Vlog #15 I had mild/moderate depression for over 20 years. I tried many (non-drug) treatments but was unable to make any impact on it beyond managing the symptoms. Three years ago I made some dramatic changes to my diet for completely different reasons. An unexpected event that followed four weeks afterwards was that my depression completely resolved and has not returned. I will never know if the change caused the resolution. But as I discuss in this post, with reference to the evidence, it is at least plausible that it may have been causative. Nothing in this post is advice. I just want to share what I did. I should also urge anyone considering changes to their treatment regime for mental health issues, pharmacological or otherwise, to do so in consultation with their doctor.

The scientific references that accompany this post can be found below. I encourage interested viewers to read them in full rather than take them at face value.

References

1. LaChance, L. R. and D. Ramsey (2018). "Antidepressant foods: An evidence-based nutrient profiling system for depression." World journal of psychiatry 8(3): 97-104. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30254980

2. Mattson, M. P., K. Moehl, N. Ghena, M. Schmaedick and A. Cheng (2018). "Intermittent metabolic switching, neuroplasticity and brain health." Nat Rev Neurosci 19(2): 63-80. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29321682

3. Brietzke, E., R. B. Mansur, M. Subramaniapillai, V. Balanza-Martinez, M. Vinberg, A. Gonzalez-Pinto, J. D. Rosenblat, R. Ho and R. S. McIntyre (2018). "Ketogenic diet as a metabolic therapy for mood disorders: Evidence and developments." Neurosci Biobehav Rev 94: 11-16. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30075165

4. Pinto, A., A. Bonucci, E. Maggi, M. Corsi and R. Businaro (2018). "Anti-Oxidant and Anti-Inflammatory Activity of Ketogenic Diet: New Perspectives for Neuroprotection in Alzheimer's Disease." Antioxidants (Basel) 7(5). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5981249/

5. Gao, Y., M. Bielohuby, T. Fleming, G. F. Grabner, E. Foppen, W. Bernhard, M. Guzman-Ruiz, C. Layritz, B. Legutko, E. Zinser, C. Garcia-Caceres, R. M. Buijs, S. C. Woods, A. Kalsbeek, R. J. Seeley, P. P. Nawroth, M. Bidlingmaier, M. H. Tschop and C. X. Yi (2017). "Dietary sugars, not lipids, drive hypothalamic inflammation." Mol Metab 6(8): 897-908. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28752053

6. Akhtar, S., A. Ahmed, M. A. Randhawa, S. Atukorala, N. Arlappa, T. Ismail and Z. Ali (2013). "Prevalence of vitamin A deficiency in South Asia: causes, outcomes, and possible remedies." Journal of health, population, and nutrition 31(4): 413-423. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3905635/ 

7. Spiteller, G. and M. Afzal (2014). "The action of peroxyl radicals, powerful deleterious reagents, explains why neither cholesterol nor saturated fatty acids cause atherogenesis and age-related diseases." Chemistry 20(46): 14928-14945. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25318456

8. Pepe, S., N. Tsuchiya, E. G. Lakatta and R. G. Hansford (1999). "PUFA and aging modulate cardiac mitochondrial membrane lipid composition and Ca2+ activation of PDH." Am J Physiol 276(1): H149-158. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9887028

9. Treadway, M. T., J. A. Cooper and A. H. Miller (2019). “Can't or Won’t? Immunometabolic Constraints on Dopaminergic Drive." Trends in Cognitive Sciences 23(5): 435-448. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30948204

10. Gerster, H. (1998). "Can adults adequately convert alpha-linolenic acid (18:3n-3) to eicosapentaenoic acid (20:5n-3) and docosahexaenoic acid (22:6n-3)?" Int J Vitam Nutr Res 68(3): 159-173. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9637947

11. Hibbeln, J. R., K. Northstone, J. Evans and J. Golding (2018). "Vegetarian diets and depressive symptoms among men." J Affect Disord 225: 13-17. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28777971 

Further notes

In the video I discuss differences in plant/animal forms of vitamins and their precursors. This relates to the concept of bioavailability. For a discussion on this, see this paper:

Gregory, J. F., 3rd (2012). "Accounting for differences in the bioactivity and bioavailability of vitamers." Food & nutrition research 56: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22489223

How I motivate myself to train. It's very simple. My books, training equipment are here: https://www.davemacleod.com/shop My Amazon page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/davemacleod

"What gets measured, gets managed". Measuring aspects of performance in sport is a good thing, but only if you are measuring the right things and interpreting the data correctly. In this vlog, I draw attention to potential problems with performance metrics in climbing, especially related to basic finger strength, both at an individual level and with normative group data.

A comment after Vlog #11 prompted me to do a whole episode exploring the pros and cons of physical versus sedentary jobs and their interaction with your training for climbing. Folk in physically demanding jobs are often strong and resilient, but can be overtired if they don't stay on top of their routine.

People are busy, including me. This post goes through how I manage busy work periods from a training point of view. I also discuss a common theme related to failure to recover from climbing injuries which I've discovered through the many thousands of messages I've had from climbers worldwide since I published Make or Break.

Here are three strategies I use in my own climbing to reflect on the previous year and plan for better results in the coming year, with some examples of how to implement them. Near the end of this video, I discuss some supplementation I do while recovering from tendon/ligament injuries.

Vlog #9 In depth interviews are not so common in the climbing media these days. I know I have many burning questions I'd love to ask the best and most knowledgeable climbers out there. So here is the first of what will hopefully be a series of interviews with really interesting climbers: Neil Gresham.

Vlog #8: Winter is coming. Are you ready? In this episode I go through the fundamentals of what I do to prepare for the mixed climbing season. Dry tooling, cardio training, and some other important points that lead the dry tooling beasts to still fail to achieve their potential on the actual winter routes.

In climbing or in life in general, I discovered the hard way that its possible to be way more scared for someone else than it is for yourself. It's kind of weird going over climbing accidents I've had. I certainly hope it's a long, long time before I'm as scared as the night I describe in this vlog.

Nevis Faces is a 6 part series of short films we made for the Nevis Landscape Partnership, exploring various characters who work and live around the Nevis area. Dr Cathy Mayne is an ecologist who specialises in mountain and upland environments.

Nevis Faces is a 6 part series of short films we made for the Nevis Landscape Partnership exploring various characters who work and live around the Nevis area. You can thank the enormous effort of Dougie Sinclair over the last 5 years for the huge improvement of the Ben Nevis Mountain path which is subject to significant erosion from over 160,000 visitors every year.

Nevis Faces is a 6 part series of short films we made for the Nevis Landscape Partnership which explores various characters who work and live around the Nevis area. Jamie Hageman is a self-taught mountain landscape painter and is suitably based in the West Highlands of Scotland where, surrounded by mountains, much of his painting inspiration comes from.

Nevis Faces is a 6 part series of short films we made for the Nevis Landscape Partnership which explores various characters who work and live around the Nevis area. Helen Rennard is an accomplished winter climber living in Fort William. We have made many first ascents together on Ben Nevis over the past ten years and Helen is one of the most solid climbing partners I know.

Nevis Faces is a 6 part series of short films we made for the Nevis Landscape Partnership, exploring various characters who work and live around the Nevis area. Dave 'Cubby' Cuthbertson is a mountaineer and landscape photographer. Watch his overnight stay on Tower Ridge to capture the sunrise over the North Face of Ben Nevis.

Nevis Faces is a 6 part series of short films that Claire and I made for the Nevis Landscape Partnership. It explores the characters of those who work and live around the Nevis area. Dr. Blair Fyffe is an accomplished climber and a scientist with a PHD in slab avalanche release. His keen interest in the mountains, snow, and avalanches has coined him the nickname Dr. Snow.

In episode #6 of my vlog I go through a handful of jumps in mental skills for climbing that I made in climbing. VS-E4 in one day for example! Most of them happened by accidental discovery. One of them happened by basically ignoring the advice of many standard sport psychology textbooks.

Your rock shoes are the most important piece of climbing equipment you must choose. It's really important that you do it right. Not only will it play an important role in whether you end up with good footwear or not, but it will also determine whether you will still have functional feet in decades to come, or have painful, arthritic feet.

Vlog #4: Subjecting your climbing partners to long belays might be okay on a sport climbing trip, but for everything else, it might be better to just go and work moves on your project on your own.

Why is it that some climbers have a badass home training setup and plenty of time to use it, yet they are not improving as fast as some who don't? Set it up and use it sub-optimally and your home wall can be just another source of plateaux in your climbing performance.

We all think wooden hangboards are a no brainer. They are nice to use, they save your skin. They allow you to do more training. More folks are thinking the same about wood holds for the actual climbing. They are not a new invention of course!