Natural Cures for Depression: The Right Diet can Alleviate Depression

A poor diet can contribute to depression. It can even be the primary cause of depression, anxiety or other mental disorders if your brain is deficient in certain chemicals.

Drugs such as Zoloft, Prozac and Paxil work by altering your brain chemistry and increasing the amount of serotonins in your brain. The right diet can also help achieve this objective without the dangerous side effects. Eating right to beat depression is a natural cure and comes with many wonderful side effects such as weight loss and better physical health.

Many studies have shown that depressed people are often deficient in either folic acid, vitamins B12/B6 or omega 3 fats.

Depression is the most common symptom of a folic acid deficiency. The foods richest in folic acid are legumes, seeds, and leafy green vegetables.

If you're not sure what legumes are, there is a good chance you are lacking in folic acid. Legumes is another word for beans. The bean family includes lentils, kidney beans, black beans, lima beans and split peas. Few people eat these folate rich foods on a regular basis these days.

Lentils are extremely rich in folic acid. The above image is a photo of a curried lentils dish. The recipe is available at The Worlds Healthiest Foods website. This website is probably the best source of nutritional information available online. It was founded by a person who made a lot of money in the health food industry. He has since sold his business and is now dedicating some of the profits toward providing superb information about healthy eating. There are no products or supplements being pushed here. It's a non-profit site, with detailed and non-biased information. Check out their information on foods richest in folic acid for example.

There is also an excellent university term paper which discusses the relationship between depression and diet. Have a look at Nutritional Factors: Natural Treatment for Depression.

See also another article at this site about the connection between omega 3 fats and treatment of depression and bipolar disorder.

Some good books have also been written recently about the right diet to beat depression: