Brainfood
As more and more attention is paid to the most effective ways to improve cognitive brain function, let’s look at the often ignored factor in the brain function equation. Namely, food.
We are bombarded from all sides with information regarding how the food we eat impacts our health. Radio, TV, movies, and magazines devote a great deal of time extolling the virtue of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. What Brain is the common denominator? They all focus[SS2] on the effects of food on the body. It just makes sense foods impact our brains, too.
While some of the foods on the list may surprise you, there are no true SURPRISES. Cheesecake is not the key to increasing your memory by 40%. Frozen French fries are not transformed into a superfood whenever they are exposed to the boiling oil of a deep fryer. But don’t stop here, because the real surprise is the ease of adding simple foods we already know and love to our diets to maximize our brain power.
We discovered a wealth of foods that are delicious, cheap, and easy to find throughout the entire year. Some taste great by themselves, while others are easy to incorporate into everyday dishes. In fact, we’ve gathered five of the “heavy hitters” together and put together a “mega meal”, guaranteed to get and keep, your brain firing on all cylinders.
Beverage:
Green Tea – Your body loves antioxidants and there is one drink that is chocked full of them. What is this high-octane beverage? The one and only, green tea. Though its benefits have been touted by Eastern medicine for thousands of years, it’s only recently that we have begun to unlock the science behind these benefits. One important study in San Francisco discovered green tea was rich in polyphenols. Not only do these hardworking antioxidants help prevent cellular damage associated with free radicals, they can help boost the availability of dopamine in areas where it is needed. The even flow of dopamine throughout the day is an important part of regulating and maintaining a positive attitude and demeanor. Click on this link to learn more about the fantastic properties of green tea.
Appetizer:
Blueberries – We’ve known for a while that these little guys were rich in antioxidants. Namely, anthocyanins, proanthocyanins, resveratrol, and tannins. Besides protecting us from cancer, heart disease, and possibly even dementia, British scientists recently discovered a new benefit. Antioxidants activate an enzyme called Enos, which increases the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain. With this boost, brains performed memory and concentration exercises an average of 15 to 20 percent better after five hours than the group without the blueberries. There’s nothing better for helping you maintain focus and comprehension in an all-night study session or that mid-afternoon conference call with the home office. Read more about this groundbreaking study here.
Main Course:
Avocados – These sometimes get a bad rap because of their high-fat content. But as we know, not all fats are created equal. Avocados are packed with monosaturated or “good” fat. In addition, they contain vitamin K and folate. These two are responsible for blood flowing clot-free to the brain as well as improving both memory and concentration. The humble avocado is incredibly versatile and can be used in a number of delicious dishes. Here are some of my personal favorites.
Wild Salmon – Did you know your brain was fat? Like, REALLY fat. And that’s okay. It’s supposed to be. In fact, your brain is 60 percent fat. To be more specific, essential fatty acids (EFAs). Two-thirds of the EFAs in your brain are made up of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), an omega-3 EFA. The interesting thing about DHA is it’s not produced by the body. We get our initial supply in utero from the diet of our mothers. That supply lasts until about the age of five, at which point we must begin to fend for ourselves through the food we eat. This is where wild salmon comes in. As an oily fish, it’s rich in Omega-3s. Omega-3s do a lot of remarkable things in the brain, but one of its most important tasks is helping produce neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters provide information to the cells about what to do and are essential for the smooth neural transfer of information down the axon, the neuron’s highway. One final note about salmon, always make sure you’re eating wild-caught salmon instead of farm-raised. Besides having a flatter, less vibrant taste, farm-raised salmon have higher levels of toxic PCBs, added chemicals for color, a higher level of antibiotics than any other livestock, and, perhaps most importantly, much lower levels of Omega-3s. Click here to learn more about ESAs and the human brain.
Dessert:
Dark Chocolate – What would our healthy meal be without a little sweet treat for dessert? Enter, dark chocolate. This dusky, delicious treat is another food that is rich antioxidants. Most notably, flavonoids, which are able to penetrate and accumulate in the brain regions involved in learning and memory, particularly the hippocampus. Many tests have proven the beneficial effects of dark chocolate when it comes to boosting the results of standardized cognitive test scores. One of the largest and most comprehensive was conducted at Stanford University in 2009. You can read about the results and the methodology of the study here.
One final word about eating and brain function. As much as the cognitive function can be helped by eating a diet rich in brain-boosting foods, it can also be harmed by eating the wrong foods. Besides avoiding excess amounts of “healthy” foods like tuna and tofu, by far the most damaging food you can consume is anything that’s highly processed or precooked.
These foods have many nasty things added. Things like preservatives, additives, dyes, and artificial flavors all can negatively impact our behavior and cognitive functioning. A pretty good rule of thumb is this: If you didn’t have to get out of your car to take care of dinner, you should probably throw those greasy sacks in the trash on your way home and prepare some of these superfoods to give you and your family’s brain the cognitive boost it so desperately needs.
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