1st of our blogs in-line with Mental Health Awareness: Mental health issues may be looked upon as, depression, dementia, Alzheimer’s, ADHD and dyslexia and other conditions reliant on brain cell communication.
Mental Health Awareness
It is clear that mental health issues are a big drain on the NHS, current levels of spending are £10 billion pounds per year and still more is needed. We are told daily by the media, so there is no doubt that we have a problem and it stretches across all age ranges. Mental health issues may be looked upon as, depression, dementia, Alzheimer’s, ADHD and dyslexia and other conditions reliant on brain cell communication.
Cells communicate through their walls, electrical pulses from all parts of the body wing their way to the central computer so you feel, touch, smell and have vision. Numerous other bodily functions happen both voluntary and involuntary all as a result of your integrated cell system. It does not require much of a leap of understanding to realise that cells need to be flexible to perform their amazing activity.
Cells may be regarded as bricks that form the living structure but unlike bricks they have a life of their own and this life must be supported so it may perform thousands of daily tasks. For a computer it is electricity, for us, it is food! If you know how cells are made surely it is a simple matter to eat the right food and all will be well? Here, we come to the nub of the problem, cell membranes consist mainly of fats of various kinds and the brain is the largest lump of fat in the body so it deserves to be given the right fats for construction.
Lipids (fats) are divided into groups saturated and unsaturated. Saturated is fairly simple, we are animals and have saturated fat in our body. It is now well accepted that butter is not harmful for us. The unsaturated fats are more difficult because here we have to understand about balance. Unsaturated fats can be mono or poly but what does that mean? Well, Omega 3, 6 and 9 are what we need to think about it to understand balance. Firstly, Omega 9 is not an essential fat, but Omega 3 and Omega 6 are essential fats not made in the body and it is these two that must be in balance. This balance is a Stone Age balance of 1 to 1 eg 1 Omega 6 to 1 Omega 3 (This does not include DHA and EPA as these fats can be made in the body).
Oils that contain more Omega 6 are Sunflower, Palm, Soya, Rapeseed and Corn amongst others, most if not all processed foods are made with these types of oils and sadly animals such as cows and pigs are fed with the residue. All this Omega 6 making its way into the food chain is putting our health at risk. Some food can be 15-25 times higher in the Omega 6 type. This has lead to 83% of the Western World being short of Omega 3. So you can see that all oil is not healthy and we need information so we can make informed choices to feed our cells and brain properly.
Here I get to my fundamental point, food labels do not give you the information needed to make informed decisions. FOOD LABELS CAUSE MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES.
My next mental health paper will deal with the adulterated oils and food to eat and avoid.
Durwin Banks your heart centred farmer.
Durwin Banks
The Linseed Farm