How Diet Alters Brain Chemistry to Cause (or Battle) Depression

After he was born in 2020, Oliver’s doctors told his mother that he had a metabolic disorder that would damage his brain — and later in life, he was at risk for depression. The way depression develops in people with this genetic change — a deficit in specific brain chemicals — reveals much about mood in the wider population. Happily, kids such as Oliver and many other people at risk for depression can benefit from dietary changes that counteract these brain changes. Depression is widespread and enigmatic — some people succumb, whereas others never do; some recover, others can’t. Cracking the mystery of its origins requires understanding the chemistry of the brain, and how the rest of the body can control what happens in the mind. Baby Oliver’s blood had too much phenylalanine, a bulky amino acid that’s one of the building blocks used to make proteins in the body. The thickening of Oliver’s blood with phenylalanine would distort his developing brain, as <a href="https://www.akronchildrens.org/inside/2022/05/31/metabolic-lab-makes-access-easier-for-people-with-genetic-disorders/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">explained</a> in a recent article about his stay at Akron Children’s Hospital. Oliver was diagnosed with phenylketonuria (PKU) — a genetic disease caused by an inability to convert phenylalanine, needed for making proteins, into the related amino acid tyrosine. The gene altered in PKU kids is like a release valve, normally limiting the amount of phenylalanine in the blood. PKU is uncommon, affecting about 1 in 25,000 babies, but has revealed important aspects of human biochemistry relevant to everyone. <a href="https://medium.com/wise-well/how-diet-alters-brain-chemistry-to-cause-or-battle-depression-4414fdad4dd2">Read More</a>