3 food choices that change your brain.

There was a time when we considered our brain and our body as separate. We realize now that this is not true. What we think, what we do, and what we eat, has an effect on our whole system, brain, heart, guts, everything.

There are many ways that our food choices affect our brain health, but here are three ways that food changes your brain.

First, what effects our heart and cardiovascular system also have an impact on our brain health. We know that an unhealthy diet increases the risk of heart disease, atherosclerosis, and high blood pressure. These conditions will have considerable consequences on our brain’s health, but new research has found that a high-fat diet changes the brain in an unexpected way.

Eating a high-fat diet changes our hypothalamus. This area of the brain is responsible for metabolism and controlling body weight.

Vicious Circle

Eating a high-fat diet by itself can cause weight gain because fat has more calories. One gram of fat has 9 calories, compared to one gram of protein, or carbohydrates, which have 4 calories. Eating the same amount of fat means we are getting twice the calories. Now we know that eating a high-fat diet can change our brain’s ability to regulate those calories by altering the structure of our brain.

As quickly as three days after a high-fat meal inflammation occurs in the hypothalamus specifically in microglial cells. These changes lead to more consumption. The fat changes the structure of the cells. This resulted in stimulating the desire to eat more fat

You could go blind

In what seems like an extreme case of poor dietary choices a young man in the UK has gone blind from poor food choices.

Second, on the list of how food affects your brain is nutritional deficiencies and our nervous system. In a case of extremely limited food choices, a teenager in England ate only white bread, chips and pork and went permanently blind.

Bad food choices don’t just lead to weight gain.

While this young man didn’t eat much, he didn’t have any vegetables, or variety, in his diet and although he wasn’t overweight, he was nutritionally deficient. Nerve damage from poor nutrition is usually only seen in people who don’t have enough to eat, not in those who choose not to eat well.

Junk food diets are now normal in developed countries.

And finally, choline.

You may have heard the news that vegans are “at-risk” of having a choline deficiency… really?

Choline is a water-soluble nutrient that is found in nuts, beans, peas, spinach, and animal products. Aside from the young man mentioned above most people probably do NOT need to worry about increasing their choline intake. In fact, the opposite might be more accurate.

The choline alarm was sounded by a journalist writing an opinion piece in the British Medical Journal. It seems the BMJ has a record of this kind of thing, Nina Teicholz, the author of Big Fat Surprise also wrote an opinion piece exclaiming that BUTTER IS BACK, which it turns out was also misleading, paid for and later corrected.

But what about choline?

The National Institutes of Health states that choline deficiencies are extremely rare and that the human body can make its own choline.

Until now I have never heard of choline deficiency, have you? The author of the article was highlighting the link between vegetarian diets and choline deficiency. She did not highlight the fact that she was on the Meat Advisory Board.

The “choline crisis” didn’t mention that choline and a byproduct of eating it, TMAO increases atherosclerosis and blood clotting. Which of course is bad for you and for your brain health.

It didn’t mention how rare choline deficiency is or that too much choline increases all-cause mortality.

Choline is linked with cancer. High choline intake has been linked to lethal prostate cancer.

Even though choline is important for many neurological functions including your brain, here is something to consider before adding extra choline to your diet. Choline rich foods, animal products including dairy, are converted into TMAO in our liver. Which increases the risk of stroke, heart attack, kidney failure, and cancer.

Whatever you feed your body eventually ends up in your brain.

Change your mind, change your health,

Shayla