How your eating rhythms impact your mental health

• There is an overlap between neural circuits governing eating and mood. Also, digestive hormones exert effects on dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays a large role in mood, energy, and pleasure.
• Individuals with depression and bipolar disorder have abnormal dopamine levels. Altered eating rhythms are thought to contribute to the poor maintenance of mood.
• Irregular eating may even play a role in the complex underlying causes of mood disorders. Despite this evidence, assessing eating rhythms is not currently part of standard clinical care in most psychiatric settings.

This is also known as intermittent fasting.

• TRE involves restricting the eating window to a certain amount of time during the day, typically four to 12 hours. For example, choosing to eat all meals and snacks in a 10-hour window from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. reflects an overnight fasting period.
• Evidence suggests that this method optimizes brain function, energy metabolism, and the healthy signaling of metabolic hormones.
• TRE has already been shown to prevent depressive and anxiety symptoms in animal studies designed to model shift work.

We live in a 24-hour world filled with artificial light and round-the-clock access to food. That makes the effects of disturbed eating rhythms on mental health an important topic for modern life.

For the general population, it is important to increase public knowledge on accessible and affordable ways to maintain healthy eating. This includes paying attention not only to the content of meals but also to eating rhythms.