Dieting for mental health should be tailored to age and sex, researchers suggest

05 Mar 2021 --- Personalized diets based on sex and age are key to optimizing mental health and well-being, according to a cross-sectional study conducted at Binghamton University, US.

The research, now published in Nutrients, analyzed data from completed questionnaires of over 2,600 people who recorded their dietary habits, location, age, sex and mental well-being over five years.

The findings show that particular lifestyle choices and habits contribute to the mental distress – most often depression and anxiety – in different ways according to sex and age. 

Exercise and caffeine, meat and fast food consumption were found to also be important factors. 

Personalization by sex and age 
Lina Begdache, a co-author of the study, tells NutritionInsight differences in age and sex are likely due to varying brain morphology between men and women and between young (18 to 29 years old) and mature (30 years or older) adults. 

While the authors’ expectations were confirmed through the study, a number of surprising findings were also revealed, she explains. 

“We had hypothesized that differential frequencies of food groups are associated with mental distress in young and mature men and women, which we confirmed through the study.”

“In addition, we found that spring season impacted women but not men, while geographical locations impacted both men and women adults over the age of 30 years. Moreover, we confirmed that mental distress is more prevalent in young adults and women, which aligns with the CDC findings and other published studies.” 

Diet has a greater impact on women's mental health than on men's, according to the research.Begdache concludes that mental health remedies could be more effective if based on gender and age groups.

This would take into consideration the level of brain maturity and differences in brain morphology, she asserts. 

Innova Market Insights last year named “Tailored to Fit” a top trend for 2021, showing that 64 percent of global consumers have found more ways to tailor their life and products to their style, beliefs and needs.

Gender divide in diet 
Sex is one of the major factors that should dictate dietary for mental health, says Begdache.

“Imaging studies demonstrated that brain morphology and connectivity is different between men and women. This suggests that differential nutrients or frequency of consumption may be needed based on the gender of the brain,” she explains. 

The main difference revealed through imaging is that men have larger brain volume, in general, and information-processing areas. 

On the other hand, women have denser brain connectivity between regions that control impulses and emotions, Begdache continues. 

For this reason, Begdache says she has found in multiple studies that men are less likely to be affected by diet than women are. As long as men eat a slightly healthy diet and avoid fast food, their mental well-being should remain consistent. 

“Women, on the other hand, really need to be consuming a whole spectrum of healthy food and doing exercise to have positive mental well-being,” she says. 

The age divide 
Young adults are more at risk of diet related mental stress.Another decisive factor found in the study is brain maturity. Participants in the young age group (18 to 29) were significantly more affected by dietary habits in their mental well-being than the older age group. 

This also cuts across the differences found between the sexes, with both men and women affected. 

“Young adults are still forming new connections between brain cells as well as building structures; therefore, they need more energy and nutrients to do that,” says Begdache.

Young adults who consume poor-quality diets and experience nutritional deficiencies may suffer from a higher degree of mental distress as a result. 

The progression of age coupled with high caffeine consumption was associated with mental distress in both young men and young women.

“Caffeine is metabolized by the same enzyme that metabolizes the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen, and young adults have high levels of these hormones,” Begdache explains. 

“When young men and women consume high levels of caffeine, it stays in their system for a long time and keeps stimulating the nervous system, which increases stress and eventually leads to anxiety.”

Further studies needed 
Begdache says more research is needed to properly define how diet can affect different people at different life phases. 

“Although we collected data over four years at different intervals and targeted different populations to promote the generalizability of the results, it is still cross-sectional in nature, and we also used nonrandom sampling.” 

Another issue was the smaller sample size for mature men (30 years or older; 207 responses) compared to young men and women and mature women, which were at least three times more. 

By Louis Gore-Langton