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Diet and anxiety: A scoping review
Despite anxiety being the most prevalent of mental disorders, the majority of evidence on the role of nutrition in the onset and course of mental disorders fails to take anxiety into account. Aucion M. et al (2021) conducted this scoping review to identify existing literature on anxiety disorders and nutrition to help elucidate associations between diet and anxiety symptoms or prevalence. Te researchers also aimed to identify gaps and opportunities for future research. Following established approaches for conducting scoping reviews and using an online program (Abstrackr) to screen for abstracts and titles, a total of 55,914 unique results were identified. Of which, the included 1,541 studies demonstrated a link between decreased odds of anxiety and increased dietary intake of fruits, vegetables, omega-3 fatty acids, “healthy” dietary patterns (with a higher intake of vegetables, fruit, whole grains, fish, legumes, and unprocessed meat), caloric restriction, ketogenic diet, broad-spectrum micronutrient supplements, zinc, magnesium, selenium, probiotics, and a range of phytochemicals (caffeine, green tea, culinary herbs, turmeric, saffron, soy, nut/seed extract, flavonoids, carotenoids). Furthermore, consuming a fatty diet, inadequate tryptophan and dietary protein intake, high intake of sugar and refined carbohydrates, and “unhealthy” dietary patterns (higher intake of processed foods, sugar and sweetened foods, soft drinks, fried foods, processed meats, “junk food,” and “fast food”) were found to increase the odds of suffering from anxiety. Recognizing the limitation of this review, with a majority of the studies included being animal and observational studies and only 10% of intervention studies including participants with anxiety disorders, the authors call for conducting more quality studies on populations of patients suffering from anxiety disorders. [NPID: nutrition, diet, food, anxiety, mental health, psychiatry, nutritional science, dietetics]
Year: 2021
