Living Well
How you think and feel is directly affected by what you eat. This idea might seem strange, but eating the right food for brain health has been proven to
Our memories, thoughts, actions, emotions and ability to focus are all controlled by chemicals in our brain, which travel across a network of interconnecting brain cells.
These chemicals and brain cells require nutrients such as proteins and healthy fats to act as building blocks for their structure and vitamins and minerals to act as the keys to activate their function – without an adequate supply of nutrients we just can’t make enough and that’s when our food for brain health gets hazy and our mood plummets.
Not feeding the brain and body well can increase the potential for the brain to degenerate into disease states such as mental health disorders, dementias and conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
Genetic susceptibility and environmental or lifestyle factors, join together to contribute to most chronic disease states, including those of the brain.
Poor food choices and low nutrient intake, especially when combined with high stress, low exercise and minimal sleep, are well-documented contributors to disease states such as oxidative stress, inflammation and insulin resistance and therefore, chronic illness.
Findings from The Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey implicated oxidative stress in the aging process and in the pathological changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementing disorders.
Researchers at Iowa State University found a strong association between insulin resistance and memory function decline and suggest that this link increases the risk for Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.
Inflammation is a mutual acquaintance of both oxidative stress and insulin resistance and all have been linked to dementias including AD. In 2004 the Scripps Research Institute proposed a theory that chronic inflammation is central to the development of AD, noting that it caused proteins to “misfold” to form the amyloid plaques of AD.
Keeping it healthy with the right diet and lifestyle may well be the first step in getting the most out of our gray matter.
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