HOW TO TRANSFORM YOUR BRAIN
No longer do you need to stand idly by, hoping that you will avoid the ravages of memory loss, dementia, or brain disease. By following the program outlined in this book, you can make simple changes to your diet, lifestyle, and daily routine that will result in a supercharged memory, resilience against brain disease, and superior brain health. Boost Your Brain Power in 60 Seconds offers the principles of the Brain Health Plan along with simple dietary and lifestyle changes that take less than 60 seconds each and result in a stronger mind and brain. You will discover the foods, strategies, and supplements that can have your brain healthier than ever.
We all know that heart disease and cancer are our two primary killers; these diseases will take the lives of a record number of North Americans. But there’s an even greater threat that will overshadow both of these in deadly impact: According to new research, scientists predict that within 8 years, brain diseases will kill or disable more North Americans than cancer and heart disease combined! That means a huge number of people need help protecting and healing their brains.
With Boost Your Brain Power in 60 Seconds, you can feel confident that you are taking charge of your brain health. You will no longer have to accept a declining memory as “just a part of aging.” Scientists continuously prove that smart nutrition and a healthy lifestyle will protect your brain and memory from damage and can even aid in the prevention of serious brain diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Though the blood–brain barrier was once believed to be impermeable, we now know it works through a lock-and-key mechanism. Damaging chemicals can mimic vital nutrients and gain access to your brain, where they can cause inflammation and plaque. Unfortunately, many of these toxins are commonly found in our foods, homes, and offices.
But this book is about empowerment and health. With a minimum amount of effort, you can employ the knowledge you gain to lock out neurotoxins, quell inflammation in your brain, and fortify this essential organ with proven brain-protecting nutrients and phytonutrients (plant nutrients). It’s all about boosting your brain health and improving your memory right now. This book is for anyone who cares about his or her brain. That means everyone!
You’ll discover my solid plan for building a better brain, along with a research-proven holistic approach and a practical way to ensure that you can easily adapt it to your life. I will guide you through the foods to swap, foods to eat, natural remedies that can supercharge your brain, and strategies to boost your memory. Each week you’ll replace foods in your diet with better options, make minor adjustments to your lifestyle, or add remedies that build brain power.
I’ll also reveal how you can balance your brain neurotransmitters, strengthen your memory (only one of your brain’s many functions), shield your brain from neurotoxins (substances proven to damage your brain and nervous system), and fortify your brain against inflammation or disease. Plus, this book is packed with research-supported, cutting-edge tips that will help you build a better brain 60 seconds at a time.
You will find 60 brain-boosting tips in Boost Your Brain Power in 60 Seconds. Additionally, every brain booster in this book offers a Super Health Bonus, which is featured at the end of each tip. With this program, you’ll supercharge your brain health and, at the same time, energize your body, improve your immunity to illness, and restore your youthful appearance! I’m not aware of any drugs that offer these impressive health benefits as side effects, but the best brain-building foods, nutrients, herbs, and lifestyle strategies ensure that you’ll protect and boost your brain while feeling better than ever in every aspect of your life. So let’s move on to the next chapter, where I’ll share the fundamentals of the Brain Health Plan so you can begin to reap the amazing health rewards immediately.
CHAPTER 2
BUILD A BETTER BRAIN
It is unmatched in its ability to think, to communicate, and to reason. Most striking of all, it has a unique awareness of its identity and of its place in space and time. Welcome to the human brain, the cathedral of complexity.
PETER COVENEY AND ROGER HIGHFIELD, FRONTIERS OF COMPLEXITY
Let’s discuss the Principles of the 4-Week Brain Health Challenge so you can get started eliminating brain-inflaming offenders and build a better brain through your food and lifestyle choices. This chapter provides the first layer of lifestyle and dietary advice you will follow over the next 4 weeks—or for as long as you’d like. Keep in mind that the more you incorporate these suggestions throughout your life, the more likely it is that you’ll maintain a healthy brain for life.
I call these the Principles because they are the basis for your brain health program. This practical, step-by-step, anti-inflammatory brain health plan will help you transform your potentially brain-harming diet into a much healthier, brain-supporting one.
Once you feel comfortable with the information presented in this chapter and you’ve started making the recommended changes to your diet and lifestyle, you can start to add the 60-Second Brain Health Tips that begin in the following chapter.
Keep in mind that we’ll be exploring different foods and strategies in greater detail as we progress. In this chapter, I’ll explain the research and rationale behind each part of the plan, so don’t worry if you’re feeling confused or a bit overwhelmed at first. It will all make sense by the end of this chapter.
I recommend adding the tips one week at a time. For example, once you’re accustomed to the Principles of the 4-Week Brain Health Challenge and the 60-second tips in Chapter 3: Substitute, the following week, add five of the “Boost” foods from Chapter 4 that build brain health, and so on until you’ve added tips from each of the four following chapters.
While the 4-Week Brain Health Challenge is designed to be implemented over 28 days (jumping into Week 1 at the same time as you begin following the Principles), it’s okay to spend a week or more getting used to the Principles of the 4-Week Brain Health Challenge before starting the tips in Week 1. You can also spend additional weeks adjusting to each new phase, if you prefer. In this way, you can customize the plan to your particular needs and move at your preferred pace, which will help you make lasting changes.
THE INFLAMMATORY STANDARD AMERICAN DIET
Let’s face it: Most Americans love sitting down to a hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, and coffee, perhaps with some milk and sugar added. Or perhaps a dinner of steak and potatoes, white pasta with cream sauce, and a decadent dessert is more your speed? Yet these and many other everyday foods are linked to low-grade inflammation. That might not sound like a big deal, but when you consider that brain diseases have been linked to inflammation, it is imperative to address the inflammation as part of our 4-Week Brain Health Challenge to ensure brain health for life. Let’s briefly explore some of the worst problems with the Standard American Diet to demonstrate how we may be unintentionally weakening our brain health through the foods we choose.
Bad Fats and Wrong Fats, Oh My
Your brain is 60 percent fat and needs plenty of high-quality dietary fat to create healthy brain cells. Getting sufficient amounts of brain-building fats is one of the best things you can do for your brain. Yet most people ingest trans fats (found in packaged, prepared, and fast foods, as well as many baked goods and restaurant foods), which can actually damage your brain by creating inflammation in your brain and body. Shortening and margarine and anything in which they are found are also sources of unhealthy trans fats. That includes baked goods, cookies, pies, and buns. Of course there are healthier alternatives to these baked goods, but they’re hard to find because most grocery stores and bakeries are using these harmful ingredients. Trans fats have even been found to damage the protective blood–brain barrier required to keep your brain healthy, thereby allowing harmful substances access to your delicate gray matter.
It’s not just these harmful fats that create a problem for the brain and the blood–brain barrier. You’ve probably heard about beneficial omega-3 fatty acids, as they have b
een getting a lot of attention in the media. There are also beneficial omega-6 fatty acids, but most people get more of the latter fats than they need. Actually, most people eat 20 to 40 times as many omega-6 fatty acids as they do omega-3 fatty acids. While omega-6 fatty acids are beneficial to your health in moderate amounts, in this ratio, they cause excessive inflammation. Omega-3s are needed in sufficient amounts to keep the inflammation at bay, yet most of us don’t get enough of these critical fats.
The Standard American Diet contains few, if any, omega-3 essential fats. These critical nutrients are needed to protect your brain from inflammation and to maintain healthy brain cells and signals between them. Our diet tends to be higher in omega-6s, or worse, trans fats. Corn, safflower, and sunflower oils, as well as the ambiguous “vegetable oil” commonly used in most North American households and restaurants, are all sources of omega-6s. (Vegetable oil is often used to fry food or as an ingredient in bottled sauces, mayonnaise, and other prepared foods.) Omega-6s are also found in meat from animals that eat foods high in omega-6s, such as those mentioned above. Our heavy consumption of these foods plays a role in the distorted ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s.
Omega-3s are found in flaxseeds and flaxseed oil; chia seeds; canola, olive, and walnut oil; dark, leafy greens, such as spinach and kale; and fatty fish, such as wild salmon, mackerel, sardines, anchovies, and others.
It’s not just the warped ratio of essential fatty acids that predisposes us to inflammation and a deficit of healthy fats to replenish brain cells, it is also the quality of the oils we eat. All oils have different smoke points—the temperature above which the oil begins to smoke and is no longer healthy to eat. When oils smoke, their delicate essential oils become damaged, cause inflammation, and in some cases also become carcinogenic. Because of this, oils that have extremely low smoke points, such as flaxseed oil, should never be heated. Olive oil smokes at just under 325°F, while macadamia nut oil reaches its smoke point around 410°F. Most oils sold in grocery stores, however, have been heated to extremely high temperatures during their processing and packaging, even before you get them home and begin to cook with them. These overheated or rancid oils no longer support brain health and actually create inflammation. Extra-virgin olive oil is the exception. Some grocery stores are moving to refrigerated, cold-pressed virgin oils, but this is still fairly rare. Most health food stores offer healthier, refrigerated, cold-pressed oils.
I probably don’t need to explain that fried foods such as French fries, onion rings, potato chips, and nachos cause inflammation. I think these items speak for themselves. Most of us know that fried foods, which are highly inflammatory in the body, have no redeeming health quality. That’s because the oils tend to be heated to excessive temperatures and are used over and over again. When oils are heated past their smoke point or are reused on a frequent basis, they become inflammation-causing oils.
You’ll learn more about these harmful fats and how to replace them with healthier options in 60-Second Brain Health Tip #4.
Good Carbs, Bad Carbs
Fats aren’t the only problem in your diet. Your brain also requires adequate energy to fuel its many functions. While energy can come from multiple dietary sources, foods that contain complex carbohydrates are the primary source. Yet most people eat the wrong kinds of carbs and insufficient amounts of the good carbs that fuel the brain, leaving it with insufficient energy to perform its vital tasks.
Your brain needs a slow and steady supply of energy to ensure that it always has fuel to function properly. Imagine how poorly your car would function if you tried to give it the wrong fuel, or if you overfilled the gas tank and then went for long periods of time during which you neglected to give it any gas at all.
But this is exactly what we do with our brains. You may give yours refined sugars from pastries, doughnuts, candy, cakes, white bread, white rice, and white potatoes instead of the correct fuel from legumes, vegetables, and certain whole grains that break down slowly and steadily. You may gorge on sugary foods that cause your blood sugar to quickly surge and then plummet within an hour or two, meaning that your brain won’t have the fuel it needs and leaving you feeling forgetful, exhausted, moody, depressed, or craving sweets. Or you may skip breakfast, wait long periods between meals, or eat at irregular times. All of these bad habits mean that your brain won’t have sufficient energy to accomplish its functions at optimal levels. And you may be left wondering why you feel so terrible, why your memory is so bad, or why you are irritable.
It is important to significantly reduce your consumption of sugar, sweets, soft drinks, and sweetened juices. Research shows that sugar is one of the most addictive substances you can use. It’s also highly inflammatory. No, you don’t need to eliminate sugar and sweets altogether; simply reduce your consumption and make fruit your go-to food when you’re craving something sweet. You’ll learn more about the damaging effects of sugar and how to replace it with healthier options in 60-Second Brain Health Tip #1.
I probably don’t need to go into much additional detail about the wrong carbs, since most of us know that the sweets we eat aren’t good for us. What you may not realize, however, is how much sugar hides in surprising places.
Eating the wrong types of fats in unhealthy ratios, insufficient brain-building fats, and excessive amounts of sugar are just a couple of dietary habits that contribute to memory problems and, in some cases, even brain diseases.
12 Surprising Sources of Hidden Sugar
Sugar hides in many unexpected places. Considering that sugar consumption has been linked to many illnesses and that even a few teaspoons of sugar will shut down your immune system for up to 6 hours, it is important to be on the lookout for sugar. Be sure to read labels to identify ingredients that end in “-ose,” such as glucose, maltose, fructose, high fructose corn syrup, etc. All of these ingredients are sugar in its myriad forms. Additionally, there are many ways that sugar can sneak into your diet, even if it does not appear on the label. Here are 12 surprising sources of hidden sugar identified in Nancy Appleton’s book Lick the Sugar Habit:1
◆The breading on most packaged and restaurant foods contains sugar.
◆Sugar (in the form of corn syrup and dehydrated molasses) is often added to hamburgers sold in restaurants to reduce meat shrinkage during cooking.
◆Before salmon is canned, it is often glazed with a sugar solution.
◆Many meat packers feed sugar to animals prior to slaughter to “improve” the flavor and color of cured meat.
◆Some fast-food restaurants sell poultry that has been injected with a sugar or honey solution.
◆Some table and seasoning salts contain sugar!
◆Sugar is used in the processing of luncheon meats, bacon, and canned meats.
◆Most bouillon cubes contain sugar (and usually MSG, as well).
◆Peanut butter tends to contain sugar.
◆Dry cereals often contain high amounts of sugar.
◆Almost half of the calories in commercial ketchup come from sugar.
◆More than 90 percent of the calories in a can of cranberry sauce come from sugar.
A Drink Is Just a Drink?
Alcoholic beverages such as beer, spirits, and wine act similarly to concentrated sugar in your body and are best eliminated or used in moderation. While there’s a lot of hype about red wine’s ability to boost brain health, this belief is largely based on the notion that the benefits of the resveratrol found in red wine outweigh the brain-cell-killing effects of the alcohol it contains. I’ll explain more about resveratrol and better ways to obtain this brain-boosting nutrient in 60-Second Brain Health Tip #28. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you need to give up alcohol completely, but it’s best not to drink it every day.
Sugar by Any Other Name
You may be thinking that synthetic sweeteners might be a good alternative to sugar, but they are actually worse than sugar. There are many different types of artificial sweeteners, including NutraSweet, Splenda, saccha
rin, aspartame, and AminoSweet, but they are all best avoided due to their negative health effects. Research links these nasty substances to many serious health conditions, from headaches and depression to Parkinson’s-type symptoms. I avoid them like the plague, and I think you’ll want to, too, after you read more about these nasties in Brain Health Principle #9.
The Meat of the Matter
Red meat and antibiotic- and hormone-laced poultry are well-established causes of inflammation in the body. I’m not suggesting that you have to go vegan or vegetarian here (although a plant-based diet tends to be much lower in inflammatory substances), but meat and poultry tend to cause inflammation, so make them the background of your meals—not the main dish. Simply reducing the amount of meat in your diet and selecting hormone- and antibiotic-free poultry will go a long way toward reducing inflammation. Wild-caught fish tends to be high in omega-3 fatty acids and is anti-inflammatory, making it an excellent choice. You will also learn more about the importance of reducing your meat consumption and great high-protein vegetarian options in 60-Second Brain Health Tip #5.
The “3 Ps”—Processed, Packaged, or Prepared Foods
Most processed, packaged, and prepared foods top the list of inflammatory foods thanks to their harmful oils, sugar and artificial sweeteners, additives, and a whole host of nasty ingredients. There are many different artificial ingredients found in these foods, all of which are best avoided: colors, flavor enhancers, stabilizers, preservatives, etc. (Some of the main ones include sulfites, benzoates, and colors named FD&C # “X.”) Of course, a package of legumes or quinoa is not the same as the vast majority of fast-food and prepared food items to which I’m referring. It’s a good idea to read package labels to see if they contain any of these untoward ingredients. Keep in mind that most fast foods and prepared foods made in-house at grocery stores will not have ingredients labels, but I guarantee that almost all of these items are packed with potentially neurotoxic (damaging to nerve and brain cells) ingredients and are best avoided. By reducing your consumption of processed, packaged, and prepared foods, you’ll go a long way toward eliminating harmful food additives from your diet.
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