Author: Zach Gallagher
It’s no secret that food is absolutely essential to human life. Apart from survival, think about how else food plays a part in your life. You can probably name a handful of things off the top of your head. In my day-to-day life, I know it can affect my mood, stress, physiological performance, sense of culture, relationships, sleep...the list goes on and on. Food has the potential to both enhance and weaken almost every part of your life. However, I bet a lot of people don’t think of brain health of all things when they think of what food can affect, and that’s what I want to highlight in this blog post. What you consume has a high correlation to the state of your brain health, and I’m going to share 4 foods that will help improve that!
Food 1: Avocados
Avocados are rich in different types of vitamin E, a vitamin that acts as an antioxidant in the body and helps to protect cells from the damage of free radicals. This is important because the brain is extremely prone to oxidative stress - a major driver of aging (25% of the oxygen we breath goes to create energy for our brain!). I know I’m not the only one that has had various new stresses rise in the midst of this pandemic, and I’m all for consuming anything to mitigate the effects of that stress by even a little bit.One whole avocado has an outstanding 12 grams of fiber, and fiber acts as food for the bacteria in our guts. When fed adequately, our gut bacteria create brain-sustaining compounds that reduce inflammation, enhance insulin sensitivity, and boost growth factors in the brain.
Food 2: Dark Chocolate
I know what you’re thinking: “wait, chocolate’s healthy?!” I too wish I could eat Hershey’s chocolate bars all day long without any concern of health repercussions, but let me explain. First of all, I’m talking about dark chocolate, and the reason why dark chocolate is recommended for consumption over milk and white chocolate is that the cacao levels in dark chocolate are substantially higher than the others (not to mention that milk and white chocolate are essentially pure sugar - no wonder they are so palatable). The copious amounts of cocoa flavanols found in dark chocolate have been shown to reverse signs of cognitive aging and improve insulin sensitivity, vascular function, blood flow to the brain, and even athletic performance. Also, a study showed that of nearly one thousand cognitively healthy people aged 23-98, those who ate chocolate at least once a week were found to have stronger cognitive performance on visual-spatial memory and working memory and tests of abstract reasoning.There are a couple of things to look out for when searching for the right kind of chocolate. First, you want to search for dark chocolate with a cacao content level of above 80%. That cacao percentage is important because you want a bar with a low sugar to high cacao ratio. Anything below 80% is creeping into hyper-palatable territory with the amount of sugar that is in the bar. Second, you want to make sure the label on the chocolate bar does not say “processed with alkali,” also known as Dutch processing. That processing degrades the beneficial phytonutrient content of cocoa, turning it into empty calories.
Food 3: Almonds
This is for all my almond lovers out there, as if there were any more reasons to eat this great snack of a food. Conversely, if you hate almonds, maybe you’ll consider giving them another shot when you learn some of the brain benefits that the consumption of them brings. First, almonds are a rich source of polyphenols, which are plant defense compounds that provide an antioxidant effect to both you and your gut bacteria. Second, vitamins are a strong source of vitamin E, and scientists have noted a link between decreasing serum levels of vitamin E and poorer memory performance in older individuals. I don’t know about you, but I want to retain a great memory capacity for as long as possible, so that linkage especially motivates me to increase my consumption of almonds. Third, the skins of almonds have been shown to provide a prebiotic effect, an effect that is crucial in nurturing the bacteria in your large intestine. This is important because your gut and brain are connected physically through millions of nerves. The gut and its microbes also control inflammation and make many different compounds that can affect brain health. Gut health and brain health go hand-in-hand, and if you can tolerate almonds, this is another reason why they are definitely worth eating!
Food 4: Dark Leafy Greens
I’m talking spinach, romaine lettuce, arugula, bok choy, kale, cabbage, rapini, all of that! Those are just some of the dark leafy greens that carry tremendous brain benefits upon consumption. Two important nutrients found in dark leafy greens are folate and magnesium. Folate is essential to your body’s methylation cycle, a cycle occurs frequently throughout the body and is crucial for detoxification and allowing genes to do their proper jobs. (read here for more on the methylation cycle).Magnesium is known as a “macromineral” because in order to reach optimal health and performance, we need to consume a lot of it. Nearly three hundred enzymes rely on magnesium, so it’s used all over the body. The job of said enzymes is to help you generate energy and repair damaged DNA - the underlying cause of cancer and aging. Luckily, almost any food that is green is a good source of magnesium, and a recent study has shown that people who ate just two servings of dark leafy greens a day had brains that looked 11 years younger on brain scans! Lastly, dark leafy greens contain a great amount of fiber. Vegetable consumption ensures that your microbiome is accompanied by a diverse and abundant pipeline of fermentable, prebiotic fibers. Leafy greens also carry a newly discovered sulfur-bound sugar molecule called sulfoquinovose that feeds healthy gut bacteria. Again, the link between gut health and brain health is huge!Well, I hope that helped some of you. While I did touch on some great foods to consume to increase brain health, I only scratched the surface on the connection between food and its effects on the brain. Most of the information I provided in this article is from Max Lugavere’s book Genius Foods, which you can buy here! In this book, Max takes a deep dive into the connection between food and the brain, and the foods that he believes cause the best brain-health effects. Along with the 4 listed in this article, Max also lists the following as “genius foods:” grass-fed beef, wild salmon, blueberries, broccoli, eggs, and extra-virgin olive oil. If you are interested in learning more about these foods, the foods touched on in this article, or nutrition in general, I recommend checking out Genius Foods!
Adam Brickman et al., “Enhancing Dentate Gyrus Function with Dietary Flavanols Improves Cognition in Older Adults,” Nature Neuroscience 17, no 12 (2014): 1798-803.
A.J Perkins et al., “Association of Antioxidants with Memory in a Multiethnic elderly Sample Using the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey,” American Journal of Epidemiology 150, no 1 (1999): 37-
44Genius Foods by Max Lugavere Georgina Crichton, Merrill Elias, and Ala’a Alkerwi, “Chocolate Intake is Associated with Better Cognitive Function: The Maine-Syracuse Longitudinal Study,” Appetite 100 (2016): 126-32Z.
Liu et al., “Prebiotic Effects of Almonds and Almond Skins on Intestinal Microbiota in Healthy Adult Humans,” Anaerobe 26 (2014): 1-6
Natural Balance Wellness Medical Center
Methylation Health & Disease | Natural Balance Wellness Medical Center
Methylation is the process whereby methyl groups (-CH3) are donated to other molecules. (23 kB)
https://www.nbwellness.com/library/methylation-health-disease/
PubMed Central (PMC)
Effects of Vitamin E on Cognitive Performance during Ageing and in Alzheimer’s Disease
Vitamin E is an important antioxidant that primarily protects cells from damage associated with oxidative stress caused by free radicals. The brain is highly susceptible to oxidative stress, which increases during ageing and is considered a major contributor ...