Mood-Boosting Foods and Beverages
- Written by News Co
Many people turn to specific foods and beverages whenever their day sets them in a grumpy mood. While there is nothing wrong with a good treat to soothe how you feel, the choice of foods and beverages will ultimately affect you positively or negatively.
High-calorie foods and sugary beverages are common for emotional eaters in which they leave them feeling worse about themselves and lead to complications like obesity, diabetes, heart conditions, and so on. If you intend to uplift your spirits, stay away from junk food, alcohol, sugars, and starchy foods.
Here are the most recommendable mood-boosting foods from diet experts
What to Drink When Feeling Dull
Look at it this way, whatever you drink will have a short-term effect and the aftermath, which will determine if it helped or made your day worse. Alcoholic beverages have become a major component of modern lifestyles and statistics reveal higher rates of depression and a generation suffering under repressed emotions.
Alcohol when used as a coping mechanism leads to severe addiction and poor quality of life. An excellent mood-enhancing beverage is coffee. The way it works, caffeine stimulates the nervous system to give your brain a rush of adenosine chemicals, which increase alertness. Coffee is only good if you understand your caffeine threshold. Too much of it will leave you feeling jittery and fatigued.
Getting a caffeine fix to boost your focus is only the first step out of a dull day. In this period when most people are restricted indoors, staying engaged is the surest way not to slip back to a foul mood.
Mood Food for Depression
Nothing beats a finger-licking plateful of well-cooked fatty fish to get a depressed person to forget what they were stressed about in the first place. Consuming fish regularly equips the body with essential omega 3 fatty acids, which effectively alter mental processes associated with depressive symptoms.
A recent study focusing on foods that smooth out various moods for bipolar patients found out that fatty fish like tuna, salmon, shrimp, croaker, blue crab, and sardines have a higher concentration of natural omega-3. After fixed periods eating meals with fatty fish, patients started showing positive response and hyperactivity thus effectively managing their stress triggers and suicidal thoughts. Omega-3 is not only important in preventing depression but it also helps our brain to produce the neurotransmitters we need for better memory, concentration and to stay alert. This is the reason why a daily intake of Omega-3 is important to people that need to perform mentally. Politicians, athletes, and even professional gamblers are told to get their daily dose of Omega-3 (link between diet and gambling).
Mood Food for Irritability
When you are dangerously at the edge of snapping, put away all beverages that act as stimulants or sugary food. Caffeine in this case will make you more irritable and foul to those near you.
Opt for foods and beverages with fewer sugars and stay off caffeine for a few weeks to get your mental processes back in line. Irritability is often caused by stress. An advisable response to this is distracting yourself with physical activity such as exercising or learning a new recipe to help you eat healthily. A home-cooked meal always gets you in the best of spirits.
Mood Food for Tired People
Ever get those days that you are too wasted to try or even care? Constant fatigue is usually an indication of a larger health problem or a deficiency within your body. The best foods to consume when fatigue becomes a day-to-day problem ought to be high in iron content.
Think beyond greens and grains, these only offer a weak form of iron, aim for seafood, lean meat, and poultry meat. Animal protein is very rich in iron and delicious too. The body readily absorbs iron present in animal protein as compared to iron from plant-based foods (no offense to Popeye’s famous can of spinach). Keeping hydrated also helps fight fatigue.
Mood Food for Sleep
Struggling to get some decent shuteye at night? The issue could be what you are eating or not eating before bedtime. Eat lightly before going to bed and a full meal in the morning to boost your energy levels throughout the day.
Avoid beverages with high caffeine or alcohol content before going to bed. This is a no brainer as no one wants to get his or her nervous system stimulated right before sleep time. Alcohol on the other hand could knock you out but take away from the quality of sleep thus creating a sleep disorder. If you feel the urge to eat something before bedtime, have some almonds or drink a cup of Chamomile tea, both belong to the group of food that will help you sleep better (Food to help you sleep
Lacking adequate sleep takes a huge toll on your entire body making it impossible to concentrate. It also makes a person irritable, forgetful, intolerant, and ultimately leads to depression. Knock off perfect zzz’s today and change your old habits by getting healthy mood foods and beverages into your system in the right proportions and at the perfect time (Nutritionist changing habits).