Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet and mental well-being: A systematic review
One of the most often recommended diets for preventing and managing hypertension is the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet. However, a thorough understanding of how the DASH diet affects mental health and well-being is still lacking. To close this gap, the current study by Tan, Wang & Tomiyama (2023) thoroughly investigated the most recent research on the relationship between the DASH diet and mental health. To find qualifying papers (up to May 2021), the Web of Science, PsycINFO, and PubMed databases were thoroughly searched to include English-language interventional and observational studies that drew conclusions regarding mental health. Using the NIH quality evaluation method, two writers independently evaluated the examined papers’ quality and gathered qualitative information. The senior author decided on conflicts. The final review comprised 16 trials with 48824 individuals: Six randomized controlled trials and ten observational studies. The studies’ methodological quality was generally of medium strength. There were contradictory findings on psychological tests, but overall, analysis of the results revealed that the DASH diet was linked to better mental health outcomes. A negative correlation between following the DASH diet and depressive symptoms/depression was found in five observational studies. According to four randomized controlled trials, the DASH diet has been shown to improve mental health, including quality of life and emotional symptoms. Thus, the authors conclude that the DASH diet may benefit mental health. However, the findings varied between published studies, which may be related to variations in the methodologies used to evaluate the DASH diet’s effects on mental health outcomes. The authors recommend that future research focus on well-powered randomized controlled trials with mental health as the main goal. [NPID: DASH diet, dietary index, epidemiology, mental health, psychological well being, systematic review]
Year: 2023
