Food-Based Strategies for Depression Management From Iranian Traditional Medicine Resources

BACKGROUND: Considering the increasing prevalence of depression in contemporary societies, general tendency for safer treatments with fewer side effects has recently been a subject of interest. OBJECTIVES: Food-based strategies, which are one of the outstanding medical solutions in Complementary and Alternative Medicine including Iranian Traditional Medicine have been investigated. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this review study, firstly some important sources of Iranian Traditional Medicine including Kamel al-Sanaat al-Tibbyyah, Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb and Zakhireh Kharazmshahi were reviewed. Next, a literature search was performed on PubMed and Magiran databases with the keywords “depression”, “depressive”, “mood”, “antidepressant”, “antidepressive”, “nutrition”, “nutritional”, “diet”, “meal”, “food”, “functional food”, “healthy food”, “healthy diet”, “medicinal food” and scientific and English terms of all singular foodstuff and some combined foodstuff which are introduced in this paper. RESULTS: Food-based strategies for depression management in Iranian Traditional Medicine resources involving both prevention and treatment parts have been classified under three headings singular foodstuffs, combined foodstuffs, and nutrition rules with the separation of prohibition and prescription items. Among the prescribed or the prohibited singular and combined foodstuffs in Iranian Traditional Medicine manuscripts, only the effectiveness of fish, garlic, milk, oregano, mint, and spinach on depression has been examined by modern medicine methods. CONCLUSIONS: The presented food-based strategies in this study introduce a precise management for depression benefiting from Iranian Traditional Medicine Resources.