Calm Your Mind with Food by Uma Naidoo

Author:Uma Naidoo [Naidoo, Uma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2023-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

WHAT ARE BIOACTIVES?

Despite its roots in folk medicine, the effectiveness of lavender oil isn’t due to mysticism or magic. Just like pharmaceuticals, it’s effective because it contains chemicals that exert an impact on the biological mechanics of your brain or body. These chemicals are called bioactives, and they have gained prominence as an area of research and in the medical community in recent years. Bioactives are a broad, complex category of chemicals, so we will only be able to scratch the surface, but in this chapter, we will explore their potential to relieve anxiety, whether found in foods we eat or in herbal supplements.

Bioactives appear in only trace amounts in food and herbs, but they can have an outsize effect on health. If that reminds you of the micronutrients we discussed in chapter 8, that’s no coincidence. There is no official consensus, but some experts classify vitamins and minerals as types of bioactives. Others make a key distinction: unlike micronutrients, bioactives are not specifically required by your body. While their presence may help you maintain optimal health, their absence isn’t going to keep your body from functioning normally. For example, if you have a severe shortage of iron or vitamin C, your body will gradually succumb to conditions like anemia and scurvy. The lavender oil that helped Naomi wasn’t essential to her health; it simply bolstered her brain and body against her somatic anxiety.

While vitamins and minerals come from a broad range of plant and animal sources, almost all bioactives are phytochemicals, meaning they are produced by plants (“phyto” is the Greek word for plant). The vast range of plants we can eat or turn into herbal preparations means there are a multitude of bioactives that have different biological effects, ranging from the antioxidants in berries to the caffeine in coffee and tea to the opioids in addictive drugs. Trying to learn the specifics of every bioactive compound, what their effects are, and what foods contain them can feel like a Sisyphean effort of confusing terminology (for example, a class of phytochemicals called flavonoids is further divided into flavones, flavonols, flavanones, flavanonols, and flavanols, among a few others5—not exactly designed to be distinctive and easy to remember).

Rather than getting too lost in the jargon, we will discuss the potential of bioactives to fight anxiety in two main groups: those that are concentrated in certain phytochemical-rich foods and those that may be worth incorporating into your routine via herbal supplements.

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