus, etc - you'll find horrid tales of rampant scurvy when you actually look into their voyages.
Populations were much smaller then, and only a small fraction of the population went on sailing voyages long enough to suffer from scurvy. So your estimate of millions of deaths from scurvy is implausible on the face of it.
Of course I agree with you. I was initially quite surprised to discover how many deaths it caused. It's a world we can't even imagine when good chunks of your crew dying was just a regular part of a job. But of course intuition should never replace facts. Maybe next time a more productive idea would be to ask for a source? I'm certain you're far from the only person who found the fact surprising!
Diet and Gut flora are incredibly important for mental health and overall well being.
In most 1st world countries, people eat way too much and often, unfortunately a lot of their food choices are heavily processed and cause massive inflammation.