Reduce stress! Improve memory! Eat to Remember!
Of course we are what we eat. This is why a balanced diet is essential. A lesser known fact is that what we eat is what we think.
Let me explain.
If we eat healthy in terms of what our brain needs, we think better and manage stress better. Eat junk and our stress can make us a mess.
How it works…
The neurotransmitters inside our brains (the brain juice) are the masters of the moods.
Dopamine Does the Do Thing, it invigorates, excites and makes us feel anew.
Serotonin causes a slowin’ or calming of our emotin’.
Melatonin, asleep it will help you to get a-go-in’.
To remember endless lines of nursing school information in less time we riddled our mind with rhyme.
These are best absorbed when found in food.
Melatonin is an excellent example. If you take it in a pill to sleep, in time your body will adjust and it will not be effective. However taking it in food, such as Montmorency Cherry Concentrate does not seem to result in tolerance. At least it worked for me.
The goal is to maintain the balance of our brain juice and avoid brain drain.
This happens when we eat a complete and balanced diet and avoid toxins. Sorry Atkins lovers, the diet may help you lose weight but you my just be losing your mind too.
Bottom Line…don’t skip meals. Eat a healthy balanced diet.
The best serotonin foods: fish (rich in omega-3 fatty acids /avoid farm grown fish). Salmon is good, sardines are great as they also provide calcium.
Cruciferous vegetables, but they are best uncooked.
The goitrogens paradox. Goitrogens are the substances that suppress the thyroid gland function, interfering with iodine uptake, possibly resulting in an enlargement of the thyroid (called a goiter). This seems to only happen when overeating them. Hmmm, balanced is better!
In this case balance includes eating foods that stimulate the thyroid.
Why uncooked? Glutathione (GSH) producing cysteine is the number one anticancer, anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, well, there are about 27 things GSH does. Cook it and you lose it because it is so fragile.
This one bears mentioning…Some studies on rats suggest that excess caffeine and a lack of iodine may promote thyroid cancers.
Cancer Sci. 94 (4): 334–7. PMID 12824900. So if you choose not to take care of your own health, please, please, do not give your lab rats excessive amounts of coffee with a high intake of goitrogens. At least feed them a balanced diet.
Both vitamin C and serotonin are essential for preventing irritability and work for stress management. Do you know which foods have both? A study reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2413754 )
found that 80 types of fruits had high serotonin concentration. Some were ( highest concentration to lowest) plantain; pineapple; banana; Kiwi fruit; plums; and tomatoes.
Also only nuts in the walnut or hickory family had a high serotonin concentration. butternuts 398; black walnuts 304; English walnuts 87; shagbark hickory nuts 143; pecans 29.
Want a snack, eat a fruit. Need a boost, eat a fruit. The underlying health is in the balance of what you eat, do and think. This is only one piece of the puzzle.
Good Health to You.
Jonathan