Looking at tens of thousands of brains over the years, we have noticed an interesting trend: as we age, our brains seem to be getting less and less active. Like many other aspects of the human body, our brain’s natural sharpness begins to deteriorate later in life. This degenerative trend can be the culprit behind a lot of our suffering as we age, causing issues like memory problems and Alzheimer’s disease.
However, just because our brains are aging, doesn’t mean we are doomed to suffer. New research has started to explore our bodies’ natural defense for this cognitive aging. Scientists hypothesize that because our brains are such complex, problem-solving systems, and our body is often so resilient, that as our brains age, it actually has a reserve to prevent you from feeling the effects of it breaking down.
This brain reserve is natural, however not everyone has the same amount of it. The amount of reserve you have correlates to how much deterioration your brain can take before you start to feel the effects, and often the more reserve you have, the better you have been to your brain. While the research is all still new on the subject, according to the thousands of patients and their brains we’ve seen over the years, this trend seems to have truth to it.
And because your brain will work well and have more reserve if you treat it well, some of the best results we get at our clinics come from the nutritionists! It’s a bit frustrating for our hard-working psychiatrists, but when we put people on the right diet, people just get better faster, and without side effects.
So, they recommend that you cut down on these three foods, if you want to stop depleting your brain reserve and feel better:
Corn The linchpin of the Standard American Diet (SAD), corn is naturally not such a bad thing. However, most of the corn we eat these days isn’t on the cob, but in our processed foods. Corn is incredibly high on the glycemic index, meaning it causes a big spike in your blood sugar and a subsequent crash a short time after you eat it. The effects of this roller coaster can be devastating for your brain, as it begins to crave those high blood sugar levels; you begin to crave those processed foods full of high fructose corn syrup. These will deplete your brain reserve, as you won’t be getting the nutrients you need to keep your brain healthy. Choose foods low on the glycemic index and without processed corn products to keep your brain reserve from depleting.
Gluten Today, it seems like everywhere you look someone is trying to get you to go gluten free. But why? When we ask people to try and cut out gluten temporarily just to see the effects, people have argued that gluten couldn’t possibly be hurting them because it’s even in The Bible! Well, our grains are hardly what they were back then, and thankfully, we know a bit more about medicine than we did in the Old Testament. Now we know that if your body can’t process gluten, it can lead to all sorts of ailments because it drains your brain reserve, from GI issues, to ADD symptoms, anxiety and more. If you suffer from symptoms like these caused by something unknown, try cutting out gluten just to discover if you can feel better without it.
Dairy Did you know, researchers estimate only about 1/3rd of adults can process lactose, a major compound in dairy? Instead of saying we are lactose-intolerant; we should actually be looking for the rare people who are lactose-tolerant! On top of most of our inability to process lactose, like our grains, milk is hardly what it was when your parents and grandparents were growing up. Today our milk is less nutritious, and chock-full of harmful chemicals from the processing and living conditions on the commercial farms where much of our milk comes from. These chemicals harm your body, and deplete your brain reserve. Instead, replace dairy with any sort of goat or nut milk, which is natural, digestible, and dense in nutrients to help rebuild your brain reserve.
I am so thankful for your support and hope you have a copy of The Brain Warrior’s Way Cookbook – which contains over 100+ brain healthy recipes your whole family will enjoy.
