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Do this for your brain June 21, 2016 |
For your brain!
I have become increasingly interested in brain health since it appears to be the source of health for the rest of your body, as well as for your mental and social health. When your brain is unhealthy, you feel off. You can be depressed, anxious, have symptoms of ADD or ADHD, feel socially isolated, and have chronic pain. You can have memory problems, and get more injuries because of the communication problems with your muscles, ligaments, and immune system in the rest of your body. Almost every kind of illness in the body starts in the brain or ends up there.
There are a lot of ways we can improve our brains, but I am going to start with the most obvious one... what you eat! I watched a presentation by Dr. Mark Hyman, a wholistic doctor in California that has written books about how to care for your brain. His basic message is stop giving it the bad stuff and start giving it the good stuff. He listed off a whole list of things not to eat.
He also mentions sleep deprivation, stress, and lack of exercise as factors. I will talk more about those next time.
So what do you eat?Real food!It is surprising how hard it is these days to eat Real Food. When you look at your plate, it should be mostly plant based with a small amount of protein, like fish, organic chicken, eggs, grass fed meat. You food by volume should be mostly plants, and by calories mostly fat... Yes fat! Your brain is made of fat and needs lots of good fat to function properly. In fact, your whole body will run better on fat, and burn your own fat if you are getting your calories from good fat. What are good fats? Nuts, seeds, avocado, coconut oil, olive oil, grass fed butter, organic egg yolks, fish oil, Krill oil. Actually, I was planning on writing this newsletter on Krill oil and it's amazing benefits over fish oil, but I guess I'll have to save that one for next time. As a teaser... it appears to be 48 times stronger than fish oil. We will talk about why next time!
Is it hard to know what is healthy to eat?The truth is that is it not. As Dr. Hyman put it "If God made it, eat it. If man made it, don't."What is hard is figuring out how to do it in your life. Just start with buying whole foods and learn to prepare them in simple ways. Buy an avocado this week. They are delicious with salt, pepper and olive oil, or salsa. When you buy pre-made stuff, make sure you can understand the ingredients. If the list is more that 4 lines, don't buy it. The less ingredients, the better. Food is more than calories, it is information. More and more information is lost the further it is from the field. Try to eat food as close to it's source as possible. Your backyard garden is the best! We will talk more about Krill oil next time. Wishing you health and freedom from pain!
Mary X. Psaromatis, DC Dr_Mary@MusclePainSolutions.com PS. Hope to see you there! |
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