People who eat fermented foods have lower levels of social anxiety, report researchers from the College of William & Mary and the University of Maryland (USA).
The results of the study, which will soon be published in the journal Psychiatry Research, suggest that eating fermented food in the form of, for example, pickled cucumbers or sauerkraut, may reduce symptoms of social anxiety. This is another study indicating the important role of diet in shaping human mental health.
About 700 psychology students participated in the study, and they answered questions about the intensity of social anxiety, the frequency of playing sports, and the frequency of consumption of fruit, vegetables and fermented products in the last month.
It turned out that people who consumed the most fermented foods had the lowest intensity of social anxiety symptoms. This association was especially strong in subjects with high levels of neuroticism, who were more prone to feeling anxious.
Exercise was also correlated with the weakening of social anxiety.
Researchers suspect that fermented food may have a positive effect on mental health because it contains natural probiotics. In this study, they only proved the existence of a correlation between the consumption of fermented foods and the intensity of anxiety, but in the future they plan to conduct an experiment that would confirm the cause-and-effect relationship.
It is highly likely that fermented food positively affects the microflora of the digestive system and induces changes that reduce social anxiety. It is amazing how microorganisms in the intestines can affect the mind – comments one of the authors of the study, Prof. Matthew Hilimire.