*!@$%!# ARGH! Stress And Accelerated Aging Of The Brain
Let’s face it – you’re stressed. Traffic, the job, the family and health issues all add up to stress. You’ve decided to work on your health and now you have the added stress of not knowing where to start.
Mention it to your doctor and before you know it he’s handing you the white slip “your ticket to paradise” a note for your friendly neighborhood pharmacist adding to all the other drugs he has prescribed to you.
Go that route and you won’t change a single thing – except that you just won’t care. All the stress your body and brain are experiencing will go on doing damage until you have the big breakdown and the rollercoaster ride through pharmaceutical hell has just begun.
But Wait……There Must Be Another Way.
The first step for handling stress starts with your fork or whatever your favorite feeding utensil is. In other words, what you put in your mouth can determine how you react to stress and how much damage you might incur while experiencing it.
Every cell in your body-and your brain-is dependant on nutrition to function. Feed them right and they function well. Feed them wrong and they suffer and so will you. The resulting cellular stress accelerates aging of the brain.
When the body becomes depleted by stress, and the brain’s chemistry becomes unbalanced, the result is low energy and premature aging of the brain. Just thinking about it is enough to cause you stress.
If you think eating fast food will provide anything for your brain, far from it. It’s unfortunate that most fast food restaurants don’t have any nutritional value for your brain.
Eating a balanced diet of good protein foods, essentials fats and plenty of greens will insure that you’ll be able to make the neurotransmitters dopamine and acetycholine. Both dopamine and acetylcholine are essential to ensure proper brain voltage (power) and speed (electricity).
Dopamine is involved with retaining memory, willpower and problem solving. Acetylcholine is about the speed with which we process information, alertness, attention span, mastering daily activities and immediate memory.
25 Common Foods To Feed Your Brain
When the body and brain gets fed properly, great long term energy is the not far behind. A variety of these foods wil get you off to a good start.
Dopamine-phenylalanine, tyrosine foods:
- chicken, duck, turkey
- ricotta, cottage cheese, yogurt
- soybeans, walnuts, chocolate (Yea!), wheat germ
Acetylcholine-choline foods:
- almonds, hazelnuts, macadamia, peanut butter, pine nuts
- artichokes, broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, wheat bran and germ
- beef, eggs (yolk), fish, shrimp, soybeans
A diet that includes these foods provides a base of nutrients for brain activity and the plant based ones have an extra bonus-the ability to deal with toxic free radical chemicals which harm the brain.
Two Essential Herbs For Optimum Brain Activity
Rhodiola and Reishi mushroom are two great examples of herbs that regulate the stress response and calm the nervous system. Because they influence the pituitary gland both can have a direct impact on brain activity.
Rhodiola is an example of an herb that can influence neurotransmitter activity, in this case dopamine. Reishi works directly on the liver to clean it of drug residue and other toxic chemicals of the modern diet. Liver in Chinese medicine includes your nervous system so you get the added bonus of less agitation.
It’s Not Your Fault!
It’s not entirely your fault. Food companies flood the market with designer food loaded with chemicals to enhance the flavor and appearance. Most of them are toxic and some actually destroy the neurons in your brain. The combination of greed and ignorance about basic principles of health results in the modern diet-a highly processed, chemically altered, free radical buffet that’s a recipe for disaster.
Standard American Diet - “SAD”
You’re all aware of the term inflammation. It’s become the “hot” topic of conversation with almost every disease. Well, they are talking about the result of free radical activity and a lot of it is cause by the poor quality of food in the Standard American Diet. There’s a good reason it’s referred to as “SAD”.
As we age, this process accelerates. This process is also encouraged by environmental factors such as pollutions, radiation and fast food.
So eat well and supplement my friends. You’ll not only feel better but limit the harmful effects of stress.
Roger
This is an excellent source of information. Even though I am a practitioner, it’s always good to refresh your memory by reading others point of view. I do, however, have to disagree about the soybeans. Have you not read of the phytic acid in soybeans that binds to minerals and pulls them out of the body? Plus all of the (phyto)estrogens, that I consider xeno, that can cause breast cancers to grow rapidly? For more information on this topic you can visit my blog and click on the links. Other then that, fantastic writing. Keep up the good work. See you on Twitter!
Dear Dr Drummer and Jessica,
Ok I have been studying this a long time trying to understand it. There is Dr Campbell’s The China Study and Dean Ornish The Spectrum, Studies stating Lots of fruits and Vegies are the way to go. And in Ornish’s book soy binds the estrigen so it can not cause problems Jessica explains, but fat creates more. Then there is the protein meat eaters, this is it to them. But???????????? What to do???????????
Great post – very concise.
It’s odd how much controversy there is about soybeans; Phytic acid is present in nuts, seeds and grains. According to Wikipedia Soyabeans have the same level as Corn but nobody seems to target Corn.
The mineral chelating effect is an argument that applies to all grains – Oatmeal has a high content of Phytic acid for example.
And the Cancer argument seems equally wide of the mark. It is demographics not eating natural diets rich in soya and oats that are dying in droves from Cancer.
Thanks, BTW for your comment on the Liver and it’s connection to the Nervous system
All The Best
Alex
Hey Jessica, Alex and Brinda,
Sorry it took so long Jessica—Reply wasn’t working.
It’s best I answer you all together. Yes,the phytic acid does bind with minerals. Yes, there is xenoestrogens in soy. One of the great things about modern science is that we can know almost every chemical aspect of every single food we might ingest. The problem is that it also points out the flaw in reductionist theory in that one single thing defines the action of the whole substance. This isn’t the case with herbs or foods.
Phytic acid does reduce minerals absorbtion but it will only have a negative effect in a really unbalanced diet consisiting of mostly grains. That diet wouldn’t be good for you even without the phytic acid.
Chemicals in soy have xenoestrogenic properties(xeno meaning outside) but are actually phytoestrogens (meaning plant) which are much weaker than the ones derived from pesticides and plastics. Pesticides have the added bonus of being poisons. There is also the question of how the body handles the ones in soy as opposed to man made chemicals. A recent study from the UCLA School of Medicine shows that the same phytoestrogens turn on 113 different genes in the prostate that cause cancer cells to die. What do we do now?
All of the negative press on soy seems to come from the meat and dairy industry or health organizations who push the consumption of red meat. We all know the side effects of too much of that.I doubt if any of this new information about soy would have come out if soy milk wouldn’t have ended up in the dairy case—crowding out the milk cartons.
Before we all pull our forks out and draw battle lines let’s try to keep this in proper perspective.
Is soy totally safe? Probably not. Can it be part of a healthy diet? Sure—and so can meat. (Wow, I said that- Veggie me!) It’s all relative to the other food you consume.
Worried about phytic acid but love grains? Eat lots of organic, deep green foods and you won’t have to worry. Want a little soy? Supplement a little iodine because it raises your requirements. Like a little meat? Greens, greens and more greens to help detox, purify the blood and move it out of your colon.
I had a wonderful tofu soup at a Sushi House the other night. I ate a lot of the fresh ginger because tofu, like most vegetarian food, is very cooling to the digestive system.
The key is always moderation and it’s the whole of your diet not any one food or chemical.
Thank you Dr. Drummer! I loved your explanation and help. I think I’ll frame it.
Roger, I particularly like your response here that BALANCE is the key. By definition, “too much” of anything is too much, even if it “good” stuff. It’s something more of us need to work into our everyday outlooks. Of course, the corollary may be: Too LITTLE of anything (well, useful things) is too little.
When queried about “too much magnetism” a friend replies: Water is good for you; too much you drown. Oxygen is good for you; too much you’re poisoned. Sunlight is good for you; too much you burn. Magnetism is good for you; too much creates a black hole. Too much of ANYTHING is too much.
Roger,
What great information. I learned a lot on how stress can effect your brain. I understand how important it is to get proper nutrition through food. You have given us a great place to start even with the little bit of controversy.
Thanks.
Jeanine