Vitamins, Minerals and Protein Amino Acids are the lowest order of food that we can recombine to make us. This helps us grow, heal and do things day to day. If we are low on a vital basic, we are malnourished. Our body tries to tell us this is the case by feeling sick, tired, moody or struggling to think.

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Avoiding Misdiagnosis

We may mistake malnourishment for anxiety, depression, sleeping disorders or other illnesses. Before a diagnosis for a physical or psychiatric condition is made, your specialist should check to see if your body stores of the relevant vital ingredients that may contribute to that condition are low. Once that is ruled out, then it is fair to have a diagnosis.

For example, ADHD is a condition where your brain either does not make enough dopamine to supply to your prefrontal cortex, and or your prefrontal cortex doesn’t use the dopamine effectively. This leads to your higher order thinking not working well, often referred to as a Executive Dysfunction, and you may feel yourself becoming moody. If you have a deficit in Vitamin B6, Vitamin C, Ferritin, or Tyrosine, this can bottleneck your ability to make Dopamine and can look very similar to ADHD. ADHD is a life long neurological condition that generally need medication and careful life management, while malnourishment is relatively simple to address. I hope that it is clear that it is best to rule out a deficit in the building blocks of Dopamine before potentially misdiagnosing ADHD.

Minerals

Iron (Ferritin)

Neurotypical people seem to do well enough with 30 ng/mL of blood ferritin (the low end of the recommended range), and generally your GP will only inform you if your pathology results are lower than this. Specifically ask what your ferritin score is to find out how you compare to the recommended range. The range is an average of many neurotypical people, and is not necessarily accurate for an individual. If you are at the lowest 1/4 of the recommended range, then you may be lower than is good for your body.

Improve your iron by eating meat (any will do, “red meat” has twice as much available iron as “not red meat”, so adjust your quantities as you need), or if vegetarian / vegan ensure you eat enough green leafy vegetables with acetic acid (to help plant iron become bioavailable) while avoiding dairy in your iron meals.

If your ferritin doesn’t increase, consider iron supplements (beware of constipation, be careful that vitamin C fortified supplements don’t adversely affect your other medication taken at the same time, and be aware that supplements don’t list all of their ingredients so there may be allergens).

If you still don’t improve your ferritin, consider an infusion (talk to your doctor).

ARFID, difficulties swallowing tablets, and needle fears can complicate all of this.

Protein

Protein should be approximately 1/4 of your daily plate.

Protein comes in a few different forms, from animal meat (including birds and sea creatures), beans, nuts and grains. Protein is a unique family of molecules that we can break down to become most of our body parts.

Proteins are made up of various amino acids, which can be broken down further into peptides, that we can then make into certain other amino acids (this is a simplification). As we can’t make all of the amino acids directly, some need to be in the protein that we eat.

Some of the amino acids we can’t make ourselves by recombining peptides were labelled as vital amino acids. This was shortened to “Vitamins”. We cover some specific Vitamins below.

Tyrosine and Tryptophan are amino acids that we can’t make ourselves but aren’t called Vitamins. We need these for the synthesis of 5 of our major neurostransmitters, Dopamine, Noradrenaline, Adrenaline, Seratonin and Melatonin. Both of these are found easily in animal meat. If you have a vegan or vegetarian diet, it is possible to be low on these amino acids. If this is true, you will feel moody, brain fog and have executive dysfunction. Fortunately, you can supplement these from protein powders that you can make into shakes – just be careful about added caffeine, taurine, ginseng and guarana that is added to workout mixes.

Complete Protein Meal

A meal that has all of the types of protein that we need is referred to as “complete protein”. Vegetarians and vegans need to consider if they have got the complete range. A quick system to get “complete protein” is the V*gan protein triangle: Grains, Legumes and Nuts; if you eat two of the three per 24 hour day, you can be confident you have complete protein.

Proteins are vitally important to basic body functions such as building muscles, bones and regarding mental health neurotransmitters. If you are low on the amino acid tyrosine and tryptophan it can be hard to make essential neurotransmitters, which will cause brain fog, mood dysregulation and difficulties initiating & completing tasks.

The Keto Diet is a high protein and low sugar diet that can be positively effective for certain kinds of diabetes and epilepsy. Some people have found that it dramatically improves some hard to treat forms of mental health ill symptoms when no other treatments have worked well.

Healthy Oils

A good diet has a moderate amount of healthy oil, generally from plants. Good examples are olive, canola, soy, corn, sunflower and peanut (if you aren’t allergic).

Not all oils are good for us. Oils that are partially hydrogenated contain unhealthy trans fats. Looking at the label on the oil container will ist the ratio of trans fats per 100 mL serve, which allows you to compare that oil to others.

Low fat doesn’t automatically mean healthy – the type of oil and fat is more important than the quantity.

Vitamins

Vitamins are essential parts of our diet. They are a fundamental building block that we can’t make ourselves from other ingredients. Vitamin is a joining of the two words Vital and Amine -VitalAmine, Vitamin.

There are a great many Vitamins. The most common Vitamin’s that are causing concerns for people that I see are listed below.

Vitamin B6

B6 / Pyridoxine: The most common pyridoxine test by pathology is checking your dietary B6 rather than your body store B6 (p5p). Ask your GP to check specifically for body stores. They are generally reluctant to do this.

To improve your B6, you can try eating more foods with B6 (such as banana and almond), or supplement via vitamin supplements. Chronically low levels can be addressed medically.

Many GP’s will just do a Vitamin B12 test and assume that your B6 is in line with that (for complicated reasons), and for most people this is good enough. However, for people who have B12 supplements (eg vegans) and for people diagnosed with Autism (many have low absorption for B6, B9 and B12) – that is, assuming that B12 levels will be in line with B6 is an error [External LINK].

Vitamin C

Vitamin C is an essential part of making neurotransmitters, and having low Vitamin C can cause brain fog and anxiety long before you see other symptoms such as scurvy. Low Vitamin C can can cause Pre-Sleep Anxiety.

Strong Vitamin C can disrupt the absorption of scripted medications, so check their information sheets.

Strong Vitamin C can be eating citrus fruit, drinking fruit juice, or Vitamin C fortified cordials, Vitamin C supplement tablets, or Multivitamins Tablets. If your medication can be adversly affected by strong Vitamin C, take your strong Vitamin C 1 to 2 hours away from when you take that medication.

Vitamin D

Your brain stem (the bit at the back of your head where your spine connects to your skull) has a timing mechanism. This timer has Vitamin D receptors that help regulate its actions, such as sleep, breathing and so forth. Vitamin D deficiency has been strongly correlated with various sleep disorders, such as short sleep duration and nocturnal awakenings [External LINK].

Ask your doctor for a Vitamin D test to check your levels. Remember to ask what the actual number is and where that is in the range of acceptable.

The best Vitamin D is from 15 to 20 minutes of early to mid morning sunlight on your skin. Not all people can tolerate sun exposure, and darker skin may need longer to form Vitamin D. We literally use Ultra Violet radiation through our skin to turn LDL cholesterol into Vitamin D. If you do not get much sunlight on your skin, then decrease your intake of LDL cholesterols, found in saturated and trans fats.

The next source are foods that are high in Vitamin D such as cow milk and cow based cheeses, or foods that have fortified Vitamin D. As a last resort, consider taking Vitamin D supplements.

Be aware that supplements don’t always list their ingredients, and so they may contain allergens.

In Australia, you can look up the TGA website for the specific brand and bottle of supplement and see a complete list of ingredients. If you don’t find that bottle on the TGA website, it probably hasn’t been registered and you should inform the pharmacist of this.

Vitamin D and Depression

Vitamin D has been linked to Depression, when the patient’s pathology results showed that their Vitamin D serum was in the last quarter of the recommended range or lower [External Link]. Supplementing with Vitamin D in these cases was, on average, helpful. It is important to also test LDL cholesterol and ensure it isn’t too low, and that your Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) is in the correct range – otherwise something else is likely going on that is affecting both your Vitamin D and causing or exacerbating your depression.