Your mental well being can be improved by good nutrition.

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Sometimes a lack of good nutrition can contribute to poor mental health. Sometimes with diabetes depression can happen.

Depression can manifest itself in several different ways. You can be angry about your diagnosis like my father was and he took some time to come to terms with it. You could also be worried about your health and your doctor could have told you to make some major changes in your lifestyle in order to achieve good blood sugar control.

All this can have a major impact on your mental well being.

People with depression have a higher risk of suicide and are often put on antidepressants to help them feel better. Some antidepressants have major side effects that can defeat the whole purpose.

However nutrition can play a part in helping you feel better. 

A healthy diet does not just make you healthy physically but mentally as well.

Foods that are too high in sugar (fizzy drinks, cakes, sweets, biscuits) can give us an energy boost in the short term, but they wear off very quickly and you can feel tired, irritable and grumpy again a short while afterwards.

Wholegrain foods are a good source of energy as it is released slowly into your body and keeps you filled up for longer. You will also be able to concentrate more and be less likely to be irritable.

Read how cooking from scratch can affect your mental well being.

Proteins (meat, fish, beans) can also be a key to good mental health. They are broken down into amino acids that can help fight against depression and anxiety.

Also cooking your meals from scratch may help. A lot of ready meals have all sorts of ingredients like chemicals or preservatives added to it that we don't need. You also don't really know where the food comes from. Here in the UK there had been horse meat found in many of our ready meals.

The key is to eat lots of one ingredient foods. You combine them to make delicious meals and they are usually tastier then the ready meals.

Just look at the ingredients list on the food. They should have very few ingredients.

E.g. Rather than buying a ready made vegetarian lasagne, buy some veg, tomatoes, pasta sheets, cheese and milk to make it. It will taste better.

You can find some good healthy recipes here.

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