Your brain is a glutton for nourishment. Although it represents only about 2 percent of your body weight, it uses more than 20 percent of all your energy — consuming half of the blood sugar circulating in your bloodstream, a fourth of your nutrients, and a fifth of all the oxygen you inhale.
The trouble is that even in the best of times your brain is often malnourished, which is then reflected in your mood and emotions, and by your thoughts and behavior. Fortunately, your brain quickly responds to proper nutrition — even from a single meal — so what are you going to feed your brain today?
The Brain Food Pyramid
Brain nutrition has four primary aspects, each corresponding to a class of food. Like the sides of a pyramid, they work together to create, protect, power, and activate your brain.
STRUCTURE — FATS for essential fatty acids and cell membrane integrity
PROTECTION — FRUITS and VEGETABLES for antioxidants and brain cell longevity
ENERGY — CARBOHYDRATES for glucose and energy production
FUNCTION — PROTEINS for amino acids and neurotransmitter synthesis
Basically, you need essential fatty acids to build a your brain, antioxidants to safeguard it, glucose to fuel it, and amino acids to interconnect it.
Three Challenges to Optimally Nourishing Your Brain:
Your brain is dense. The immense complexity and density of the human brain is only made possible by the intricate network of blood vessels and capillaries that deliver the nutrients it needs. Optimal blood flow throughout the brain is absolutely essential for its proper function. When the brain's blood vessels are narrowed by disease or its capillaries weakened by poor nutrition, it becomes difficult to effectively and fully nourish the brain. Even gravity works against it.
Your brain is barricaded. The blood-brain barrier protects precious brain cells from fluctuations in blood chemistry and from toxins that may get into the bloodstream. Unfortunately, even necessary nutrients have some trouble reaching neurons. They only pass in minute amounts and in certain forms. Therefore, the brain is prone to malnourishment even when nutritional levels are adequate for the rest of the body.
Your brain has a sweet tooth. Glucose is the main fuel that brain cells use. Unfortunately, brain cells cannot store glucose. They depend on the bloodstream for a constant supply of glucose and oxygen. Two fixtures in our society, stress and sugar, each cause reactions that lower the amount of glucose available to the brain. In excess, they also damage the brain, especially its ability to remember and learn.
Your Brain Has a Mind of Its Own
Where does the mind fit into this model? What is the relation between brain and mind? One way to visualize this perennial dichotomy is by using the familiar image of a pyramid whose capstone hovers above its base.
The brain is represented by the pyramid-base. Nutrients are the building blocks that shape its four sides, providing strength and duration. The capstone represents the mind. The gap suggests the inexplicable relation between the two. The mind emanates from the brain — the foundation from which it reaches out to comprehend all it surveys or imagines. The brain's purpose is to provide a stage for its crowning glory, the conscious mind.
Carrying the analogy a step further, a motto beneath the pyramid says, "Nourish Your Brain." A motto above the capstone says, "Enrich Your Mind."
A Body of Knowledge
"Know thyself." This ancient mandate has ushered us into the inner workings of the brain. Here we are privileged to witness the amazing molecular dance of life. To see so deeply and intimately into ourselves is a thrilling experience — unique to our time. To learn how our brains work is to know who we are.
Another reason to understand brain function is to gain an awareness that enables us to consciously participate in our own behavior at the metabolic level. Just as psychoneuroimmunology has shown that we can consciously augment our body's natural healing process, our knowledge of how the brain works may support and even enhance its performance.
What is Metabolism?
It seems the ancient Greeks viewed the process of food being converted into body parts as a kind of metamorphosis. They called it "metabolism," a fascinating word whose Greek root is bole, "to throw" (as in ballistics, our primal propensity for propelling projectiles). Meta-bolism is beyond ballistics, the ultimate movement, where chemistry is broken down and rebuilt into biology — matter transformed into mind.
Please Pass the Magnesium
Nature has a special way of "throwing" things, and she uses bacteria as her quarterbacks. Consider magnesium, the eighth most abundant element on Earth:
Soil bacteria prepare magnesium for assimilation by plants whose green leaves contain photosynthetic bacteria (chloroplasts) that place magnesium in chlorophyll molecules to capture solar electrons and materialize the energy of the sun to make the carbohydrates eaten by animals whose intestinal bacteria pass magnesium into their bloodstream to trillions of cells full of energy-producing bacteria (mitochondria) that use magnesium to break down carbohydrates into the energy that animates us.
Better Brains Build a Better World
A fit and healthy brain depends on a combination of nutrients that support the structural integrity, electrical activity, and growth of its cells. Nutrients enable it to synthesize the chemical messengers it uses for intercellular communication. Nutrients power and protect it.
Because a malnourished brain alters mood and behavior, optimal nourishment has the promising potential to get at the root of social problems stemming from fear, apathy, anger, and violence. As research unveils the complex biochemistry of the human brain and the intimate connection between what we eat and what we create, this knowledge can enable us to function at our best. We can then explore our full cognitive potential for a richer life — positively influencing individual evolution and planetary health.
No comments:
Post a Comment