Can Diet Affect Your Brain?

When people think about staying fit, they generally think from the neck down. But the health of your brain plays a critical role in almost everything you do: thinking, feeling, remembering, working, and playing – even sleeping.

Will raw food ever be recognized as a factor in patients regaining cognitive powers? There is an undocumented case in Australia where a woman who was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's started speaking simple sentences after being fed green smoothies for several months. Some would say she was protesting but her husband said she had been silent for years, then she spoke single words, and progressed from there. Who's to say it wasn't the increased nutrition?

Remember 'The Brain Diet'? It makes a pretty convincing case that nutrition and mental health are connected.

Well they do say fish is brain food. I am eating a lot more fish, and fruits and veggies.

Also what if people with poor cognitive are just prone to eat more less Mediterranean eating style.
I have ADHD and it takes me more work to keep track of what I ate.

Tommie
Intresting story
If their ends up being a link between raw food and brain function that it should only be a medically supervised diet. I wonder what was in the veggies smoothies? Was it due to the veggies being raw or just more veggies, or maybe it was completely unrelated. I have a friend who swears by her veggie smoothies yet the veggie smothies did nothing for my grandmother.

Another thing with Raw food diets
The problem with raw food diets is it can be dangerous especially for small children, pregnant women and cancer patents.
Several children placed on raw food diets have died as a result of starvation because some vegetables need to be cooked to get the nutrients from it.
Also there is higher rates of food poisoning with Listeria which do not effect most people but it’s harmfall for the fetus.

This week I have "fallen off my diet" in a big way due to the need to be mentally productive. To get the work done I require, I simply cannot be distracting myself every 2.5-3 hours with food. Also, the large blood sugar rush from my larger meals is helpful as well. During less crunch times I can eat "better," but not now. Maybe someday I will learn how to be this productive on my 5-6 meal/day plan, but I don't know. It may just be psychological, "this is always how I have handled this in the past so I'm afraid to deviate" and "being lean is important but not worth missing my deadlines over." Not sure how to deal...

Anyone can test the link between brain and diet and weight by adding a new brain activity (or a few) to one's regular routine and seeing how it feels. One feels more alert and (provided your regular food is healthy in the first place) you get back in shape more easily with the same physical routine. Add a simple walk after dinner and it is even better, you are more relaxed and alert. Conversely reduce your brain activity and your weight balloons up with no other change, however imperceptibly. Which brain activity? Take a simple basic or advanced class - anything from another language to accounts to computers, whatever you can.

Can diet affect your brain?
You bet it can.
Cortisol is the key hormone of depression and cortisone is release during the night fast if you go to bed with a depleted liver as countless millions do.
Also cortisol attacks the hippocampus the memory centre of the brain - big time.
Chronic overproduction of cortisol must therefore be a potent risk factor for development of Alzheimer's.
The principles of The Hibernation Diet deal with all these questions.

THE HONEY, INSULIN, MELATONIN CYCLE, (HYMN) AND ITS INFLUENCE ON RECOVERY (FAT BURNING) BIOLOGY.

If you were to stand up in a biology seminar and announce that honey activates sleep, you would risk being laughed at.
If you then further stated that, not only does honey activate sleep, but by optimally refuelling the liver prior to bed, honey promtes fat burning during sleep, you would be dismissed as confused at best, and deranged at worst.
However the veracity of both of these statements is easy to demonstrate, in spite of both being counter-intuitive.
Scientific principles are sometimes in tune with intuition (if you jump from a building you will fall down, not up), but not always.
The principles informing the Hibernation Diet are all derived from the scientific literature, some of these principles going back many decades.
Two of these key principles are both deeply counter-intuitive.

1. Fat is the fuel used for exercise. This is correct, (we do burn fat during exercise), but only 20% correct and with respect to body fat only 10% true. Fat is the fuel used preferentially by the human body for rest and recovery.

2. That we should not eat late in the evening. This is a myth. Failure to refuel the liver prior to bed, after an early evening meal, results in activation of the adrenal glands and the release of stress hormones, cortisol and epinephrine. These hormones inhibit recovery and recovery biology is (exclusively) fat burning biology.

In the west people are told not to eat late or they will lay down fat.
This is the direct opposite of what actually occurs.
From an early evening meal the liver depletes rapidly and by bedtime will be dangerously low.
This puts brain metabolism at risk and the brain activates the adrenal hormones.
These hormones degrade muscle and bone, not fat.
If the liver is refuelled prior to bed and blood glucose is stable during the night fast, the brain activates the pituitary gland and recovery hormones are released.
These hormones burn fat.
In the cultures where they eat late (Mediterranean), they go to bed with a fuelled liver and activate recovery (fat burning) biology.
This means that, not only are they recovering and burning body fat, they suffer less from the adrenal stress driven diseases than do we:
Hypertension and heart disease - epinephrine.
Osteoporosis, diabetes type 2, infertility, gastric ulcers, poor immune function, obesity, depression and memory loss - all cortisol driven.

What are the key principles of fuelling the liver with honey for the night fast, prior to bed?
1. The liver is optimally replenished via fructose uptake and conversion into glucose and liver glycogen (stored glucose). Fructose allows the uptake of glucose into the liver by activating the glucose enzyme, glucokinase (The Fructose Paradox).
2. Sleep is activated via insulin, serotonin and melatonin (HYMN Cycle - explained in the 95 Theses).
3. With good liver plenitude and stable blood glucose the brain activates the pituitary gland to release a suite of recovery hormones.
4. Recovery biology is exclusively fat burning biology.
5. Release of adrenal stress hormones is prevented.

This is a new approach to weight control, weight loss and overall health.
It looks at human biology from the perspective of the liver/brain axis and recognises that the brain is at risk during the 8 hours of the night fast, if the liver is depleted prior to bed.
The brain (which has no storage capacity) demand for fuel is colossal and must be supplied with 6-6.5 grams of glucose every hour simply to survive.
To put this in perspective, the brain is 2% of the body by weight but consumes around 30% of the energy at rest.
Assuming an average calorie consumption of 2400 calories, the brain consumes around 720 calories.
If the body overall consumed the same amount of fuel on a percent basis we would have to consume some 36,000 calories per day or 36 loaves of bread.
This provides us with an indication, not only of the crtiical demand for fuel of this organ, but of the necessity of optimising its fuel supply during the 8 hours of the night fast, by optimising the liver glycogen store.

Honey is perfect for this purpose.

Honey optimises liver glycogen plenitude, prior to bed, via fructose and glucose uptake, honey activates sleep via insulin and melatonin, honey promotes optimal recovery (fat burning ) biology during the night fast, via stable blood glucose and activation of the pituitary gland, and honey promotes good health via prevention of overproduction of the adrenal stress hormones (HYMN).

Many people, including health professionals equate honey with the refined sucrose and high fructose corn syrup, which activate hyperinsulinism, fat synthesis, obesity, diabetes type 2, and cardiovascular disease.
This is profoundly mistaken.
See Below:


Journal of Medicinal Food
Natural Honey Lowers Plasma Glucose, C-Reactive Protein, Homocysteine, and Blood Lipids in Healthy, Diabetic, and Hyperlipidemic Subjects: Comparison with Dextrose and Sucrose
Apr 2004, Vol. 7, No. 1: 100-107
Noori S. Al-Waili
The benefits of honey are many, but if it can be demonstrated that honey may be shown to optimise recovery biology, that recovery biology is fat burning biology, and it can, we are on the verge of a new era in the long history of this amazing and natural product, produced by bees from the sub-artic to the tropics.
(c) Mike McInnes Sept 24th 006.

Well, your brain is definitely affected by your diet. If you have decreased circulation in your body due to high cholesterol, diabetes, etc., your brain won't get as much oxygen and fuel and you'll be "fuzzy" and unfocused. Kind of like my boss...he's only 50 and a diet of almost purely fried foods and smoking has turned his brain to mush. He forgets everything and acts like he's 80.

Spectra, your story reminds me of my first job. I had 2 direct bosses. I didn't know how old they were. One of them ate a decent diet, and in my 18-year-old mind, he was *young*. He walked as fast as I did, no memory problems, anything. The other one was slightly overweight and I'd fetch him fast food for lunch, as part of my job. He was balding, wrinkled, needed ridiculous amounts of post-its and memos to remember anything, and walked like an old man, carefully and slowly. One day I was going through personnel and found out they were only 2 months apart, and they were only 36 years old each. In my mind, the young one was around 32, but the "old" one had to be at least 48...

I`M EATING ALOT AND THE FOOD THAT I`M EATING THEY ARE NOT FINE FOR MY BRAIN.IS THE ANY ASSISTANT THAT I COULD BE OFFERD.