Diet, Trauma, and PTSD

Since people with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are at increased risk of various chronic diseases, Kim et al. (2019) tested the theory that the poor health outcomes were linked to diet quality by evaluating PTSD and deterioration in diet quality over time. This was assessed from 51,965 women who participated in the Nurses' Health Study II PTSD sub-study. In this study, diet was assessed at 4-year intervals via the Alternative Healthy Eating Index-2010 (AHEI). A total of 7 comparison groups for trauma/PTSD status were determined using information from the Brief Trauma Questionnaire and Short Screening Scale for DSM-IV PTSD [no trauma exposure, prevalent exposure (trauma/PTSD onset before study entry), or new-onset (trauma/PTSD onset during follow-up)]. Additional categories were created as well. For example, women with prevalent exposure as having trauma with no PTSD symptoms, trauma with low PTSD symptoms, and trauma with high PTSD symptoms. Regardless of PTSD status, diet quality did improve over time, although women with prevalent high PTSD and women with new-onset high PTSD symptoms had 3.3% and 3.6% lower improvement in diet quality, respectively, compared to those with no trauma. These trends remained consistent after adjusting for health conditions, sociodemographics, and behavioral characteristics. These findings suggest PTSD is associated with less healthy changes in overall diet quality over time, and could implicate poor diet quality is involved in the higher occurrences of chronic diseases linked with PTSD.