The UltraMind Solution (26 page)

Let’s take a closer look at our cell membranes, which form the covering of all your cells.

Healthy Cell Membranes: Happy Mood, Clear Focus, Sharp Memory

Omega-3 fats form the basic structure of
all
our cell membranes. And all life processes start and end at the surface of our cells. These surfaces are where all of the biological “communication” in your body takes place. Every instruction you need to survive is communicated from one cell to the next through your cell membranes. Think of the cell membranes as the ears of your cells. Without healthy cell membranes you will be deaf to the call of messages coming in.

You are only as healthy as your cell membranes. Changes in your cell membranes affect the health of your entire body. The healthier your cell membranes are, the healthier you will be. Let’s focus for a minute on why this is true in the brain.

Your brain weighs only about three pounds, or 2 percent of your body weight, but it uses about 20 percent of the oxygen you breathe and about 20
percent of the calories you consume. Your brain contains 100 billion brain cells, with trillions of supportive cells to protect and defend them called glial cells (the immune cells of the brain).

Each brain cell is connected to every other brain cell by about 40,000 connections (called synapses). So let’s see,40,000 x 100,000,000,000. That is how many connections there are in your brain and they are all sending messages constantly!

Each of those connections meet at the cell membrane.

If those membranes are not healthy, the effectiveness and speed of communication slows down. That leads to poorer mental function, memory problems, and mood disorders. There are many things that affect the wiring and connections in the brain—in fact, all the keys explained in
The UltraMind Solution
do. But the membranes of your brain cells are at the heart (or brain) of the matter.

Cell membranes are made of the following things:

1.
Fatty acids
(from wild fish and fish oil): the omega-3 fats (DHA and EPA) if you are eating well or taking fish oil, or shortening and lard, if you are not. (I discussed this above.)

2.
Phospholipids
(choline from egg yolks, soybeans, peanuts, lentils, sesame seeds, flaxseeds): fats that contain phosphorous, phosphatidylcholine (PC) and phosphatidylserine (PS) are the two most important.

3.
Cholesterol
(from eggs, shrimp, poultry): glue between molecules (see, you
need
cholesterol).

4.
Protein
(from legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds, eggs, poultry, meat, and dairy): receptors, transporters, gates, signal transducers, etc. This is where all the communication signals from other parts of the body and the environment get processed. (I will be talking more about protein after we discuss phospholipids.)

Besides the omega-3 fats, which make up much of your cell membrane, there is another class of compounds called phospholipids, which are equally crucial for building membranes.

These fatty substances are critical for optimal brain function and the research has borne out the benefits of these nature-made molecules. If your cell membranes are your brain’s ears, then PS and PC are your brain’s “eardrums.” They are the listening interface of every cell and receive the communications all of your other cells are sending. If your cells are not made of the right materials, you will be “deaf ” and become not only dumb but also depressed and demented!

Your cell membranes are made up of the fats you consume. If those membranes are made of trans fats and beef fat, they become stiff and hard like lard or Crisco. As a result, communication gets stopped up. It’s hard for things to get in or out—for information to pass smoothly from one cell membrane to the next—when your cell membranes harden this way.

If they are made from omega-3 fats and phospholipids your cell membranes become fluid and flexible, allowing easy communication from cell to cell. Think about the cold-water fish swimming in arctic waters. Their bodies have high levels of fat to preserve heat, but must be fluid so they can swim and move in icy waters. Your cell membranes need to be fluid and smooth like those fish.

The most abundant fats in your cell membranes are phospholipids. PS, in particular, is found in all cell membranes. In fact, it is in all cells in all life-forms. It is one of the building blocks of nature, and the human brain has extremely high amounts of it.

Using PS supplements has been proven effective in improving memory and cognitive function,
⁸
boosting mood and stress reduction,
⁹
improving attention, and reducing aggression in children with ADHD. And it has no side effects!

Unless you eat a lot of organ meats (like liver, kidney, and brains, often prized in traditional cultures), which is not a good idea because they store toxins, you may need to supplement with PS. I will discuss this in more detail in Part IV, where I give you my plan to optimize your brain with nutrients.
¹⁰

The other main phospholipid is PC. The effects of PC are widespread throughout our bodies and brains. It is the most abundant molecule in your cell membranes. It helps make new brain cells, and helps maintain attention, concentration, memory, and mood, as well as boost detoxification. And it reduces the stress hormone, cortisol, which is harmful to the brain, as you will learn in
chapter 12.

How does PC do all this?

It contains a vitamin called “choline,” which is essential for producing acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is one of the major neurotransmitters responsible for memory, motor function, and the function of your autonomic nervous system, which regulates your unconscious bodily functions like breathing, heart rate, digestion, and all your organ functions.

PC is one of the raw materials that make up your body. Without it, you can’t have healthy membranes, control your organ function, remember things, repair your brain, effectively eliminate toxins, or control inflammation.
This chemical sets the stage for addressing any problem with mood, memory, attention, and behavior.

The best sources of choline are lecithin (essentially a dietary source of PC that comes from egg yolks and soybeans; it can be taken as a supplement), eggs, sardines, soybeans, nuts, and peanuts.

The
protein receptors
for all your brain neurotransmitters sit inside the fatty cell membrane. When the membrane is rigid, the receptors can’t work and your brain doesn’t function well. A fluid membrane improves the structure and function of protein receptors for neurotransmitters like serotonin (depression), dopamine (attention), acetylcholine (memory). Fluid membranes also improve the function of enzymes and ion channels in the membrane, leading to better cell communication and signals.

Figure 5: A normal cell membrane and a damaged cell membrane

Just eating a can of sardines (which are full of healthy omega-3 fats and phospholipids) will help your brain grow, improve connections, make mood chemicals work better, help cells communicate better, reduce inflammation, and improve the function of every cell in your body by giving them the fats they need to build smooth, fluid membranes that communicate information easily. And all that with a few bites of lunch!

To find out if omega-3 fat deficiency is a problem for you, you can go to
http://efaeducation.nih.gov
, enter your diet, and see the omega-3 content of your body. Or you can simply complete the quiz I gave you above to get a sense for whether or not you have nutritional deficiencies in this area.

Building healthy cell membranes is essential to fixing your broken brain. Jane’s story is a great example.

Jane was a forty-two-year-old Ivy League college professor who found herself unable to think, focus, or remember scientific papers that had been a critical part of her world. Brain fog and a dark cloud of depression so limited her ability to function, that she went on disability leave.

By taking a careful history and doing some blood testing, I found that she was living in a house full of toxic molds. These molds produce highly toxic molecules as part of their defense mechanisms. They damage cells and cell membranes leading to all the symptoms Jane experienced.

We matched the molds found in her house to the mold antibodies and toxins in her blood. Based on that, she was able to get her insurance company to pay for the demolition and the rebuilding of her house.

Once we had her out of the toxic environment, we rebuilt her brain through a program of detoxification and an oil change with PC and omega-3 fats. She has now fully recovered and the brain fog and cloud of depression are gone.

So now you know what your cell membranes are made of and why it’s important to keep them healthy. But how do messages flow from one cell to the next? That is where proteins and neurotransmitters come into the story.

Your brain is built from fat. The cell membranes are made of omega-3 fats, cholesterol, and the phospholipids PC and PS. You have learned why these are so important, but they are only half the story. Those trillions of cell membranes are the ears that “listen” for messages that tell your brain to be happy or sad, to focus or be inattentive, to forget or remember, to be sluggish or full of energy, to feel pain or pleasure, to relax or be stressed.

The other half of the story is protein, specifically the amino-acid building blocks of protein that get transformed in your body into the messengers, or
neurotransmitters,
which do the “talking” in your brain and throughout your body. Protein is also used to build the little
receptors,
or docking stations, for these neurotransmitters that are embedded in your cell membranes. So if your cells are going to “hear” anything at all, they need protein to help them do it.