Diet and Nutrition

Food For Thought

How you think and feel is directly affected by what you eat. This idea may
seem strange, yet the fact is that eating the right food has been proven to
boost your IQ, improve your mood and emotional stability, sharpen your memory and keep your mind young.

One of the most limiting concepts in the human sciences is the idea that the
mind and the body are separate. Try asking an anatomist, a psychologist and a biochemist where the mind begins and the body ends. It is a stupid question, and yet that is exactly what modern science has done by separating psychology from anatomy and physiology.

But it’s not just the scientists who live by this false distinction. It’s us.
When you’re having difficulty concentrating, when your mood is low, when you struggle to find a memory, do you consider that you may be poorly nourished? Why not? Every one of these states - your thinking, feeling, mental energy and focus – happen across a network of interconnecting brain cells, each one of which depends on an optimal supply of nutrients to work efficiently. The evidence is there if you look for it. You can change how you think and feel by changing what you put into your mouth.

Of course improving our mental health isn’t only about nutrition. While,
sadly, most psychotherapists ignore the role of nutrition and the brain’s
chemistry on how we think and feel, let’s not make the same mistake of
omissions. I believe the solution for the mental health problems that plague
or society lies in the combination of optimum nutrition and good psychological support, which includes a place you can call home, being treated with respect and dignity and counseling.

Whether you’re in good shape or are currently dealing with a mental health
problem, there are five essential foods you need to tune up your brain.

*Balance your glucose – it’s fuel for the brain
*Essential fats – these keep your brain ‘well oiled’
*Phospholipids – these memory molecules give ‘oomph’ to the brain
*Amino acids – These are the brain’s messengers
* Intelligent nutrients – these include vitamins and minerals that ‘fine tune’
your mind.

Knowing a few simple facts about your amazing brain shows you why these foods are so important for your mind. Every day we have around 6,000 thoughts. Most of them are repeats! Every single thought you think is represented by a ‘ripple’ of activity across the network of nerves called your brain. Here’s how it works:

What we call the brain is a network of neurons – special nerve cells that
connect to other neurons. You’ve got 100 billion neurons, each connecting to
thousands of others. To get an idea of just how complex that is, let’s look at
the Amazon rain forest. The Amazon stretches for 2,700,000 square miles and it contains about 100 billion trees. So there are as many cells in our brain as trees in the entire Amazon rainforest, and as many connections as leaves!

The connections between neurons are called dendrites. Where one dendrite meets another neuron, there’s a gap like the ‘spark’ gap in a spark plug. This gap is called a synapse and it’s across this gap that messages are sent from one neuron to another.

The message is sent from a sending station and received in a receiving station, called a receptor. These sending and receiving stations are built out of essential fats, found in fish and seeds; phospholipids, present in eggs and
organ meats, and amino acids, the raw material of protein.

The message itself, the neurotransmitter, is in most cases made out of amino acids. Different amino acids make different neurotransmitters. For example, the neurotransmitter serotonin, which keeps you happy is made from the amino acid tryptophan. Adrenalin and dopamine, which keep you motivated are made from phenylalanine. Turning an amino acid into a neurotransmitter is no simple job. Enzymes in the brain that depend on intelligent nutrients do it.
These include vitamins, minerals, and special amino acids. You are not only
what you eat. How you think and feel depends on what you eat!

It used to be thought that all our thinking is done by neurons in the brain.
We now know that the digestive system contains 100 million neurons, and
produces as many neurotransmitters as the brain. The gut, for example produces two-thirds of the body’s serotonin, the ‘happy’ neurotransmitter. So in essence, you’re feeding two brains. Every time you eat something it sends signals to the brain because the gut and the brain are in permanent
communication. This is why the right foods can make you happy and the wrong foods can make you feel anxious and depressed.

The most important nutrient of all for the brain and nervous system is glucose, the fuel they run on. We humans are solar-powered. We use plants to collect the Sun’s energy for us in the form of glucose. The plants absorb hydrogen and oxygen (H 2 O-water) from the soil, and carbon and oxygen CO 2– carbon dioxide) from the air, and combine these atoms together using the Sun’s energy to make carbohydrate (COH).

We then digest the carbohydrate down into glucose and deliver this into both our brain and body cells. The glucose is then “burnt” within our cells,
lubricating the Sun’s energy, which is what keeps us alive.

Your brain consumes more glucose than any other organ. In a sedentary day your brain can consume up to 40 percent of all carbohydrates you eat. That’s why you get hungry after exams! Any imbalance in the supply of glucose to the brain and you can experience fatigue, irritability, dizziness, insomnia,
excessive sweating (especially at night) poor concentration and forgetfulness, excessive thirst, depression and crying spells, digestive disturbances and blurred vision.