Top Ten Brain Health Nutrients

Last week’s missive set the foundation. How to build Structural Brain Health the way we’re built. Naturally. From the ground up:

The last one is doing triple duty, so let’s just call it Neck-up Damage Control.

If you would, please read each item above again, but this time rate your current health state for each with an honest 1-10 score. 10 is consistent, complete achievement. 1 is “I need to call my doctor tomorrow”. Do it now.

Are any under 6? Write them down. There’s a reason for it. I want you to remember “This where I need to focus my self-care and self-love to perform my best.”

Each of these deserve deep study. And in this Structural Brain Health editition #2 in what looks like a 10 part series, we’ll unpack each of your sub-6 opportunities, and level-up together, one at a time. Stick with me.

Today we’re moving up from the foundation to the ground floor. What nutrients does the most energy-demanding organ in our body, our brain, require to perform the miracles we do, or attempt to do, every day?

First, an admission. The Top Ten Brain Health Foundations listed above don’t match the order of critical path “floors” in the Structural Brain Health we’re building. Because I decided this deserves to be a series soon after sending it. So, let’s be like Marines and “improvise, adapt, and overcome”.

Number 4 above, our daily diet, and the benefits of the MIND diet, is today’s ground floor, before we explore supplements to supplement a brain-friendly diet.

Don’t get me wrong. Taking supplements as dietary band-aids is not a bad reason to take them. The research literature supports that. But our goal is optimization, not remediation.

Does my high-achieving, active lifestyle reader have any such nutritional deficit? Let’s start there.

The Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) diet was developed in 2015 by Martha Clare Morris at Rush University, which overlaps with the Mediterranean diet with Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet.¹

The MIND diet was found to reduce the risk of Alzheimers by up to 53%, depending on adherence. 960 older adults were tracked over 4.7 years to indicate higher (if self-reported) global cognition in five cognitive domains: Episodic memory, semantic memory, working memory, perceptual speed, and visuospatial (visually processed spatial relationship recognition) ability. Again, we’ll go deeper in this in future editions of BrainHealth.news.

For now: Which of the following foods containing the MIND diet’s brain health compounds do you frequently consume?

My last ask today is for you to review these foods again, but slowly. Then write a yourself a love note, answering this question; which of these foods am I not eating daily? What non-MIND foods do I often eat that I could eat less often?

Based on your list, make adjustments proportional to your intention for self-care. Love your self enough to do yourself good long term. Not only feel pleasure short term.

To be sure, when we eat for pleasure first and health second, we deserve no judgement. Including no self-judgement. It’s nothing personal. It’s evolution. Our mouth only lies to our brain because the reward system evolved to reward what was once scarce in nature: quick energy for survival. We should not judge it. Only understand it.

The principal to put in to play here is progress over perfection. Let’s strive to increase mindful awareness each day, however much we can, of when we’re eating for health vs pleasure. I call it eating from the neck-up vs neck-down.

The MIND diet, eating for the neck-down (epigenetic, whole biome, deep health) system, is what our brain needs. These are the foods that built the brain structures that set our species apart from all the others through evolution.

Nature seeks homeostasis, equilibrium. Moderation is a means. A mind+body health virtue. For high-achievers, orthorexia is a risk too. Remain mindful, even vigilant. Balance neck-up pleasure and neck-down health. The quality of our journey, together, is the destination.

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