The UltraMind Solution (89 page)

Not only can stressed food cause stress in the person who eats it, but food also triggers changes in our genes that lead to more stress.

One remarkable study in the
American Journal of Clinician Nutrition
found that stress genes, inflammation genes, and insulin resistance genes were all turned on in people who ate more refined (not total) carbohydrates.
²⁴

The study looked at two groups of people, both with insulin resistance. They were fed two diets that were exactly the same—the same calories and the same amount of protein, carbohydrates, fat, and fiber.

The only difference was that in one group the carbohydrate source was wheat, oats, and potatoes, and in the other it was rye. Rye contains different information molecules (phytonutrients) and is absorbed and broken down more slowly than carbohydrates from wheat, oats, and potatoes.

What happened was nothing short of revolutionary in its implications.

After twelve weeks, fat biopsies were taken and changes in gene expression were measured. There was no change in weight, but the difference in gene expression was extraordinary.

In the wheat, oat, and potato group, sixty-two genes that promote inflammation, produce stress molecules and hormones, and promote insulin
resistance and obesity were “turned on.” In the rye group, seventy-one genes that improve insulin function and prevent cell death were “turned on.”

It appears that obesity is not the only thing controlled by the information in our food. So are our stress response, mood, behavior, memory, and brain function. That is why a fresh, whole-foods, organic, real-food diet is the foundation of health and
The UltraMind Solution.

Remember, the body has only so many ways of saying ouch. One major way the body says “ouch” is the activation of the stress response. How can this response be turned on?

Well, it is the result of many different insults.

Taking everything personally, any negative thought or perception, or rigid beliefs or attitudes can trigger the stress response. That is how our experience of the world creates illness and damages our brain.

But every other input into your world—an imbalance in any of the other six key systems in your body—can initiate that same response.

You don’t have to think bad thoughts to set the stress response in motion. Just breathe in the fumes from a coal-burning power plant, eat beef grown on a feedlot, take antibiotics, and change the ecology of your gut, which will then do the negative talking for you, or be a military recruit on a forced march and don’t sleep for five days.

All these things, and anything that creates nutritional imbalances, hormonal problems, inflammation, digestive imbalances, any toxin, or anything that messes up your energy production, will all cause an activation of the stress response.

This type of thinking is foreign to medicine and difficult for most of us to grasp. We are always looking for that one thing, that one factor we can blame and say aha! That’s it. But that will never happen.

We will never find the magic bullet—whether it is a new food like the acai berry, or a vitamin, or a new drug or pill that will solve our chronic health issues or the epidemic of mood, behavior, attention, and neurodegenerative disease.

The World Health Organization estimates that depression affects about 121 million people worldwide and is the leading cause of disability (as measured in years living with disability [YLDs]),
²⁵
accounting for almost 12 percent of all disability.
²⁶

By the year 2025, it is estimated that major depression will be the second leading cause of medical disability in America.

A different type of thinking is necessary to solve this problem.

Everything is connected. We are one wholistic system and we need to understand the ecology of our body. We are an ecosystem connected locally and globally to everything that happens. Only by understanding and working on all the imbalances in these systems can we hope to regain our health, vitality, energy, and our clearheadedness and happiness.

That is my hope for all of you in offering the plan in
The UltraMind Solution.

The hardest part of being a doctor is helping people connect to why they want to heal. Knowing what to do comes fairly easily to me now. I have a new road map, a new way of navigating through the astounding mystery of our biology. But my challenge is always to help people to connect to meaning.

What is it they treasure? What anchors them to life? Who and what is worth living for? How can they connect to meaning and purpose? The development of a sense of place in the world, a sense of connection, belonging, and contribution must be nurtured and fed. That is the most important diet: meaning and purpose.

There begins healing. In our world, we have to be particularly vigilant to nurture connection, community, and meaning, because so many forces conspire to distract us from ourselves.

Part of the problem is the runaway stress response. Once activated, it doesn’t turn itself off. This produces all the damage we explored in this chapter.

Fortunately, we can learn to turn it off and activate the relaxation response. You can turn on your vagus nerve every day and you don’t need a pacemaker implanted in your neck to do it.

Learning to relax will stop the vicious cycle that keeps you from waking up and being present to your life. It will allow you to slow down long enough to consider how you might nurture compassion in your life.

In Part III (see page 285) and IV (see page 343) I will show you how to transform the effects of stress from any insult—physical or psychological. In fact, I will give you a specific plan to achieve that goal.

In Part III, you will learn the basic, six-week program for a healthy brain, a kind of owner’s manual for your mind.

Then in Part IV, I will teach you how to fine-tune that plan based on
your
imbalances in the seven keys we have been exploring.

Now you have seen how all the seven keys influence your brain and biology. It is one interconnected web of problems. And because it is all connected, you can make a few simple changes that can have dramatic and life-changing effects.

Simple dietary changes, a few nutrients, a little exercise, enough sleep, and a little time each day for activating the relaxation response can transform deep-seated symptoms that show up as altered mood, behavior, attention, and memory.

Your brain can thrive. You just have to provide the right conditions.

In the rest of the book I am going to teach you those conditions.

——————

In six short weeks you will learn more about your body and brain than you ever imagined.

You have in your hands the tools to immediately transform your health and well-being. Using the six-week brain-boosting program you are about to learn, you may:

Feel more alert and focused

Experience a more stable mood