Changes in our lifestyle can help to improve our physical performance. But what about lifestyle changes to influence our mental state and to prevent anxiety and depression?

According to a recent study, to answer this question, you need to distinguish between men and women and take their age into account.

The researchers divided 2.628 participants into 4 categories (young men, young women, mature men, mature women) and investigated the influence of their food choices and other lifestyle factors on mental health (such as anxiety and depression) over a 5-year period of time. The conclusions were quite interesting.

If you are a young woman (18-29 years old) and want to improve your mental wellbeing, you need to include daily breakfast in your diet, exercise (moderate-to-high exercise frequency), don’t drink too much coffee (or other caffeine drinks) and avoid fast food.

For older women (30 years or older) the recommendations would be daily exercise and breakfast, as well as high intake of fruits and limited caffeine consumption.

As for young men, frequent exercise, moderate dairy consumption, high meat intake, as well as low consumption of caffeine and fast food could be the key to improve mental health. For the same purpose, the mature men need to include moderate intake of nuts in their diet.

The study highlights that their specific recommendations, based on gender (brain morphology) and age (level of brain maturity), should be followed along with a nutrient-dense diet to achieve better results.

Curious? HERE is the source