Do Diet and Nutrition Really Matter?
Are there really 3 ways your gut is destroying your brain? We at Sandwiched Matriarch and Money are not doctors or nurses and have no medical expertise. However, as the “sandwich generation,” we seek to serve and to provide potential answers to your health questions or, at a minimum, offer a starting point for your health discovery journey. We offer input from leading medical doctors and other experts in the medical field. In addition, we often find that diet and nutrition will provide much-needed answers to many health problems.
Today’s Ailments and the 3 Ways Your Gut is Destroying Your Brain
Brain ailments and diseases are the subject of much discussion today. Additionally, conventional treatment of such disorders appears to be sporadic at best. Many of the treatments utilized today fail to uncover the “why” of brain malfunctions. Instead, they tend to put a bandaid on the symptoms: Aricept for Alzheimer’s disease, Vyvanse for ADD, and psychotropic medication for Bipolar Disease rather than changing diet and nutrition.
Alzheimer’s disease, ADD, Bipolar disorder, and many more brain disorders plague families these days. These diseases cause us to lose our parents and children in devastating ways and in grand proportion. But what if there were a link of sorts among all brain disorders. While the blood-brain barrier exists, what if its existence manifests itself differently than once believed. For example, what if there is an integral connection between the gut and the brain.
The Gut Brain Connection
Dr. Mark Hyman, Founder and Director of Ultra Wellness Center, hosted the ‘Broken Brain” Docuseries. He notes at least 3 ways our gut is destroying our brains. He and other experts contend that the Gut-Brain-Connection is a significant factor in solving brain disorders. The docuseries points out that Alzheimer’s, for example, appears to be link to high blood sugar. When blood sugar is high, insulin increases. High levels of insulin create inflammation in the human body. Inflammation is a major contributing factor in cognitive impairment. Also, obesity, caused by unhealthy diets, is connected to mental illness.
Similarly, the health of your thyroid impacts the health of your brain. People with thyroid issues have fatigue, brain fog, apathy, irritability, anxiety and panic attacks, and sometimes depression. Patients have been misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and psychotic disorders due to Hashimoto’s disease. Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system creates antibodies that damage the thyroid. Whole-food-based diets with minimally processed foods have proven beneficial in treating Hashimoto’s disease.
BEST FOODS FOR YOUR GUT
Researchers also found that Omega-3 fatty acids are perhaps as good a treatment for things like bipolar illness as some bipolar drugs. Omega-3 also positively impacts treating mood, anxiety, ADD, and Autism.
Dr. Shebani Sethi Dalai, a Stanford, Duke-trained double board-certified physician in obesity medicine and psychiatry and founder of the Stanford University Metabolic Psychiatry Program, found a bi-directional (meaning if you have a mental illness, you’re more likely to have the metabolic disease, and similarly, if you have the metabolic illness, you’re more likely to develop mental illness) link between mental illness and metabolic disease.
In her extensive research and treatment of patients, Dr. Dalai found that through successful treatment of patients for insulin resistance, pre-diabetes, or gut issues, such treatment had the collateral advantage of healing or reducing the impact of their co-occurring depression, panic attacks, or bipolar disease.
She further notes that one of the most significant discoveries around mental health is that mental health problems are often caused by inflammation in the brain. Such inflammation manifests itself in psychiatric symptoms. Nutrition affects the brain, and a few significant components are the need to reduce the intake of sugar, processed foods, and carbohydrates to improve physical and mental health.
Recommendation
I highly recommend that you watch the docuseries “Broken Brain.” Unfortunately, doctors do not learn about inflammation treatments in medical school. When you or your family member is facing a diagnosis or preliminary diagnosis of a mental illness, ADD, Alzheimer’s, or Bipolar Disorder, understand that you can consult an alternative medicine doctor in conjunction with your primary care physician or another allopathic doctor. Consider that significant and extensive research, clinical trials, and anecdotal success stories exist in finding healing of the brain through the recovery of the gut.
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