Book Summary: Grain Brain
David Perlmutter’s Grain Brain looks at the effects of certain foods, particularly carbs, sugar and gluten. He examines how they influence our brain and the disorders that overconsumption can lead to.
Related Book Summaries:
What To Eat When – Michael Roizen
Drinking Water – James Salzman
Quotes From Grain Brain:
The simple act of moving your body will do more for your brain than any riddle, math equation, mystery book, or even thinking itself.
We are designed to be smart people our entire lives. The brain is supposed to work well until our last breath.
You can improve insulin sensitivity and reduce your risk of diabetes (not to mention all manner of brain diseases) simply by making lifestyle changes that melt that fat away. And if you add exercise to the dieting, you’ll stand to gain even bigger benefits.
Grain Brain Book Summary Notes:
- Fewer carbs = better health
- Large Carbohydrate intakes are being linked to more and more health issues. Including debilitating brain issues.
- Consumption of carbohydrates can lead to inflammation in the body. Inflammation is known to be linked to chronic disease.
- The body usually experiences a negative event such as a sprained ankle and responds with inflammation, we see it as swelling and tenderness.
- These inflammatory responses are usually short term. If they continue on however, they can eventually result in damage to healthy cells in the body which over time can lead to chronic disease.
- The prolonged inflammation process can also be called oxidative stress.
- Another similar negative cycle in the body is that of type 2 diabetes. When we consumer sugar, we release insulin to manage it. If we consume too much sugar over a long enough time frame the body becomes resistant to the effects of insulin. It’s too used to seeing it so it becomes less effective. The bodies response is to increase the amount of insulin released, which feeds into the vicious cycle eventually resulting in type 2 diabetes. Which is where the body no longer recognises the effects of released insulin, or has become ‘resistant’ to it.
- Celiac disease, or intolerance for a protein found in gluten. Was originally discovered in the 1900’s but wasn’t considered important until a wheat famine dropped the mortality rate of children with celiac symptoms from 35% to 0.
- Some people’s gluten sensitivity can manifest as severe headaches.
- Of the two main energy sources; fat and carbs, you can live a perfectly fine life with minimal carbs. By restricting fat in our diet we cause a whole host of other issues.
- Fat is far more important to the body than carbs. We can even survive just fine on almost no carbs.
- A study from 2012 found that among elderly people those who consumed high carbs were up to 4x as likely to develop Alzheimer’s. Those whose diets were higher in fat were up to 42% less likely to develop the same issues.
- Another study of cholesterol found those elderly people with the highest amount of cholesterol were less likely to die from cancer and infections than those with the lowest.
- Juice taken from fruit and bottles often holds the same sugar ratio as soft drinks do.
- An inverse relationship between body fat and memory has been found in a 2005 study.
- Sleep, exercise and fasting also play important roles in keeping your brain healthy as you age. Don’t neglect them.
