After years of trying so many diets to improve my health, I found in Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind by Dr. Georgia Ede, the reason why I wasn’t getting better. Her research and studies were very helpful and insightful. I’ve changed my way of eating and lifestyle. I highly recommend this audiobook, narrated by the author.

It took me almost a month to read this book and I have been driving my friends and family crazy talking about it. I love books that explain the science behind everyday things, and this one is very heavy on the science.

The first thing the author does in this book is to examine how we acquire our knowledge about nutrition. She questions the validity of many studies and claims that the “wisdom” that we have about food is not based in science. She breaks foods down into the macro and micro nutrients and gives an overview of the chemistry and biology happening at a cellular level in our bodies, in particular the cells in our brains.

In the end, the author champions a ketogenic diet and advocates eating meat over plants. She suggests that we don’t need to ingest carbohydrates at all, and that we especially need to avoid refined carbs. She goes as far as citing examples of such diet changes improving and even eliminating psychiatric problems.

While I don’t think I will be taking my diet to this extreme, reading this book has made me think about what I’m eating. I no longer eat whatever I see in front of me. I have almost completely cut out refined carbs. For me, knowing what effect something will have on my brain and body has helped me to make choices about what I eat.

I haven’t finished this because it’s very dense and I got it on audiobook, which was my mistake. This, for me, needs highlighters and sticky notes to begin to absorb it all, but what I did listen to was interesting. It was distressing to hear about how 50 percent of antidepressants help people, which sounds not terrible until she says that 40 percent of people who take placebos also get better. I was perplexed by her seeming to cheer carnivore, heavy egg and fat diets because, if you’re that meat centric, how are you getting fiber? How can your gut possibly be happy with that diet?

NetGalley provided an advance copy of this nonfiction book.

This book is excellent. It's dense with the technical clinical references but it's comprehensive in the information it gives about how the body works, how the mind works and how they both team up to make you, you. The book, at the same time, is comprehensible, so that I can clearly understand what works and what doesn't work, what I can do to better my health, my brain, my mood, and so I could start right away to make changes that have helped me see good effects in myself and feeling better. I recommend this book to anyone.

I enjoyed the narrating voice, I have always been curious about the way our nutrition affects our health.
In this particular case the writer explains the correlation between nutrition and our mental health.
A good tip is to hold a food vs symptoms journal, that will help you experiment
and find out what works for you,
The writer explains, but leaves the decision to the reader. And I’m all in favor of such empowerment.
It’s based on science, simplicity and common sense. We need to find what works for our own brain.
Customize our intake of certain nutrients, make informed choices.

Interesting approach, which will become a great part of how we approach our mental health in the future.