Thinking Beyond Science

What happens when you substantially reduce your carbohydrate intake and derive more of your calories from fat? You turn your body into a fat-burning machine. When you follow a diet low in carbohydrates, minimal in protein, and rich in healthy fats and plant-based fibers, you stimulate the body to use fat rather than glucose for fuel. More specifi-cally, you force the body to turn to specialized substances called ketones for energy. In the absence of carbohydrates, ketones are produced by the liver using fatty acids from your food or body fat.

These ketones are then released into the bloodstream, where they can travel to the brain and other organs to be used as fuel. A so-called ketogenic diet -one that derives 80 to 90 percent of calories from fat, and the rest from fibrous carbohydrates (e.g, whole fruits and vegetables) and high-quality protein – is the foundation of the Grain Brain Whole Life Plan.

Your body is in a state of ketosis when it’s creating ketones for fuel instead of relying on glucose. A mild state of ketosis is healthy. We are mildly ketotic when we first wake up in the morning, as our liver is mobilizing body fat to feed our hungry organs. Both the heart and the brain run more efficiently, by as much as 25 percent, on ketones than on blood sugar. The brain’s energy needs account for 20 percent of total energy expenditure, and healthy, normal brain cells thrive when fueled by ketones.

Neurological diseases may all have their distinct characteristics and underlying causes, but one feature they share in common is deficient energy production. When the body uses ketones to maintain normal brain cell metabolism, some of those ketones are a more efficient fuel than glucose, as ketones provide more energy per unit of oxygen used. Being in ketosis also amplifies the number of mitochondria in brain cells, the cells’ energy factories. Studies have documented that ketosis shores up the hippocampus, the brain’s main center for learning and memory.

In age-related brain diseases, hippocampus cells often degenerate, leading to cognitive dysfunction and memory loss. But with greater energy reserves, the neurons are better buffered against disease stressors.

The gut and the brain are, in fact, intricately connected. The gut has an impact on the brain’s function in the moment as well as in the long term; it influences your risk of developing a neurodegenerative condition, like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease. Brain Maker covered the science of the microbiome in depth, especially as it relates to brain health, and since its publication newer studies have continued to confirm the facts. For example, in 2015 a landmark European study found a powerful relationship between an unhealthy intestinal microbiome, often referred to as gut dysbiosis, and the development of Parkinson’s disease. Some are even calling the intestinal microbiota, or gut flora, the brain’s “peacekeeper.”

Extended family of more than 100 trillion organisms-mostly bacteria living within the gut – that outnumber your own cells ten to one. These organisms’ metabolic products and genetic material are also considered to be part of the microbiome. Amazingly, a full 99 percent of the genetic material in your body is housed by your microbiome! It supports and nurtures every aspect of your physiology, including what goes on in the brain.

We now know that our lifestyle choices help shape and sustain our microbiome. We also know that the health of the microbiome factors into immune system function, inflammation levels, and risk for illnesses as diverse as depression, obesity, bowel disorders, multiple scle-rosis, asthma, and even cancer.

National Cancer Institute has recently revealed that certain gut bacteria regulate and “educate” the immune system in such a way that they can help reduce the growth of tumors; what’s more, gut bacteria help control the efficacy of certain well-established anticancer therapies. They also do a lot of work on behalf of our physiology: They manufacture neurotransmitters and vitamins that we couldn’t otherwise make, promote normal gastrointestinal function, provide protection from infection, regulate metabolism and the absorption of food, and help control blood sugar balance. They even affect whether we are overweight or lean, hungry or satiated.

One of the key areas that intestinal bacteria help control is gut permeability. When we are talking about permeability issues in the gut, or so-called “leaky gut,” we are referring to problems in the competency of the tight junctions -the small connections between the cells that line the gut and control the passage of nutrients from the gut into the body via your circulation. If the junctions are somehow com-promised, they fail to appropriately police what should be allowed in (nutrients) or kept out (potential threats). As the gatekeepers, these junctions determine, to a large extent, your body’s set point of inflammation – your baseline level of inflammation at any given time.

The term “leaky gut” used to be dismissed by conventional researchers and doctors, especially as it relates to autoimmunity. But now an impressive number of well-designed studies have repeatedly shown that when your intestinal barrier is damaged, which can result in having an unhealthy gut flora that cannot protect the intestinal lin-ing, you are susceptible – through increased inflammation and an activated immune response -to a whole spectrum of health challenges, including rheumatoid arthritis, food allergies, asthma, eczema, psoriasis, inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease, type 1 and type 2 diabetes, and even cancer, autism, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s.

According to this new science, the intestinal wall has every. thing to do with whether we tolerate or adversely react to substances we ingest. A break in that intestinal wall can cause food toxins such as gluten and pathogens to pass through and agitate the immune system. This breach affects not only the gut, but also other organs and tissues, such as bones, skin, kidneys, the pancreas, liver, and brain.

Source : The Grain Brain Whole Life Plan: Boost Brain Performance, Lose Weight, and Achieve Optimal Health by David Perlmutter, Kristin Loberg

Goodreads : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29214704-the-grain-brain-whole-life-plan

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