inc.com Want to Avoid Depression This Winter? Harvard Doctors Suggest This Fruit Can Help Jessica Stillman 4–5 minutes

The cold, dark months are coming and with them the threat of seasonal affective disorder. There are plenty of tweaks to your behavior, mindset, and space that you can ensure the short days and gray skies don’t make you a little (or a lot) depressed.

But science just came up with another suggestion. It’s about as easy and as unexpected as they come: eat more blueberries. The easiest, tastiest study ever?

If you were ever going to sign up for a scientific study, you could do a lot worse than the one that came to this conclusion. Led by researchers out of Harvard Medical School and recently published in The Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging, it tested a simple, tasty intervention for improving mood and staving off depression. The scientists asked 18 volunteers over the age of 65 with mild depressive symptoms to consume some blueberries every day.

To be scientific about it, half the participants got their daily dose of blueberries in the form of a freeze dried powder. The other half got a, presumably blue, placebo powder. The researchers monitored their mental health and also ran some health tests.

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Both groups felt a little more cheerful by the end of the study. But the group that consumed more genuine blueberry goodness reported a bigger decrease in depressive symptoms. This group also saw a shift in the abundance and composition of their gut bacteria, which scientists have previously linked to improved mood and cognitive function.
Blueberries vs. depression

This is a tiny pilot study that showed only modest effects. The researchers behind it are open about the need for more research to confirm their results. “Our data are preliminary and warrant additional studies to investigate the link between blueberries, the gut microbiome, and mood in older adults,” they write.

Generaly, you should definitely not change your behavior based on a single study of this size. But there are reasons you might want to consider paying attention to this one. First, it’s blueberries! They’re delicious and easy to toss into a bowl of cereal or pancake batter. The chances of anyone coming to harm from adding more berries to their diet is vanishingly small.

Second, science is already pretty certain that blueberries are good for you, even if further investigation shows they don’t have a huge impact on depression specifically. Brightly colored fruits like blueberries contain large amounts of flavanols. These colorful compounds are often lacking in American diets and have a wide range of health benefits, including reduced risk of heart disease and cancer and slower cognitive decline.

When (spry 70-something) billionaire Richard Branson had a Harvard-trained cancer doctor design his diet for optimum health, more blueberries were among the recommendations. Small lifestyle changes, big mental health impacts

So if you know you’re susceptible to SAD, or just mild depression in general, it certainly can’t hurt to throw some blueberries into the cart next time you’re at the supermarket. But there may be a broader lesson from this study too.

Treating depression for many people requires professional and pharmacological intervention. Nothing in this research suggests otherwise. Neither blueberries nor any other lifestyle tweak is a substitute for listening to your healthcare providers.

But this study, however small and provisional, is still a good reminder that modest changes to your behavior, like a bit of additional exercise, gardening, or getting out to a cultural event once a month, have been shown to cut the risk of depression by surprisingly large amounts.

These findings aren’t just a nudge to consider tweaking your fruit consumption. They are also a nudge to remember that, if you’re feeling blue, you’re not at the mercy of your brain and your doctors. Changing your lifestyle in small ways can make a bigger impact on symptoms of depression than many of us suspect.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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