BRAINology 101+: The Bits
Why
carbs are destroying your brain
blared
the heading of a book review in The Times (London) of 18 January 2014
This book review brought to mind an
earlier feature in the German magazine FOCUS of 18 June 2012
A summary of this article, which I
had made for another occasion at the time, I repeated as comment on the Times article:
According to this FOCUS
article, Atkins’ theory has been confirmed by Susan Masino in Frontiers of
Neuroscience: ‘A high-fat diet containing lots of carbohydrates promotes fat
storage, a high-fat/low-carb diet, however, [leads to] fat burning’. In
addition to further reporting on medically supervised trials, the article also
mentions that high-fat/low carb diets were first developed at the Mayo Clinic
in 1921 as a measure to reduce the severity of epileptic attacks (when weight
loss was also observed as a ‘side effect’). Further benefits or areas of
current research of high-fat/low carb diets are the avoidance or amelioration
of type 2 diabetes, stroke, multiple sclerosis, depression, autism, migraine,
Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and cancer (study at Würzburg University).
Mrs Ernestine Brett, commented in the
Times in reply:
The Germans have all
sorts of strange obsessive ideas about health. My aunt and uncle, for instance,
insisted on moving bedrooms because a water diviner found a spring under their existing
(second-floor) one and it was giving them rheumatism. What I would like to know
is why a half reputable paper is giving a double-page spread to this
pseudo-scientific alarmist nonsense, as if we didn't have far bigger worries
about unhealthy eating and obesity.
To which I commented further:
The essence is to
maintain the highest developed intelligence system in the Universe, called
brain, which to maintain needs the engine of a body powered by what we eat and
drink, as well as with information as direct brain food – somewhat along the
line of ut sit mens sana in corpore sano. To this end, I for one would
not like to feed my maintenance engine with other than the most suitable known
‘petrol’, and my brain only with memes having best known correspondence to
facts. In this respect, Dr Perlmutter’s book as reviewed by Barbara McMahon, Dr
Atkins' writings, and the sources I quoted from the FOCUS article are the best
I could find. If anyone thinks these sources are nothing but “pseudo-scientific
alarmist nonsense” I would be pleased to learn of any better advice so that I
could consider mending my ways.
And to explain my stance: I'm 'doing Atkins'
now for 23 years, triggered by my weight shooting up to 95kg after putting a
full stop to smoking. Adopting the Atkins diet, I lost 15kg within nine months,
prompting a TV interview by the BBC at the time. Weight is now at maintenance
level around 67kg, with me in best of health. My mother died at age 51 from
sudden heart failure, my father died at age of 82 having both legs eventually
amputated due to type 2 diabetes. Therefore, what better than a high fat/low
carb diet prophylactic a la Atkins & Perlmutter could there be, especially
when considering not only the physical but also the mental (I hope) health
benefits?
To which in turn EnglishRose2 commented:
‘This is exactly my
view too and in fact half of silicon valley some of the brightest people on the
planet eat like this too. It is of course not new. It is what our species ate
for 1 million years.’
Obviously, this book had to be
obtained and read:
Yellow Kite Books, Hodder
& Stoughton Ltd, London, 2014
For openers, some quotes from
introductory pages:
“The information that I
will reveal to you is not just breathtaking; it’s undeniably conclusive….
“And the benefits don’t stop at brain health. I can promise that this
program can help any of the following:
- ·
ADHD
(attention deficit hyperactivity disorder)
- ·
anxiety
and chronic stress
- ·
chronic
headaches and migraines
- ·
depression
- ·
diabetes
- ·
epilepsy
- ·
focus and
concentration problems
- ·
inflammatory
conditions and diseases, including arthritis
- ·
insomnia
- ·
intestinal
problems, including celiac disease, gluten sensitivity, and irritable bowel
- ·
memory
problems and mild cognitive impairment, frequently a precursor to Alzheimer’s
disease
- ·
mood
disorders
- ·
overweight
and obesity
- ·
Tourette’s
Syndrome
- ·
and much
more
Even if you don’t suffer from any of the above conditions, this book
can help you preserve your well-being and mental acuities. It is for both the old and the young….”
“More than one hundred
eighty-six thousand people younger than age twenty have diabetes (either type 1
or type 2) [link quoted: http://www.diabetes.webmd.com accessed May 13, 2012]. Just a decade ago,
type 2 diabetes was known as ‘adult-onset diabetes’, but with so many young
people being diagnosed, the term had to be dropped….”
“ALZHEIMER’S
DISEASE = TYPE 3 DIABETES?
Flash back to your
moment with those hunters and gatherers.
Their brains are not too different from yours…… So while your brain
might operate similarly, your sources of nutrition are anything but. In fact,
take a look at the following graphic that depicts the main differences between
our diet and that of our forebears.
And what, exactly does
this difference in dietary habits have to do with how well we age and whether
or not we suffer from a neurological disorder or disease?
Everything.
The studies describing
Alzheimer’s as a third type of diabetes began to emerge in 2005, but the link
between poor diet and Alzheimer’s has only recently been brought to light with
newer studies showing how this can happen. These studies are both convincingly
horrifying and empowering at the same time. To think we can prevent Alzheimer’s
just by changing the food we eat is, well, astonishing. This has many
implications for preventing not just Alzheimer’s disease but all other brain
disorders, as you’ll soon discover in the upcoming chapters….”
These aperitif quotations from Dr. Perlmutter’s Brain Drain will, I hope, be sufficient reasons to trigger your own
further exploration at source – if only for personal reasons.
But personal reasons alone would not
make it relevant to my reading and writing about global aspects of Clean Energy
as defined at the top of each of my blogsite entries, which in turn arose from
the three tenets which together form the self-chosen parameters for my trying
to understand things:
-
“…to
render the total chemical and energy resources of the world, which are now
exclusively preoccupied in serving only 44% of humanity, adequate to the
service of 100% of humanity, at higher standards of living and total enjoyment
than any man has yet experienced.”
Buckminster Fuller’s 1963 proposed World
Design Science Decade 1965-1975
-
“Treat the earth well: it was not given to
you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit
the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.”
Ancient American Indian Proverb
- “Libraries are not just depositories of
books, but cornerstones of democracy. True democracy --based upon the informed
consent of the governed --cannot exist without full free and public access to knowledge.”
Seattle City Librarian Deborah Jacobs, as
quoted by Bruce Mau
If you will, these
three make a good mission statement for the global job-in-hand together with
its timeframe and its working method. [http://www.lmhdesign.co.uk/planet.php]
Thanks to science,
technology and humanism of the Age of Reason with their increasing applications
in exploration, trade, industrialisation and education, tremendous achievements
were made in living standards and wealth (livingry,
in Buckminster Fuller’s vocabulary) over the last five hundred years or so; not
to be overlooked, however, must be the equally tremendous increase in killingry, when measured by the
slaughter of some hundred million people through the two World Wars in the last
century alone.
As a rough and ready
measure of livingry progress let me take life expectancy at birth
(expectancy at birth is thought to include aspects of medicine, health
and hygiene standards):
The table of historical world figures
shows a rough doubling of life expectancy since the early 20th
Century compared to all previous human history; the graph of current life
expectancies at birth shows a difference of nearly 200% between the worst and
(by this measure) best locations on Earth.
One of these correlations is of further
particular interest to my current topic, and that is the apparent relationship
between wealth/health and fertility, quoting directly from the Filip Spagnoli
website:
“22.
GDP and fertility rates
Well, GNI, actually, not GDP:
But the same is true for GDP:
It seems that the
richer a country the lower the average number of children, which is kind of
obvious. A large number of children is typically an insurance against the risk
of infant mortality and is typical for agricultural societies dependent on
manual labour in family run farms.
However, more prosperity doesn’t always equal less children. An
economic downturn, for instance, can also reduce the number of children:
”
To sum up these graphically
presented statistics collected by Filip Spagnoli:
.
WEALTH relates to HEALTH, to lengths of
LIVES and to
rates of BIRTHS
.
not to mention
myriads of other things that are connected with Wealth.
Time to recollect the topic of this
brainhealth exercise, concisely summed up in the epigram taken from the
opening line of a poem by Juvenal, as to which I would like to present a quote
from an essay in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_sana_in_corpore_sano
as a brief interlude before going further:
“Mens sana in corpore sano is a famous Latin quotation, often translated as, "A sound mind in a healthy
body."
The phrase comes
from Satire X of the Roman poet Juvenal (10.356). It is the first in a list of
what is desirable in life:
English translation:
You should pray for a healthy
mind in a healthy body.
Ask for a stout heart that has no fear of death,
and deems length of days the least of Nature's gifts
that can endure any kind of toil,
that knows neither wrath nor desire and thinks
the woes and hard labours of Hercules better than
What I commend to you, you can give to yourself;
For assuredly, the only road to a life of peace is virtue.
|
In original Latin:
orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.
fortem posce animum
mortis terrore carentem,
qui spatium vitae
extremum inter munera ponat
naturae, qui ferre
queat quoscumque labores,
nesciat irasci,
cupiat nihil et potiores
Herculis aerumnas
credat saevosque labores
et venere et cenis
et pluma Sardanapalli.
monstro quod ipse
tibi possis dare; semita certe
tranquillae per
virtutem patet unica vitae.
|
Traditional
commentators believe that Juvenal's intention was to teach his fellow Roman citizens that in the main, their prayers for such things as long
life are misguided. That the gods had provided man with virtues which he then lists for them.
Over time and separated from its context, the phrase has come to have a
range of meanings. It can be construed to mean that only a healthy body can
produce or sustain a healthy mind. Its most general usage is to express the
hierarchy of needs: with physical and mental health at the root.
An earlier, similar
saying is attributed to the pre-Socratic philosopher Thales:
τίς εὐδαίμων, "ὁ τὸ μὲν σῶμα ὑγιής, τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν εὔπορος, τὴν δὲ
φύσιν εὐπαίδευτος"
What man is happy? "He who has a healthy body, a resourceful mind
and a docile nature."
For probably the most comprehensive
description of “…long-term dietary change
and its consequences for agricultural production, trade, food consumption,
environment, and health,” [quoted
from its Preface], here is a book I would
suggest, as its scope appears an overview of consequences that might have to be
considered globally if Dr Perlmutter’s findings were widely adopted:
MIT
Press, Cambridge Mass. and London, England, 2012
Japan achieved an extraordinary
increase in longevity over the last Century (from male/female 43/44 years in
1900 to 75.8/80.6 years in 2010) descriptively summarized in the title of Chapter
1: Japanese Diet, 1900-2010: From
Subsistence to Affluence and quoting further from the opening description in this book’s
Preface already referred to:
“[This book’s]…scope dictates
interdisciplinary coverage and precludes any simple categorization: the book
draws on findings from historical and economic studies, agronomic and
agricultural analyses, and the fields of nutrition, public health, demography,
and environmental science. The intent has been to present a multifaceted
evaluation of a process whose nature and impact can be truly appreciated only
through a broad-based inquiry….”
A book of such breadth and depth can
IMHO not usefully be further recommended for reading by short quotations – it
is, of course, a TYGER MustRead. A short look at the Contents page may
nevertheless be helpful in reinforcing this view:
[the Series Foreword
“…presents the ninth book in the Food, Health, and the Environment
series…” by Series editor Robert Gottlieb, Occidental College, MIT Press]
In this history of diet change in
Japan during 110 years, Smil and Kobayashi particularly only note the dietary
benefits regarding diseases like cancer, cardiovascular, and coronary heart
disorders (but also Mianamata with its poisonous effects from mercury
contaminated fish). Age or brain related
diseases like dementia, Alzheimer’s or diabetes find no special mention.
Obesity, however, with its very low
incidence compared to the North American norm, is highlighted as a special
benefit of the Japanese diet. Adult
obesity in Japan was only 3.9% in 2005, “…when
the U.S. rate had surpassed 33% (the highest prevalence among the leading
economies) and the European shares
ranged from 10 percent in Italy to about 23 percent in England…).
With that, back to diet – the obvious
follow-on from mentioning obesity in any conversation.
“No
diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat.
Without a brain, you might look god, but all you could do is run for public
office,” commented George Bernard Shaw on the subject.
Another often-heard comment is ‘It must be
in the genes!” - which raises an
interesting further question to be asked in consequence, namely: ‘what genes?’
One’s own, of course, but:
“Compared
to about ten trillion human cells, there are about ninety trillion cells in our
body that are not actually ‘us’; and the majority reside in the gut. The Human
Microbiome Project’s researchers (see p59 of The WIRED World in 2013) showed these microbes collectively contain over 100
times more genes than our own genome, and these contribute significantly to our
health and well-being. In the gastrointestinal tract, for example, bacteria can
provide essential nutrients and help us digest foods that we otherwise could
not absorb. But they can also metabolise drugs we take, lowering their efficacy
or even creating toxic byproducts. Microbiome function is believed to be so
essential and pervasive that many have recently referred to it as the
‘invisible organ’ “.
[from an article in WIRED
magazine 03.14 titled Smart toilets and
sewer sensors are coming by Yanic J Turgeman, Eric Alm and Carlo
Ratti. Carlo Ratti is director and Yanic
J Turgeman the head of research of the MIT SENSEable City Lab. Eric Alm is an
associate professor in MIT’s department of biological engineering.]
Combining this last
consideration with the two earlier books referred to, puts a completely
different emphasis on two quotes by ‘The Philosopher in the Kitchen’ – Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (French lawyer
who had also studied chemistry and medicine, 1755-1826),
“Tell
me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.”
“The
fate of a nation depends on the way that they eat.”
or in grand summary on an
individual basis, provided by Thomas Alva Edison,
“The
chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.”
To do that, we need to maintain a healthy body capable of maintaining
the brain equally healthy throughout life.
“The liver, for example, perpetually regenerates by growing new liver
cells, and similar regeneration of cells occurs in virtually all other tissues,
including skin, blood, bone and intestines.” [Grain Brain, p129]
It is often written that, in fact, the whole body, atom by atom, renews
itself about every ten years – with the exception of brain cells – neurons –
which can only die, and do so. However….
“In my previous book, ‘Power Up Your
Brain: The Neuroscience of Enlightenment’, Dr Alberto Villoldo and I told the
story of how science has come to understand the gift of neurogenesis in
humans…. In 1998, the journal ‘Nature Medicine’ published a report by Swedish
neurologist Peter Eriksson in which he claimed that within our brains exists a
population of neural stem cells that are continually replenished and
differentiate into brain neurons. And indeed, he was right: We all experience
brain ‘stem cell therapy’ every minute of our lives. This has led to a new science
called neuroplasticity.” [Grain
Brain, p130f].
Wow o Wow!
To paraphrase Edison
while remembering Juvenal:
“Being alive entails maintaining a healthy body whose
chief function is to maintain a healthy brain throughout life’s duration.”
The energy for all this maintenance
work including its ongoing renewal of brawn and brain can only come through what we eat, drink and breathe. If
we sum these three inputs with respect to requisite availability and quality as
‘wealth’, let me recall the earlier summary of resultant effects:
WEALTH relates to HEALTH, to lengths of LIVES and to rates of BIRTHS
and let me consider
further the effects of the dietary changes proposed in Dr Perlmutter’s Grain Brain with respect to life
expectancy and attendant issues.
As already described, the first
effect of the eradication of hunger is a remarkable increase in life
expectancy, as shown in the Gapminder
World Map 2010 earlier. This and
other descriptions so far have shown how we have got here and why. Important now is, how best available
forecasts of future life expectancy describe what awaits us. Some graphical descriptions might best make
these astounding figures memorable:
The demographic shift in aging populations is of special
importance for further consideration:
Apart from the purely numerical increase
in world population from the current seven billion to about nine billion in
2050 there are, for current purposes of nutritional considerations only, two
qualitative aspects to consider, namely famine+thirst, and health .
With regard to the former duality, “the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization estimates that nearly 870 million people of the 7.1 billion people
in the world, or one in eight, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in
2010-2012. Almost all the hungry people, 852 million, live in developing
countries, representing 15 percent of the population of developing counties.
There are 16 million people undernourished in developed countries (FAO 2012).”
and “Water scarcity already affects every continent. Around 1.2 billion people, or almost
one-fifth of the world's population, live in areas of physical scarcity, and
500 million people are approaching this situation. Another 1.6 billion people,
or almost one quarter of the world's population, face economic water shortage
(where countries lack the necessary infrastructure to take water from rivers
and aquifers). Water scarcity is among
the main problems to be faced by many societies and the World in the XXIst
century. Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population
increase in the last century.”
A short glance at US water
consumption may be opportune here. Of
note there is the high demand from thermoelectric power generation – yes, even a
nuclear reactor is simply powering yet another big ‘steam engine’ while also cooling
itself to avoid its own meltdown – closely followed by the high demands of
agricultural irrigation.
From the World Health Organization comes this summary, useful for a
recap here:
“Are you
ready? What you need to know about ageing
World
Health Day 2012 - Toolkit for event organizers
Our world is changing
Key facts
- The number
of people today aged 60 and over has doubled since 1980.
- The number
of people aged 80 years will almost quadruple to 395 million between now and
2050.
- Within the
next five years, the number of adults aged 65 and over will outnumber children
under the age of 5.
- By 2050,
these older adults will outnumber all children under the age of 14.
- The majority
of older people live in low- or middle-income countries. By, 2050, this number
will have increased to 80%.
- In
the 21st century, health is determined by and contributes to broad social
trends. Economies are globalizing, more and more people live and work in
cities, family patterns are changing and technology is evolving rapidly. One of
the biggest social transformations is population ageing. Soon, the world will
have more older people than children and more people of very old age than ever
before.”
With aging populations come related
diseases, like diabetes, senile dementia and Alzheimer’s, for examples. A mention of that other disease – obesity – attracts
this mention in another WHO publication:
“Obesity is increasing rapidly in both developed and
developing countries. This reflects declining levels of physical activity and
the rising consumption of diets high in sugars and fats. This trend is also
obvious among young people. A generation is entering adulthood with
unprecedented levels of obesity. According to the International Obesity Task
Force (IOTF) and the WHO World Health Report 2002, about 58% of diabetes
globally can be attributed to body mass index (BMI) above 21 kg/m2.
Obesity and type 2 diabetes are
linked. Weight gain leads to insulin resistance through several mechanisms.
Insulin resistance places a greater demand on the pancreas to produce insulin.
At the same time, physical inactivity, both a cause and consequence of weight
gain, also contributes to insulin resistance. Diabetes occurs when the body’s
need for insulin outstrips the ability of the pancreas to produce it.
The sheer scale of the obesity and
diabetes epidemics require responses at a population level, as well as by individuals.
Approaches based only on personal education to promote behaviour change are
unlikely to succeed in an environment where there are plentiful inducements to
engage in opposing behaviours. Personal education must be supported by
appropriate changes to the broader environment, such as transportation, urban
design, advertising and food pricing.
WHO and IDF support numerous
strategies, worldwide, aimed at addressing issues associated with diet and
physical activity. It is recognized that only through constructive partnerships,
involving governments, civil society and private sector, can the necessary
changes be made that will reverse current trends towards overweight and obesity
and the range of chronic diseases associated with them.”
The adoption of a high-fat/low carb diet has already proved itself as an
effective weight loss diet countermanding obesity practically as a side-effect.
If then the dietary
recommendations of Dr Perlmutter’s Grain
Brain were to be adopted, not only personally but also nationally and
eventually globally, then obesity, diabetes as well as all other age related
brain deteriorations could be described by the most extensively documented
occurrence – Alzheimer’s disease.
Let’s have a quick look at diabetes first,
as shown in Brain Grain,
before we turn to Alzheimer’s:
“Natasha Khan and Daryl Loo of
Bloomberg look at the growing problem of Alzheimer’s in China. According to one
estimate, the country now has the world’s largest population of sufferers of
the disease:
- ·
‘In China, there
are only about 300 qualified physicians to treat more than 9 million dementia
sufferers. The shortage is overwhelming families and threatening resources from
an already stretched welfare system as the country ages. … Life expectancy in
China has increased seven years to 76 since 1990. The flip side of that
progress is that an aging population has combined with rapid modernization to
fuel a rise in mental illness from depression to Alzheimer’s even as the nation
has directed only limited resources toward the elderly.
- ·
Between 2000 and
2010, the number of Alzheimer’s patients grew 53 percent to an estimated 5.7
million.
- ·
This isn’t just a
China story. After years of being thought of as a disease of the wealthy,
Alzheimer's is increasingly proliferating in middle- and lower-income
countries. A 2008 study in the Lancet found that
rates of dementia “in urban Latin America (approaching 10%) resemble those in
high-income countries.’
According to the London-based Alzheimer’s Disease International, “Already 62% of people with dementia live in
developing countries, but by 2050 this will rise to 71%. The fastest growth in
the elderly population is taking place in China, India, and their south Asian
and western Pacific neighbours.”
It
is obviously something of a victory for global public health that life expectancies
even in developing countries are reaching the point where conditions like
Alzheimer’s or diabetes are become widespread problems. But it’s also a sign
that in the next century, we may need to reframe some priorities.”
Some further illustrations from the Alzheimer’s
Disease International web site will save many words
If ?
It rather seems When
? is the question to ask.
Which inevitably leads to How? But that needs an extrapolation of
Dr Perlmutter’s
concluding paragraph in his Brain Drain
before any answers can be attempted:
“Until we face a health challenge
that affects our brains’ functionality, we tend to take our mental faculties
for granted. We assume that our mind will travel with us wherever we go. But
what if that doesn’t happen? And what if we can in fact guarantee our mental
prowess and brain power just by actively nurturing the brain in the ways I’ve
described? We all cherish the right to free speech, the right to privacy , and
the right to vote, among others. These are fundamental to our way of life. But
what about the right to a long life, free of cognitive decline and mental
disease? You can claim this right today. I hope you do.”
That’s fine by me, but here’s the real challenge: what about the other 8,999,999,999 +/- a few hundred
million or so, alive by 2050, who expect a brain-food diet a la Perlmutter as a fundamental human right?
Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, speaking at WIRED 2013 conference
[WIRED magazine
03.14]:
“Post-humans will evolve from our
species not via natural selection but by design. They could be silicon based,
or they could be organic creatures who had won the battle with death.”
But in addition to conquering food, water and fresh air famines,
Homo
Sapiens will first have to win the battle against Bedlam.
oooooooooo000000000000000ooooooooo
Postscript on 30 April 2014:
an illustration of the direct relationship between bits and oneself, i.e. not only 'are you what you eat' but you also are what your mother ate:
oooooooooo000000000000000ooooooooo
Postscript 10 May 2014
University of Graz Study Finds Vegetarians Are Unhealthier, More Mentally Disturbed Than Meat-Lovers
oooooooooo000000000000000ooooooooo
Postscript 14 June 2015
see also Scientific American Tending the garden within at
http://www.scientificamerican.com/editorial/innovations-in-the-microbiome/
Postscript added 02 MAY 2016
Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2016
and for an appetizer:
"The quality of our diet
matters most. Real, whole, fresh, unadulterated, unmodified foods: Those must be the starting point. There are
other things that contribute to weight gain and obesity besides what we eat – such as our genetics, activity levels,
stress levels, gut flora, and environmental toxins and obesogens (toxins that
cause obesity) – and that modify our risk of disease and even our
response to different foods. But it is still true that the biggest determinant
of our weight and our health is the food we eat.
And a review of the research shows that for many traditional cultures
across the globe, fat is coveted, special, and necessary. Tibetans put butter
in their tea. In China, pork fat is sold as a delicacy and preferred to the
meat. Traditional cultures always preferred the organs of animals, high in fat.
The Plains Indians ate the liver and organs of the buffalo first. And most of
us thrive on higher-fat diets, especially those with pre-diabetes and type 2
diabetes, or what I like to call diabesity.
Our diets are so different today than they were 12,000 to 14,000 years ago when we were hunter-gatherers. The
agricultural revolution and the advent of animal husbandry led to the
replacement of traditional foods with cereal grains and dairy. However, all
food was still organic, grass-fed, whole. Because of the Industrial Revolution,
our diet has been transformed more in the last 100 years than it was in the previous 10,000. The Industrial Revolution has
led to the manipulation of crop genetics through increased hybridization
and genetic modification, intensive
animal husbandry in confined animal feeding operations, the refining of vegetable
and seed oils as well as cereal grains, the development of trans fats and
high-fructose corn syrup, the dramatic decrease in omega-3 fats we obtained
from wild foods, the increase in refined omega-6 oils, the use of chemicals
(pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers,
antibiotics, and hormones), and the depletion of nutrients in the soil.
The quality of our diet has dramatically declined. From the perspective of food as
simply a source of energy and calories, none of this would matter, but the
science has peeled back this simplistic view to reveal
a powerful understanding of the role of food in all of our biological
processes, from the regulation of which genes get turned on or off, to the regulation of hormones, the production
of immune messengers and neurotransmitters, the balance of gut flora, and even
the structure and composition of our cells and tissues and organs.
Let’s dig into the wide
world of fats, so you can make sense of the different kinds and how they affect
our biology."
oooooooooo000000000000000ooooooooo
As Juvenal wrote some 1800 years ago:
ORANDUM EST UT SIT MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO
One should earnestly pray that a healthy Body is also inhabited by a sound Mind
and not forgetting 'You Are What You Eat', this story continues with
BRAINOLOGY - THE BYTES
is at
