Hilary, a 39-year-old in California, has had depression for about as long as she can remember, which means she\u2019s tried a lot of antidepressants. Mostly, though, the meds left her unimpressed.<\/p>\n
Last year, she started taking the GLP-1 medication Wegovy to lose weight. Right away, she felt some of her sadness lifting. After months on a GLP-1, she felt like her entire outlook had become more positive. No one was more surprised than Hilary. \u201cI didn\u2019t even know it was possible for GLP-1s to have a positive effect on mental illness until it happened to me,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Hilary had accidentally stumbled into a cutting edge\u2014and somewhat controversial\u2014corner of psychiatry. In recent years a growing number of doctors have acknowledged that what you eat can affect how you feel, giving rise to the world of food therapy and nutritional psychiatry<\/a>. Now a small group is taking that concept further, betting that GLP-1s, medications that have fundamentally changed how Americans eat<\/a>, may also have major benefits for mental health.<\/p>\n Since well before everyone was on Ozempic, research published in journals like Translational Psychiatry and Diabetes Care has shown that health issues including obesity, high blood sugar<\/a>, poor gut health<\/a>, and chronic inflammation often<\/a> go along with mental illness. When people improve their diets, their mental health sometimes gets better<\/a>\u2014perhaps because some of those physical health issues improve, translating to benefits for the brain.<\/a> When about 20 people with depression cut back on processed foods for a month, they felt happier and less anxious, according to an experiment published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Psychiatry in September<\/a>.<\/p>\n Providers like Joanna Buck, a Wisconsin psychiatrist, have started using brain-friendly diets as a supplement to traditional therapy. \u201cMore than just taking a pill or taking a medication or an injection, [a dietary approach] can really provide benefits to the person as a whole,\u201d Buck says.<\/p>\n