The UltraMind Solution (60 page)

Despite the fact that this epidemic of food allergies is still largely unrecognized by the medical community at large, new research in the prestigious journal
Science
²⁶
and in the journal
Gut
²⁷
confirms the connection between what you eat and how you feel that is being ignored by the rest of medicine.

Dealing with food allergies is essential to creating wellness of mind, body, and brain!

In Part III I will outline an elimination/reintroduction diet that will help you identify the foods you are allergic to and heal your brain allergies. Because this plan is specifically designed to help you overcome brain disorders, I will focus on the major allergens that lead to brain problems—dairy, gluten, and a few other substances.

If you are suffering from a brain disorder of any kind, it is likely these substances are a problem for you. Using the elimination program in this book may help you overcome your brain allergies.

However, they may not be the
only
foods you are allergic to. Though in most cases the elimination diet that the UltraMind Solution is based on helps heal brain disorders, there are a small percentage of cases where you may have other allergies.

So if you get through this program and don’t see all of the results you expect, it may be time for a more radical approach to eliminating food allergens. In that case I would recommend you try
The UltraSimple Diet
, which offers a more detailed explanation of food sensitivities, how and why we overreact, and a more extended program that tells you how to fix
all
of your food allergies.

The bottom line is that an unhappy, chaotic, disorganized, disengaged, forgetful brain is an inflamed brain. The trail of scientific clues leads us to a few final common pathways for all illnesses, and inflammation is a key pathway.

Doctors of the future will become experts not only in identifying inflammation (which we are already becoming increasingly good at), but in navigating to the ultimate causes of that inflammation and putting out the fire instead of just dealing with the smoke.

To treat depression, autism, Alzheimer’s, or any disease that affects mood, behavior, or the brain, we must learn how to get rid of the causes of inflammation and restore the normal immune balance through the food we eat, nutrients, exercise, sleep, and stress management.

I will teach you specifically how to do this in Part III, where I outline my basic program for optimal brain health. If you have additional problems in this area, you can optimize this key using the strategies outlined in Part IV.

In the next chapter you will learn how your gut and brain are connected in surprising ways, and that often the first thing to do to fix your brain is to fix your gut!

We all have had gut feelings. And we know what it is to feel something in our gut. In Japan, the gut is viewed as the seat of the mind and soul. A Japanese business mogul was once asked how he knew whether to do a deal, and he replied, “I swallow it, and if it feels good in my belly, I do it.”

Your gut has a mind of its own...

The “mind” of the gut talks to your brain every day. We are familiar with signals for hunger, or elimination. But a new conversation is being discovered between the gut and the brain, a bidirectional conversation in which the brain speaks to the gut and the gut speaks to the brain.

We will explore how this conversation has dramatic implications for new ways to cure mental illness and neurodegenerative disease. The gut is the literal and figurative center of our health. If you start by fixing your gut, many things fall into place.

Here is what we will explore:

The Second Brain

The “second” nervous system in the gut

Bad Bugs Below

How errant bugs in the gut bug your brain

Odd Neuropeptides

Mischievous molecules from the gut—signals gone awry

The Gut as the Center of the Immune System