Full Day, Full Log, Full Plant-Based Living: Gut Health, Mental Health, Serotonin, & the Microbiome
5.15.20
I got to the microbiome section of Undo It days ago, but I have held back on posting about it because the microbiome is such an important/lengthy topic, I could dedicate all of Jasquatch to just discussing the myriad ways your gut responds to what you shove down your gullet, and how it then alters your whole body/mind.
In the upcoming days, I’ll focus on all the diseases associated with poor gut heath, but today I’ll focus on the one that is most personally important: mental health.
I originally changed my diet to avoid inflammation (<—had GI issues, bad knees, sore back, a perpetually painful neck from Lyme’s), and it wasn’t animal products that we cut first: it was refined sugars and processed foods. The hope was that maybe some of the pain in my body would dissipate, but I had absolutely NO idea or expectation of how it would change my mental health.
I accepted depression as a lifelong cross, because it runs through my family. I’m one of those souls who had depressive thoughts as far back as kindergarten; was a melancholic mess through my teens and 20s; had worked really hard to keep the darkness at bay in my 30s; and navigated it all without medications, because I was terrified of the numbness associated with them; but depression and anxiety were always a looming cloud.
I changed my diet to plant-based whole-foods and that gut-health/mental-health connection was sparked up to pure light. I used to have multiple anxiety attacks daily: I could not even tell you when the last one was. It’s been years. I used to have uncontrollable sobbing fits, a mind cast perpetually toward darkness, and a stomach that felt like a pit of despair. That state is so distant it feels foreign and rattling to even think back on.
Despite the overwhelming research showing the mechanisms linking gut-health to mental-health, I find most of the population still has absolutely no idea that what they eat will affect their mental health. Most of the folks I love are on some manner of antidepressant, yet still slipping foods into their systems that are perpetuating their anguish.
If you want to remain in darkness, it is your body and your choice. If you want to start healing yourself, lighting up your brain with purpose (not grief), and heal the world while you’re at it: maybe give plant-based whole-foods a try along with whatever-else you-have-going on. The health benefits are vast, so instead of worrisome side effects you’re attempting something health promoting, environmentally sustainable, & compassionate, that just may alleviate some suffering for you too.
Continue for illumination on: how our microbiome controls our mental health; how I went from arms full of cutting scars, to arms budding biceps; how we move forward with light & purpose daily; plus a full day of Plant-Based Family feasting.
Live kindly, feast kindly, grow forward.
Morning Chalkboard for Q: “If you help out in the garden today you can choose a smoothie of your choice.”
Plant-Based Kiddo Breakfast: pink lady apple and a peanut butter Pit of Carkoon with apple peel Sarlacc.
Yesterday’s David Barber drawing had him so proud he was beaming and bouncing from foot to foot while calling me out to look.
If the file wasn’t too big for uploading, I’d post the video of him describing this himself, but here’s a transcript:
“This is a chamber that was in an asteroid that crash landed on earth. And pictures of the asteroid show cracks that show little pictures of what looked like a cage inside, and there were staples so the creature couldn’t get out —METAL staples. Those are brothers, and these are drips, and those are the walls, and people have felt ‘Well, I guess this is just a big rock’ when the miners found it, so they buried it with cement, and now it’s under the road. And the miners didn’t know that this thing was inside it!”
He then went on to find an example of the word beast “as a reference” so he could title it himself. <3
He is a tiny Stephen King / HP Lovecraft and it blows my non-fictional/documentarian/unable-to-conjour-fiction brain daily. <3
Pre-K Quarantine Homeschooling: math work, his letter of the day sheet from school, a coloring sheet from school that he turned into “an enchanted tree” (<— complete with various tentacle creatures, and several species of spider, “That one in the ground is a turret spider!”), and inspired by the sheets he loves most from his school packet (which he blew right through): there’s a homemade counting/number-writing sheet.
Post-schoolwork lunch assistance.
Cardio breaks and looking like his leggy Papa.
How do you fit cardio breaks into your day? Before serving meals, I’ll put on a song so we can do jumping jacks, dancing, and/or running for the duration.
Steamy peas, self-serving, and spoon reflections.
Q’s new favorite part about feasting is participating anyway he can. He’s gotten very adept at fixing his own bowls.
Plant-Based Whole Food Lunch: stoneground polenta, garlicky peas, sautéed kale, a little hempeh, and fresh marinara.
Powered up with plant-based whole-food fuel, we spent the afternoon in the garden working on unearthing the stone borders. Under all of this grass is a buried border. :-)
Q snapped this. I’m using that cooler as a boombox to amplify the music on my phone, and repping two of my favorite organizations: Switch4Good and Nomad Cinema. <3
Q spent the first half of the afternoon filling my ears with the stories of whatever he was pretending in that moment (it changes as swiftly as a breath), and spent the second half of the afternoon transporting stones across the yard to work on his own border.
He did this all himself! So incredibly proud of him!! <3
Afternoon health fuel: mangos, orange, banana, spirulina, oatmilk.
Before
After
Before
After… with the big house-painting project still looming in the future. :-)
Every year is a deadline to finish big maintenance tasks in the tight window of jobs and stable Central New York Weather (like painting the house ourselves because we can’t afford to have someone do it), and the garden is neglected.
The silver-lining to these pandemic times, is that we finally have the time to do these gardens justice. The previous owners put so much care and thought into them, and our lives have not been afforded the time to give them proper upkeep.
Ian works from home during the day, and the afternoons are when these two get to burn off steam together. <3
Plant-Based Family Feasting: not the prettiest photo because there was a lfurry to get tacos out before they were cold.
Here seen: buffalo hempeh, quick-pickled cabbage, refried black beans, easy avocado, kale, and pickled jalapeno .
Sometimes cardio is listening to the Samruai Jack theme song on repeat while running with a sword (<—his suggestion) :-D
Black Fly Bite and a Meditation on Growth
The soft underside of this arm is covered in a crosswork lattice of scars. They were confined to that area so they could be hidden by a short-sleeve shirt, and I could carry on and avoid questions. Cutting is a terrible/unhealthy/ill-advised path, and I grew out of this painful habit in my early 20s. I replaced the it’s-imperative-that-I-vent-this-inner-wailing-NOW energy into hiking and polar bearing, but —as I stated in the intro— the depression and anxiety were still present, they were just held back.
I would have sworn —just as you may— that it was in my genes and there was nothing to be done. That was the kind of talk I got from doctors when clinically diagnosed. I had absolutely no idea —nor did they mention— that the junk I was eating was directing that mind-state.
Did you know that 90% of the serotonin in your body is created within your gut? Serotonin is a vastly important neurotransmitter that is tied to mood and depression.
How many of you souls are on SSRIs to boost your serotonin levels so that you can feel less depressed and anxious? How many of you are on other depression/anxiety maintenance meds? How many of you are rolling through that mental anguish with no medications at all?
Have your doctors ever mentioned that what you eat could directly affect the serotonin levels you’re trying to raise? Did they tell you that processed foods and refined sugar make your depression worse because your microbiome requires fiber (<—found in nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables, whole-grains)? Did they even know to mention that switching to a plant-based whole-food diet could alleviate/obliterate the depression/anxiety, and possibly spare you the side effects of those drugs?
Ian suggested that we remove refined-sugars and processed foods out of our house for purely body-health related reasons, but the thunderclap of mental clarity that came to me as a result of cutting that crap out of my diet bettered my whole life. It launched me forward like a freaking javelin.
My mental state went from self-focused/inward wailing to globally-driven-howl (<— because I realized that there’s a lot of inward wailing within humanity and complete ignoring of how our actions have disastrous impacts that affect millions of of species and ecosystems).
My outlook was altered into a wider focus, my time is now often spent reading/researching how to be as body-kind (nutritional research) and environmentally-kind as possible, relaying as much as I can in the hope it wakes up others, and I grew a greater appreciation for the preciousness of time (and how much of it had been wasted in standstill) so I’m now focused on enjoying as much as I can while I can.
It’s a significantly better way to spend the brief spell I have on this earth, and I wish I had woken up sooner.
Added bonus: plant-based whole food diets not only brighten your mental outlook, they also make you stronger. It used to be a joke with family and friends that my arms had so little muscle that instead of a bicep there was just a convex, quivering tendon. I’ve always been willowy/weak, and poor nutrition and lack of physical activity left my arms especially twiggy.
These fresh muscles are from a soul who only recently took up lifting (as a means to vary healthy lifestyle exercises), and is growing muscle rapidly because plant-based diets also support healthier muscle growth.
I’ve never felt stronger in body or mind, and all I did was change my diet to something that is:
fuels me with more power (like personal heroes Dotsie Bausch, Scott Jurek, or Kendrick Farris)
Think this is just hippy hogwash?
First, each of the links above lead to some manner of article or study, and here are some more references:
“Junk food is linked to both moderate and severe psychological distress”
“Consuming highly refined carbohydrates increases risk of depression”
And here’s another illuminating section from Undo It (by Dr. Dean Ornish and Anne Ornish)
Q requested Neko Case’s “Furnace Room Lullaby” several times. (This is a whole family favorite, and is often the mental theme for that gothic horror western Ian is writing.)
I used to listen to “Blues Run The Game” like it was a life-anthem, and now I just admire the music and am happy light runs my days.
Wrapped a packed day with a full heart. It could have been a day of inward-wailing, couch surfing, baking up sugary/fat-filled inflammation for me and my kin, or spinning in standstill watching the most recent horrors on earth; but instead it was forward movement and doing all I can to make my space as helpful and luminary as possible.
How are you going to grow forward today? <3
