Brain food Intro: Learn how to nourish your Brain. Feeding your brain is necessary to support brain health, to prevent memory loss, to enhance learning, to increase comprehension, to decrease stress, to boost mood, and to improve mental concentration. Your brain requires healthy foods, supplements, and amino-acids. Foods are the best way to feed your brain. If you are not able to acquire all the brain nutrition you need from eating foods, then minerals, vitamins, amino-acids, and drinking certain teas may help fill your dietary gaps. This article offers readers nutrition and health information for their brains.
Step 1: Eat regular light meals. Eating light meals frequently allows your body to digest foodstuffs easier and faster while using less energy. If you eat a heavy meal, your body is too busy digesting large amounts of food and less energy is left for real mental tasks because more of your blood supply goes to your stomach to help digestion, while less remains in your brain. You become sleepy and you’ll call it a day as soon as possible.
Step 2: Eat more complex carbohydrates because complex carbohydrates are energy nutrients for the brain. These foods take more time to process completely; therefore, they will keep you satisfied longer while facilitating a gradual release of nutrients in your bloodstream and to your brain, thus insuring a steady digestive process. Some of the best complex carbohydrate foods are brown rice, oatmeal, and whole grains.
Step 3: Eat more animal and plant proteins. Eating moderate amounts of protein at every meal is good for your brain. Some of the best protein meals are usually found in many soy products, nuts, dairy, beans, eggs, fishes, and meats. Larger people with healthy kidney function may need significantly more protein intake because the daily requirements for proteins vary from person to person due to size specifications. Also, you should eat more fruits and vegetables because some colorful fruits and vegetables boost brain function.
Step 4: Start consuming more minerals to maintain excellent brain function. For example, calcium helps your brain cells to communicate with one another and helps transport nutrients into your brain cells. It is needed to keep blood pressure normal. You can find calcium in yogurt, milk, tofu, dark green leafy vegetables, fortified cereals and juices. Second, zinc is needed for your brain maturation, growth, and memory. You can find zinc in oysters, crab, beef, pork, poultry, beans, fortified cereals. And third, magnesium is needed for normal nerve and brain function. Works with calcium to relax blood vessels and keep blood pressure normal. Too little magnesium may damage arteries.
Step 5: Take more brain boosting vitamins and supplements. First, omega-3 fats are needed for the development and growth of brain cells. It builds the network that brain cells use to communicate with each other and stay more fluid and nimble. The two types of omega-3 fats are EPA and DHA. You can find these fats in fish such as trout, salmon, mackerel, herring, tuna, halibut, and bass. Second, B-vitamins are good supplements for brain fuel. B-1 vitamins are pivotal in getting energy and nutrients to the brain. It is needed for communication between nerve cells. You can find B-1 in asparagus, spinach, peas and Brussels sprouts; winter squash, beans, oats, and tuna. B-6 vitamins are needed for the production of red blood cells which carry oxygen to the brain. It works well with B-12 vitamins and folate acid to keep your brain healthy. B-12 vitamins are extremely important because low levels of this vitamin may lead to dementia. It is also needed for the formation of red blood cells.
Third, lecithin is brain and nerve food, you need it when you are either fatigued or very tired, when you feel brain dead, when you are indecisive, confused, and not alert. Lecithin contains phosphatidylserine and phosphatidylcholine, which are chemicals necessary for normal brain function. Phosphatidylserine is a phospholipid that contributes to the building of brain membranes. It can increase energetic and electric activity across the whole brain. Phosphatidylcholine converts into acetylcholine, which is the memory neurotransmitter in the brain. Phosphatidylcholine is part of the actual membrane that surrounds brain cells.
And fourth, if you take B vitamins in supplement form you need lecithin to be able to retain all your B vitamins. Lecithin also contains choline, which is necessary for normal brain development before and after birth. It contains chemical ingredients that boost brain memory and reasoning. You can find choline in chicken, turkey, salmon, flounder, cod, pork, beef, and wheat germ. Lecithin is found in abundance in olives, egg yolk and avocados, liver, peanuts, soybeans, and wheat germ.
Step 6: Start taking amino-acids such as L-glutamine, and phenlalnine because they work to increase brain function. L-glutamine is a non-essential amino acid. It is a neurotransmitter for your central nervous system, your brain and spinal cord. It is necessary for the metabolism of sugars and fats, it aids in the transportation of potassium into the spinal fluid, it acts as fuel for the brain, it helps correct personality disorders, and it has been used for the treatment of epilepsy, mental retardation, and muscular dystrophy. Phenylalanine is an essential amino acid that is used by the brain to produce norepinephrine, which is a chemical that transmits signals between nerve cells in the brain. It promotes alertness and vitality, it elevates mood, it decreases pain, and it assists in reasoning and memory. It has been used to treat arthritis, depression, menstrual cramps, migraines, obesity, Parkinson’s disease, and schizophrenia.
Step 7: Take more L-arginine and L-citrulline supplements. L-arginine facilitates the potentiation of long-term memory by stimulating the production of nitric oxide (NO), which is a neurotransmitter responsible for the potentiation (storage) of long-term memory. L-arginine improves memory and cognitive functions by facilitating brain circulation.
Step 8: Drink more green tea and ginkgo biloba tea. European science researchers have discovered that green tea is an excellent drink for your brain because drinking green tea daily caused many people to develop fewer enzymes that were associated with memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease. Second, drinking ginkgo biloba tea has significant health benefits. Some of the health benefits of drinking ginkgo biloba tea includes stimulation of blood and peripheral arterial circulation, reducing lethargy and improvement in your sense of well-being, improvement in memory, reversal of some hearing disorders, improvement in equilibrium, improvement in mental alertness, and treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.
Step 9: Do more mental exercises. Although vitamins, minerals, amino-acids, and teas are good brain boosters, science researchers believe that exercising your brain may generate cognitive improvements throughout the rest of your life. So, you should read more challenging books, do more complex math, and learn new activities daily because reading and learning stimulates the brain to use the nutrition that you are feeding your body. Remember to exercise your body because there is a symbiotic relationship between a healthy mind and a fit body. In addition to physical and mental exercises, you should learn how to play and read classical music. Researchers have discovered that classical music increases brain power in young children and some adults.
Warning: The statements presented in this article have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA); therefore, this article is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. The information in this article is simply the author’s opinion.
Related Sources:
(http://www.WEBMD.com/); (http://www.livescience.com/); (http://www.greatea.com/) ;(http://www.sciencedaily.com/); (http://www.teabenefits.com/) ;(http://www.vitacost.com/Are-You-Feeding-Your-Brain); Prescription for Natural Cures by James F. Balch, M.D. and Mark Stengler, N.D. ; Prescription for Herbal Healing by Phyllis A. Balch, CNC; and Prescription for Dietary Wellness by Phillis A. Balch, CNC. Arg9 Plus by Dr. Joe Pendergrast.
