Food for the brain
What that means to you and me, in terms of how, or if, we ought to change our diet to optimize and sustain brain health, is the focus of research around the globe. Just like physical health, mental and emotional health is intimately tied to the quality of our diet. Pandemic or not, one thing is abundantly clear: What we eat matters to our brains.
Growing evidence suggests the right diet may mitigate some of the ill effects of stress, while the wrong one may worsen the effects, especially during sensitive periods of brain development and aging when dietary factors take on heightened import. The kind of “uncertainty stress” induced by pandemic unknowns may be particularly taxing, keeping the brain in a constant state of high alert. For starters, it may increase the metabolic demands of the brain, which already commands about 20 percent of the body’s energy in normal adulthood (and up to two-thirds in early childhood). Stress interacts with diet in myriad ways to influence brain function. The question takes on new urgency in the context of a global pandemic in which many people are existing in a state of persistent, heightened pandemic stress.
What if all this focus is missing the real culprit of cognitive health: the high-fat, sugar-heavy overprocessed Western diet? 35 grams of EPA (the two types of omega-3s found in seafood).The constant stream of “news” and promos touting the next best diet to follow or food to consume to achieve better brain health can make it hard to sort out science-based hope from over-marketed hype. Three ounces of wild salmon contains about 1.24 grams of DHA and. "These are all very high in the omega-3’s that your brain needs on a daily basis." Adult women require about 1.1 grams of omega-3s per day, according to the National Institutes of Health. "I recommend cold water, fatty fish, especially Alaskan salmon, mackerel, blue fish, sardines, or anchovies," says Dr. These are the brain foods a neuroscientist wants you to add to your diet 1. Of all the foods she has researched, seven stand out as absolutely essential for brain health. "There are gates in the brain that open and close depending on whether the brain is 'hungry.' No other organs in the body have the same strict rules," she tells Well+Good. The neuroscientist has dedicated her personal brain power to studying the blood-brain barrier, which determines which nutrients can-and cannot-make their way into the organ upstairs. Put simply: Everything in the brain that isn’t made by the brain itself is 'imported' from the food we eat," explains Dr. The brain, being radically efficient, makes many of these nutrients itself, and only 'accepts' whatever else it needs from our diets. "To function best, the brain requires around 45 nutrients that are as distinct as the molecules, cells, and tissues they shape. "Put simply: Everything in the brain that isn’t made by the brain itself is 'imported' from the food we eat." -neuroscientist Lisa Mosconi, PhD Mosconi's, reveals why: What we eat directly affects our cognition. Nutritional psychiatry has invited the foods we eat to be part of the larger conversation around mental health. "Parts of the foods we eat will end up being the very fabric of our brains." Brain-focused nourishment writ large has been on the rise in the wide world of wellness. "As a society, we are comfortable with the idea that we feed our bodies, and much less aware that we're feeding our brains too," she says.