Power Foods for the Brain

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To Drs. David and Alexandra Jenkins,
who are lighting the way for others to follow.

I
hope this book provides you with new insights into important health issues and gives you tools to tackle them. Before we begin, let me mention two important points:

See your health-care provider.
Memory problems are serious business. It is important to have an appropriate evaluation and care. I would also encourage you to speak with your provider before making any diet change. This is not because changing your diet is necessarily dangerous. Quite the opposite. Adjusting the menu is a good idea. But people who are taking medications—for diabetes or high blood pressure, for example—very often need to adjust their medications when they improve their diets. Sometimes they are able to discontinue their drugs altogether. Do not do this on your own. Work with your health-care provider to reduce or discontinue medicines if and when the time is right.

Also, talk with your doctor before you jump into a new exercise routine. If you have been sedentary, have any serious health problems, have a great deal of weight to lose, or are over forty, have your provider check whether you are ready for exercise, and how rapidly to begin.

Get complete nutrition.
The way of eating presented in this book is likely to improve your nutrition overall, in addition to the specific health benefits it may bring. Even so, you will want to ensure that you get complete nutrition. Please read the details in
chapter 10
. In particular, be sure to take a daily multiple vitamin or other reliable source of vitamin B
₁₂
, such as fortified cereals or fortified soy milk. Vitamin B
₁₂
is essential for healthy nerves and healthy blood.

I
owe an enormous debt of gratitude to many people who helped bring this project to fruition. First, thanks to our research team and colleagues who, over the years, have shaped fundamental concepts of health and nutrition: Mark Sklar, MD; Andrew Nicholson, MD; Gabrielle Turner-McGrievy, PhD; Joshua Cohen, MD; Kavita Rajasekhar, MD; Ulka Agarwal, MD; Suruchi Mishra, PhD; Paul Poppen, PhD; Susan Levin, MS, RD; Joseph Gonzales, RD; Jia Xu, PhD; Heather Katcher, PhD; Lisa Gloede, RD; Ernest Noble, MD; Jill Eckart, CHHC; and Amber Green, RD.

Thanks also to the many investigators at other research centers whose work has brought to light the power of foods to affect health in general and the brain in particular. I am particularly grateful to Martha Clare Morris, ScD, of Rush University Medical Center, whose painstaking work has opened up new possibilities for protecting the brain. David J. A. Jenkins, MD, PhD, of the University of Toronto, continues to lead groundbreaking nutrition research with direct benefits for countless people.

Christine Waltermyer and Jason Wyrick used their considerable culinary skills to turn the scientific concepts in this book into wonderful recipes.

John McDougall, MD, and Mary McDougall have been constant
inspirations and fountains of information, and answered many questions along the way.

Special thanks to the physicians, scientists, and others who critically reviewed the manuscript: Lawrence A. Hansen, MD; Erika D. Driver-Dunckley, MD; Travis Dunckley, PhD; Leonid Shkolnik, MD; Clifford Schostal, MD; Nikhil Kulkarni, MD; Hope Ferdowsian, MD; Caroline Trapp, MSN, APRN, BC-ADM, CDE; Edie Broida, MS; Brenda Davis, RD; Doug Hall; Lynn Maurer; Shaina Chimes; and Jillian Gibson.

Thank you to Ellsworth Wareham, MD, and Duane Graveline, MD, for allowing me to share their experiences and profit from their wisdom. Thank you to Cael Croft for his excellent illustrations and to Chris Evans, PhD, of the University of Glamorgan, Wales, for helping me color the manuscript with historical facts.

Huge thanks to my editor, Diana Baroni, and my literary agent, Debra Goldstein, for their enthusiastic support and expertise in transforming concepts and ideas into a tangible tool that can be put to work for better health.

And finally, thank you to everyone at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine for your boundless innovation and energy in spreading the word about good health.

T
hat was how Brian Epstein described the Beatles when he first saw them at a Liverpool club in 1961. In leather jackets and jeans, this ragtag foursome did not attract the interest of a single record company in Britain, or anyone else outside a short radius.

Yes, they were scruffy. But they had energy and magnetism, and plenty of drive and ambition. They couldn’t read music, but they had an irresistible sound. Although Epstein had never managed a band before, he took them under his wing, determined to help them succeed. He dragged them to a London tailor and plunked down £40. Out with the leather jackets and jeans and in with proper suits. And no more “greaser” haircuts; it was time for a new hairstyle. No eating, smoking, or swearing onstage, and please learn to bow to the audience at the end of a set. He scheduled performances, arranged publicity, and made sure everyone got paid.

Within nine months, the Beatles had their first hit on the British pop charts, and within two years, they had conquered the world.

The reason I am telling you this is because inside your brain you have unruly needs, wants, drives, and ambitions, too. Your “early Beatles” reside deep in the center of your brain, in your hypothalamus. This nut-size organ is the locus of hunger, thirst, sex, and anger. And if there is one thing it needs, it is a manager.

By the time you were born, your hypothalamus was already signaling its demands. But all you could do about it was to wail and thrash your arms and legs.

Your “Brian Epstein” is in the outer layers of your brain, in your cerebral cortex. It takes your ragtag, scruffy self and all its wants, drives, and ambitions, and gets things organized. It helps the desperate hypothalamus to wait patiently when food is on the way. It solves your problems and guides you to get what you want more effectively than by simply stamping your feet. As the years go by, your manager matures, developing ever more sophisticated ways of getting what you need and like.

By August 27, 1967, eighteen Beatles songs had topped the charts, and they were at the peak of their popularity. But that was the day that everything changed. Brian Epstein was found dead in his apartment. He was just thirty-two. And for the Beatles, it was the beginning of the end. The group began to sputter. They had arguments, with no arbiter. Disagreements became chronic and bitter. Rudderless, they lost their musical cohesiveness, drifted apart, and eventually the most successful musical group of all time collapsed, each member going his own way.

Inside your brain, your own fateful August 27 is looming large. Just when your knowledge and experience are at their maximum and your family life and perhaps your financial security are finally established, that’s exactly the moment that you are
at risk of losing your manager. If that happens, you will find that you can’t remember things or will have trouble reasoning things out. Sometimes things go downhill to the point where you are no longer able to control your disorganized, unruly, unmanaged inner self. The day the manager in your brain becomes nonfunctional is the day that life as you have known it comes to an end.

This is a book about keeping your manager alive and well. It is about memory and mental clarity, and keeping them intact lifelong.

It starts as an occasional lapse. You’ve forgotten a name or word—something you know perfectly well but just cannot put your finger on. Later on, it happens again, and you start to wonder what’s wrong. Maybe you’re overtired or overstressed, and a good night’s sleep will set everything to rights.

But maybe it is more than that. Memory problems affect a great many people. They are worrying, to say the least. Not being able to come up with a friend’s name, losing your keys one too many times, losing track of facts and events, and, perhaps worst of all, having others
notice
that you seem to be having trouble—none of this is good.

It may not be just memory. Sometimes you might feel that your thinking is just not as clear as it used to be. You’ll be adding up your checkbook or reading a newspaper article and you’ll feel as if your brain is stuck in low gear.

And sometimes cognitive problems are very serious. One in five Americans between the ages of seventy-five and eighty-four develops Alzheimer’s disease. Beyond age eighty-five, it hits almost half of us. Also frighteningly common are strokes, which can devastate our ability to speak, move, and think.

Of all the worries we may have about our future, the possibility of losing our mental abilities tops the list. We work hard, start our families, set aside some money, and finally have some time to relax and enjoy life. But if memory loss enters the scene, it steals everything we cherish.

Losing our memory and brainpower means stripping away our most critical capabilities. Little by little, we start to slip away from our families. Things we did together are erased. If the process drags on over years, as it often does, it can end up encumbering our families and eventually exhausting them physically, emotionally, and financially.

A poor memory is not just “a part of life” that you have to put up with. And it is certainly not an automatic part of growing older. Your calendar does not come equipped with an eraser.

Imagine having a sharp memory—and good concentration and alertness—day after day for as long as you live. Instead of apologizing for names that elude you, the words come easily, just as they always did. Instead of lapsing into memory problems in older age, your mind remains clear and strong.

For many years, my research team has been investigating the role of foods in health. We have helped people trim away weight and cut their cholesterol levels. We developed a dietary method for managing diabetes that is more powerful than previous diets, sometimes making the disease essentially disappear. We have also developed programs for the workplace and for doctors’ offices, designed to help people make diet changes to improve their health.

Just as we were doing our studies, other research teams were looking at the brain and how specific nutritional factors could affect the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, and other serious brain problems, as well as the surprising effects of foods on more day-to-day cognitive issues.