Category: OCD

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Mood Fuel For Teens: What to Eat for a Better Vibe

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Did you know that what you eat can help improve your mood? If you’re feeling down, anxious, or just struggling with energy, making some small changes to your diet might make a big difference. Here’s a quick and easy guide on how to use food to feel better, based on solid research. Don’t worry, it’s not about being perfect—just doing your best to choose healthier options.

Why Does Food Matter for Your Mood?

Think of your brain as a machine—it needs the right fuel to work well. When you eat nutrient-rich, unprocessed foods, you’re giving your brain the tools it needs to produce chemicals that make you feel happier and more energised. Junk food, on the other hand, can drain your energy and make you feel worse over time.

What Should You Eat?

You don’t need to overhaul your whole diet overnight, but there are some simple swaps that can help. Here’s what the research says works best for lifting your mood:

  1. Fruits and Veggies: These are packed with vitamins and minerals that help your brain function at its best. Tip: Add berries to your breakfast or grab an apple instead of chips for a snack.

  2. Whole Grains: Foods like brown rice, oats, and whole wheat bread give you long-lasting energy.
    Tip: Try swapping white bread for whole wheat or ask for brown rice with your takeaway.

  3. Healthy Fats: Your brain loves fats from foods like avocados, nuts, seeds, and oily fish (like salmon or tuna). Tip: Toss some chia seeds into a smoothie or snack on nuts between classes.

  4. Lean Proteins: Proteins like chicken, eggs, beans, and tofu help your brain make mood-boosting chemicals. Tip: If you’re grabbing a sandwich, pick something with lean meat or beans for a protein boost.

  5. Omega-3 Foods: Foods like fatty fish (salmon, sardines), flaxseeds, and walnuts are super helpful for your brain. Tip: Aim for fish a couple of times a week or toss some walnuts on a salad or in your oats.

  6. Cut Back on Processed Foods: Things like chips, sweets, fast food, and soda may taste good, but they can cause energy crashes and make you feel low. Tip: Instead of soda, go for water or herbal tea. Try home-popped popcorn (from the kernels!) or fruit as a replacement for chips.

It’s Not About Being Perfect

Here’s the thing—eating well doesn’t mean you can never have pizza or chocolate again. It’s about balance and making healthier choices most of the time. Even small changes, like swapping out sugary snacks for fruit a few times a week, can start to make you feel better. You don’t have to follow a strict diet—just do what feels manageable for you.

Worried About Cost?

You might have heard that healthy food is expensive, and sometimes it can be. But it doesn’t have to break the bank. Studies show that eating healthier costs about $1.50 extra per day—that’s less than a coffee. Try to look for budget-friendly options like:

Easy Changes You Can Make Right Now

  • Switch white bread for wholemeal.
  • Snack on nuts or fruit instead of chips.
  • Have water instead of sugary drinks.
  • Include a source of protein in each meal.
  • Try a handful of berries or a banana for a quick mood boost.

Remember: It’s All About Progress, Not Perfection

You don’t need to completely change your diet to feel better. Start small, and take it one meal at a time. Just adding more fruits, veggies, and whole grains, while cutting down on junk food, can really help lift your mood. And if you slip up, don’t stress—just get back on track when you can. Your brain and body will thank you!

Start where you are, and do what works best for you!

Photo source: Freepik

Gut Health is Important for Mental Health

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At Thrive Wellness, we recognise that mental health is multifaceted, and addressing it from all angles is important. While psychological therapy plays a significant role in mental health care, did you know that your gut health could be just as important? The gut-brain connection influences everything from mood to cognitive function and improving the health of your gut could be your ticket to a happier mind.

The Gut-Brain Connection: More Than Just a Feeling

Your gut and brain are constantly communicating through what’s known as the gut-brain axis – a two-way street where your gut can influence your mood, thoughts, and overall mental health, and vice versa. Here’s how it works:

Neurotransmitter Production: Did you know that a significant amount of serotonin, the “happy hormone,” is produced in your gut? A healthy gut is essential for maintaining optimal serotonin levels. An unhealthy gut can disrupt serotonin production, leading to mood swings, anxiety, or even depression.

Inflammation and Immunity: A disrupted gut can lead to systemic inflammation which has been linked to mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety. A healthy gut helps maintain a balanced immune response, reducing inflammation and potentially alleviating symptoms.

Nutrient Absorption: Your gut is responsible for absorbing the nutrients that your brain needs to function effectively. If your gut isn’t healthy, you might miss out on essential vitamins and minerals important for mental clarity, emotional balance, and resilience.

Microbiome Balance: Your gut is home to trillions of microorganisms, collectively known as the microbiome. These beneficial bacteria help regulate mood by producing and modulating neurotransmitters like serotonin and GABA. They also help maintain the gut barrier, enhance nutrient absorption, and regulate immune responses. When the microbiome is imbalanced – a condition known as dysbiosis – harmful metabolites and endotoxins are produced, leading to inflammation and poor mental health.

Why Psychological Therapy Alone May Not Be Enough

Psychological therapy is an essential part of mental health care, but it’s not the only piece of the puzzle. While therapy can help you manage emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, it may not address the underlying physical issues that could be contributing to your mental health struggles.

This is where a Certified Practicing Nutritionist (CPN), also known as a Clinical Nutritionist, can help. Through comprehensive assessment of your medical history, current symptoms, lifestyle factors and laboratory testing, a CPN can create a personalised plan that includes dietary modifications and therapeutic supplmenentation to support and enhance your mental well-being.

Research shows that this evidence-based, dual intervention approach of tackling mental health from both the inside and out produces better outcomes than psychological therapy alone.

Microbiota-gut-brain bidirectional relationship. Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/medicine/articles/10.3389/fmed.2022.813204/full

How Clinical Nutritionists assess and improve your Gut-Brain connection

Certified Practicing Nutritionists (CPNs) are tertiary qualified, clinically trained, Practicing Nutritionists who assess and address a person’s nutritional biochemistry and metabolism by providing customised recommendations within a clinical and nutritional medicine framework to improve health. Using dietary and lifestyle modifications along with therapeutic supplements, CPN’s aim to remediate the metabolic dysfunctions that drive a person’s poor health and/or chronic disease states. Here’s what you can expect when working with a CPN at Thrive Wellness to improve your gut-brain health:

  1. Comprehensive Assessment: Upon scheduling your appointment, you’ll receive an information pack and questionairres for you to complete detailing your health concerns, symptoms, lifestyle, dietary habits, and your health goals. Your CPN will review this information prior to your initial consultation, identifying key areas and questions to explore further during your first meeting.
  2. Additional Assessments: Your CPN may suggest further investigations, such as additional questionnaires, food diaries, or laboratory tests (e.g. blood, saliva, stool). A comprehensive stool analysis, for example, can profile your gut microbiome’s diversity and abundance, shed light on the health of your gut lining and mucous, nutrient breakdown and absorption and measure inflammation.
  3. Customised Recommendations: After evaluating your information, your CPN will provide tailored recommendations, education and support to help you implement the recommendations. Restoring gut health following dysbiosis typically involves five to six consultations over a 6 month timeframe, sometimes longer. Initial recommendations are based on population-based scientific studies, wheras prescription following specialised testing allows for a higher level of personalised health care due to your specific biochemistry and needs being identified. As not everyone requires advanced testing to get results, a cost-effective option can be to engage in an initial 2-3 month course of therapy and only pursue additional testing if you’re not getting the results you want.
  4. Nutritional Medicine – Supplement and Dietary recommendations: Your CPN will prescribe evidence-based therapeutic supplements and dietary modifications to address underlying issues. For example, if you’re lacking in key nutrients like magnesium, B-vitamins, or Omega-3 fatty acids, supplements might be recommended to fill the gaps, enhancing your mental health outcomes. Select clinical probiotic strains and prebiotic fibres will be prescribed to modify gut microbiome composition. Although making permanent changes to gut microbiome diversity and abundance takes a long time and requires a diet diverse in plant-foods to sustain it (possible without ongoing supplementation), faster improvements in mental health from taking psychobiotics occur on average, within 6 weeks. Such outcomes are due to the metabolites that the psychobiotic strains produce having a modulatory affect on the micorbiome-gut-brain axis and immune system, leading to significant reduction in depression and anxiety. Of course, gut health is just one system that may be contributing to and impacted by your mental health, as others systems are also affected, your CPN will provide you with recommendations that address your whole body and bring it back into balance. For this reason, early improvements in energy, mood or sleep may occur in just a few days.
  5. Transition to self management – Once balance is restored and your mental health wellness goals achieved, your CPN will provide you with a plan for maintaining your health, along with education on how diet and lifestyle alone can acheive this without the need for ongoing supplementation. Clients with a long history of being unwell, may cling to supplementation out of fear they might become unwell again. The supplements used for restoring homeostasis however are often not needed ongoing, with the exception of specific circumstances. An example of an exception is an individual experiencing ongoing stress, who has a genetic SNP or other variant that increases their susceptibility to poor gut, immune or mental health. Another example is an individual who is unable to make the necessary diet and lifestyle modifications to maintain their health. Your CPN will discuss your individual needs with you, and customise ongoing supports for you accordingly.

Ready to improve your Mental Health?

At Thrive Wellness we’re passionate about providing multidisciplinary, evidence-based, comprehensive, holistic mental health care. We value psychological therapy as an important primary mental health intervention. Our psychologists help you manage emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, and provide you with evidence-based strategies to reduce stress, however they can’t address underlying biochemical, genetic or metabolic issues that could be contributing to your mental health struggles. If you’d like to support your body using clinical nutrition and nutritional medicine interventions, reach out and request a CPN consultation. After all, when it comes to your well-being, why settle for anything less than complete care?

Image by pikisuperstar on Freepik

A Cognitive Behavioural model of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

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I have recently added a new PDF of a CBT model of OCD to the self help resources at Thrive Wellness. In this post I would like to provide some detail on this model.

CBT model of OCD

The cycle of OCD all begins with intrusive thoughts: distressing thoughts that seem to pop out of nowhere and are inconsistent with personal values. Pretty much everyone experiences intrusive thoughts from time to time. In OCD, however, these intrusive thoughts become so repetitve and distressing that they are referred to by a different name: obsessions.

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Compulsions: fast-acting anxiety relief! (With a price…)

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As I have previously written, there are two key facets of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: obsessions and compulsions. In this post I want to explain what compulsions are, and why they occur.

Essentially, compulsions are actions or thoughts that are repetitively performed in an attempt to reduce or eliminate anxiety or distress triggered by obsessions. A compulsion may be an attempt to prevent obsessions from coming to mind (perhaps by repeatedly praying for such thoughts to be prevented, or repeating a phrase intended to block such thoughts), or it may be an attempt to prevent some feared outcome associated with the obsession (such as calling a friend to warn them to be careful after having an image come to mind of that friend being in an accident).

In the beginning stages of the development of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder compulsions provide fast relief from the anxiety or distress created by intrusive thoughts – uninvited, upsetting thoughts that can pop into our minds unexpectedly.
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Intrusive thoughts: the uninvited visitors

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There are two key facets of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions are thoughts, images or urges that repeatedly and uncontrollably intrude, unwelcome, into a person’s mind. They are a source of distress, often because the content is unpleasant, theatening or believed to be socially unacceptable. A passion for cars, or cooking, would not be classed as an obsession – even if you talk about it so much it annoys your friends: Obsessions are the last thing you would want to be thinking about; interests are the first things you want to think about.
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It gets worse before it gets better

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There is a common paradox for psychological therapy: many times the strategies we have found to provide us relief from our problems are at the same time perpetuating our problems. For example, a man suffering depression may find that staying in bed all day is the only way to get some slight relief from his persistent sadness and guilt. Yet, at the same time, staying in bed is keeping him isolated from social supports that could play an important part in his recovery. It is also feeding back into his guilt when, at the end of the day, he reflects on all the things he “should” have done instead of being in bed.

A woman with a phobia of mice may find running and hiding in another room if she sees a mouse gives her relief from her feelings of terror – yet in doing so she has unintentionally reinforces her automatic fear response to seeing mice.

Therapy generally involves, at some point, changing unhelpful patterns in one way or another. Initially this means stopping use of strategies that have had at least short-term benefits. Consequently, therapy can at times be very uncomfortable: you make a choice to confront difficult feelings and experiences that you have developed a range of strategies for avoiding. Because of this I often caution clients that “it gets worse before it gets better.” It is often necenssary to sit through discomfort, sometimes considerable discomfort, to experience the reward of mastering a problem.
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“Are you sure?”

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cracksObsessive Compulsive Disorder – OCD – what do you think of when you hear those words?

Do you imagine someone repetitively washing their hands? Do you imagine a person carefully dodging cracks and seams in pavement? Perhaps you picture someone in their home with everything perfectly symmetrically arranged and perfectly tidy.

While all of the above are examples of what a person with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder might experience, there are vastly more, and often subtle, ways the condition can present.
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