The food you eat probably has the greatest impact on your health, mental/brain health than anything else. The body requires vitamins and minerals in order to function properly. The majority of these nutrients come from food. If you feed your body sugar and processed foods full of chemicals you can’t even pronounce, your body and brain will function far below what it is capable of. I know this because I’ve done it myself. My diet isn’t perfect. I like to bake and eat chips and dip and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, but now I do it sparingly with portion control. In my 20’s I had a terrible diet. I had brain fog. I was always tired. I had mono. I constantly had white spots on my tonsils. Breakfast was a bowl of cheerios and milk. Cheerios have a glycemic index of 74, not a good idea for someone on their way to having gestational and prediabetes. Not to mention the glyphosate they contain.
The food you eat affects how you feel. It also affects your mood. It probably contributes to depression and anxiety. Several times I have eaten chili from one of the fast food restaurants and experienced panic attacks shortly afterwards. Back before becoming gluten free, eating pasta would suddenly cause a shift in my mood. It took a long time to recognize it, but I was able to pinpoint it once I started taking notice of how I felt after I ate. There is a new field of psychology called nutrition psychology that studies how food can be used to treat mental health. One of the first food movies I ever watched, Food Matters, talks about a psych patient who just sat rocking in place all day. When giving niacin, they were able to live normally. Niacin is Vitamin B3 which helps regulate the nervous system and can be found in meat, poultry, fish, nuts and legumes.
The brain is connected to the gut via the vagus nerve. The gut contains good and bad bacteria that make up what’s called the microbiome. The condition of the microbiome influences the brain. The better the gut health, the better the brain health.
To improve the microbiome, you need to eat boost your gut health with things like eating prebiotic foods and probiotic foods and removing processed foods and sugar. Prebiotic and probiotic foods increase the amount of good bacteria in the gut, while processed foods and sugar increase the amount of bad bacteria in the gut, leading to leaky gut syndrome. Leaky gut syndrome is where the cell lining of the intestinal walls loosens, allowing toxins to pass through, which can get through the blood brain barrier leading to health problems, including neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
The microbiome/gut/brain connection is complex and is a relatively new area of study. To get started improving the gut and brain, some prebiotic foods to eat include garlic, onions, asparagus, bananas and apples. Some probiotic foods to eat include yogurt, sauerkraut, kefir, tempeh and pickles.
What you eat also impacts your blood sugar. Increased blood sugar leads to diabetes which can then contribute to all sorts of illnesses including dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Not to mention it’s linked heart disease, cancer and all sorts of other diseases. Increased blood sugar causes inflammation. Sustained inflammation over time builds up to big health problems. The goal is to avoid blood sugar spikes and to keep your blood sugar even and within the recommended range. Eat low starch vegetables and fruits. A good start would be to avoid include anything white, such as white rice, white bread and white potatoes. Everything to avoid has a healthier substitute. Choose brown rice or quinoa and sweet potatoes. The recipe/salads page has a great sweet potato recipe that is a good substitute for white potato salad. Although, eating white potatoes cold doesn’t spike your blood sugar as high as warm white potatoes do.
Some foods good for the brain include healthy fats like walnuts and avocado and low glycemic fruits such as blueberries, blackberries and raspberries. Green tea contains antioxidants that improve brain health.
Food and it’s impact on your health and brain health is such a complex topic. This blog post doesn’t even scratch the surface. A simple way to start improving your health with food is to shop the outer aisles, avoid processed foods and sugar, eat foods with short ingredient lists, avoid high fructose corn syrup and the other flavors of sugar, eat organic versions of meat, use portion control, don’t overdo it on beans and legumes. Satisfy sugar cravings with frozen fruit berry ice cream and dark chocolate.
Challenge:Start a food journal. Take 1 average day, write down what you eat for each meal/snack. Write down how you feel before you eat. An hour or two after you eat, write down how you feel. At the end of the day, review your entries and see if your mood/energy levels were the same before and after you ate or if they fluctuated throughout the day. If they fluctuated, review what you ate and see if you can pinpoint potential foods that caused the fluctuation.
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