What’s the next phase in omega-3 fatty acid supplementation? If biotechnology and agricultural trading giants like Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and Cargill have anything to say about it, the future is soy and canola.

There is no way to meet the demand we currently have for fish oil.Peru, the world’s leader in fish oil and fish meal production, had a banner year in 2016, getting the highest recorded average price per metric ton. But those record numbers come at a time when production levels have declined 61% from the previous year. The production levels aren’t likely to improve either, as the United Nations reports 90% of the world’s fish are fully or partially overfished. Farm-raised fish are unlikely to be a good source of Omega-3s as they themselves are frequently fed other fish oils to boost their health. We are approaching the point where a big source for Omega-3s, wild-caught fish, will no longer be available, and farm raised fish currently require supplementation instead of providing it.

The Big Business Solution

The demand for fish oil products has created a 2.4 million dollar market, and many big companies have settled on grains as the solution to the problem left by dwindling fish oil supplies. One of the companies with ambitious plans in this area is Cargill, an agricultural trading company based in Minnesota. In a bid to create a fifth of current fish oil supplies, 159,000 metric tons, they’ve earmarked up to half a million acres of Montana farmland to grow their new strain of canola. Projected to be ready in 2020, the canola will contain long-chain omega-3 fatty acids from algae. Dow Chemicals has also jumped on the canola train, although they plan to grow their canola in Canada.

Monsanto, on the other hand, is sticking with what they know – soy. Soybeans are already a  source of ALA (alpha-linolenic acids), and the company’s plan is to develop a soybean specifically meant to be processed into a soy oil for baked goods and soup. Other companies are launching omega-3 products with algae. Archer Daniels Midland in Chicago, a commodities trading and food processing company, created an algae-based product for fish supplementation. TerraVia Holdings Ltd is another company focused on algae, using it to convert sugar into omega-3s.

A Little People Solution

Omega 3 fatty acids are essential to any healthy diet, but other options are out there? Quality fish and fish oil are hard to find and hard to justify from an environmental perspective. Many of the proposed big businesses solutions focus on GMO crops. Both of these options are problematic.

Getting omega-3s in your diet doesn’t have to be all about fish oil. Algae is a great source of omega-3s, and it’s important to get different colors. Green algae like spirulina and chlorella, are a source of EPA. Brown algae like wakame and hijiki are sources of DHA, a key nutrient in supporting a healthy brain. Other vegetable based sources of omega-3s include flax, chia, and nuts, especially walnuts. The acids are also in a number of vegetables like spinach, winter squash, and brussels sprouts, though the amount is much less than what is found in seaweeds, nuts, and seeds.

The World is Not Enough

This is not the only important part of the food chain disappearing. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, close to 75% of plant diversity has been lost. Six different livestock breeds are lost every month. Our gut bacteria has been slowly losing its variety, leaving us more open to disease. From a health viewpoint and an environmental viewpoint, now is the time to look for different, diverse foods. How long will it be before whole nutrients groups disappear from our world like so many plant varieties or members of our gut flora?

Related Reading:

• The Fascinating Bacteria in our Gut, and How it Affects Our Whole Lives
• Scientists Against GMOs – Hear From Those Who Have Done the Research
• Understanding and Detoxifying Genetically Modified Foods
• Monsanto Company Profile
• Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones

Sources:

• Grain Traders Prepping Fish Oil Substitutes for Aquaculture, Health Fads – Reuters
• Record Short First Fishmeal and Fish Oil Season in Peru Leads to a Five Year Production Low, Prices Declining Partially Due to Hardship of Companies – Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
• Top 10 Foods Highest in Omega 3 Fatty Acids – HealthAliciousNess
• What is Happening to Agrobiodiversity? – Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Aging is an inevitable process that we go through, and it has the most profound effects on the brain. After the age of 40, the brain decreases in volume by at least 5% every decade, and this rate increases with age. This loss in volume translates to a loss of long-term memory, slower reaction times, decreased working memory, slower processing speeds, and detriments in sensory and/or perceptual function. These effects can be reduced and even reversed by addressing these four processes:

1. Neuronal Cell Death

In our adolescence, we have 1.5x more neurons in our brain than we do as an adult. As we learn and grow, our brains form new synaptic connections that allow our neurons to communicate. This allows us to do the things that we want to do efficiently.

As we reach our early 20’s, our brain starts to refine its connections. Underused neurons undergo apoptosis or programmed cell death. This is a natural process that allows us to remain good at what our environment requires us to do while unneeded neurons and synaptic connections are removed.

Neuronal cells can also be damaged and eventually die due to traumatic injury, environmental toxins, cardiovascular disorders, infectious agents, and genetic diseases.

2. Reduction in Synapses and Synaptic Plasticity

As we age, the amount of dopamine and serotonin in our brain decreases. This leads to a decrease in synapses (the connections that allow for communication between neurons.)

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) activity also decreases with age. BDNF increases our ability to form new synaptic connections (synaptic plasticity) and triggers the development of new brain tissue (neurogenesis).

3. White Matter Damage

The white matter of our brain is made of myelinated axons. These are like electrical cables that carry the signal from one neuron to another. As we age, the myelination (fatty insulation) of these axons deteriorates. This process is what reduces our reaction time as we age.

4. Impaired Vascular Function

The health of our circulatory system is as important for brain health as it is for heart health. The primary cause of impaired vascular function is oxidative damage that leads to inflammation and plaque build up. This process is caused by consistent exposure to environmental toxins, refined foods, trans fats, and/or head trauma. Damaged blood vessels lead to an easily permeated blood-brain barrier that allows toxins and infectious agents in. The brain’s ability to receive nutrients and remove waste (like beta amyloid plaque) will also be impaired.

Brain Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease

These four changes are largely to blame for the effects that aging has on our cognitive function. This process is accelerated to a catastrophic degree in people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s Disease: Brain Aging Accelerated

What makes Alzheimer’s disease so catastrophic is that it accelerates the synaptic damage and neuronal loss common with aging, while impairing the regenerative properties of the brain. This leads to a rapid decrease in brain volume and function.

Many genetic and environmental factors lead to the accelerated damage of neurons and their synapses. In a brain with Alzheimer’s disease, this leads to the accumulation of beta amyloid plaque and damage of the neurofibrillary tracks that help move nutrients and other key materials throughout the cell. As plaque builds up and the tracks become tangled it leads to a snowball effect of neuronal damage and cell death throughout the brain. This unforgiving process is what makes Alzheimer’s disease the sixth leading cause of death among older adults.

Although genetics, specifically the APOE genes, play a major role in our brain health and the progression of Alzheimer’s, there are many things we can avoid, changes we can make, and treatments we can use to improve brain health and reduce neurodegeneration due to age and Alzheimer’s Disease.

Yes, you can teach an old dog new tricks, but first, we must understand what accelerates the aging of the brain and Alzheimer’s Disease.

How to Shrink Your Brain

Do the Same Thing Every Day

Every time we reach past our comfort zone by learning or experiencing something new, we increase the rate of neurogenesis and make new synaptic connections. On the other hand, if we do the same things every day without reaching beyond our competency, our brain will focus on pruning down its synaptic connections and more neurons will undergo apoptosis. As the process continues, your brain will become smaller and smaller.

Eat A lot Oxidized Polyunsaturated Fats and Trans Fats

When these fats enter our body they create chaos in the circulatory system which leads to an immune response to deal with the trouble that the oxidized fat and trans fat is causing. Our body handles these fats by depositing it as plaque which leads to atherosclerosis. This process also occurs in our brain, which contributes to the accumulation of beta amyloid plaque and tangling of the neurofibrillary tracks.

Eat Plenty of Refined Sugars

High blood sugar levels are associated with the increased risk of Alzheimer’s Disease. When blood sugar is high, the sugars tend to interact with the residues of proteins. Together they form glycation end-products (AGEs). These AGEs create oxidative damage and inhibit enzymes like macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) that are important for protecting the brain aging.

Make Sure You Are Chronically Stressed

Although acute stress can enhance your learning ability, chronic stress impairs working memory and prefrontal cortex function. When the function of the prefrontal cortex is impaired, we cannot reason effectively, and our emotions can take hold and control us more easily.

Live in a Polluted Environment

The process of brain aging and Alzheimer’s disease is accelerated by the accumulation of metals in the brain. The primary way that this can happen is through the nose. Nanoparticles of metals from car exhaust, industrial pollution, and smoking can cross the olfactory areas of the brain and accumulate in areas, like the hippocampus that are most affected by Alzheimer’s Disease.

Drink Alcohol Every Day

Drinking alcohol accelerates the shrinkage of the brain, which leads to cognitive decline that mirrors the symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease.

The best way to reduce brain aging is by eliminating the things from your life that age your brain. There are many other factors that contribute to brain aging that we have not discussed, but we know for sure that if you continue doing any of these six things, your brain will start shrinking rapidly.

How to Grow Your Brain & Keep It from Aging

Increase Your Physical Activity

Increasing your physical activity can improve brain volume and reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by up to 50%. Even people who had mild symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease increased their brain volume by increasing their physical activity. This means that you can grow your brain by simply taking a walk every day.

These profound effects are due to the fact the exercise helps reduce inflammation, anxiety, and insulin resistance, while stimulating growth factors (like BDNF mentioned above) that improve the health of your brain cells and blood vessels.

Do Something New Every Day

When we were children, we were filled with curiosity. Every moment was an experiment that led to a new discovery like walking or crawling. During this phase of development, our brains were primed and ready to form new synaptic connections, so that we could thrive in our environment. By the time we are in our 20s, our brains are almost fully developed, and we begin to form patterns and habits, leaving our curiosity behind.

As we age, we must stimulate our curiosity again by learning new things, going on adventures, and reaching outside of our comfort zone every day. This will trigger a process in the brain called scaffolding, which stimulates the brain to form new connections with different neurons in new ways. This allows the brain to function more efficiently and age gracefully.

Drink Coffee or Tea

Habitual caffeine intake may protect against cognitive impairment. In studies done on mice, caffeine has been found to suppress the buildup of beta-amyloid plaque in the brain. On the other hand, OLM’s stance on coffee is not positive; try circumin:

Try Circumin

Like caffeine, circumin can prevent plaque build up, and it removes plaque as well. This potent anti-inflammatory molecule makes up 5-10% of turmeric. It is known to lower cholesterol, reduce oxidative damage, and remove metals that accumulate in the brain like iron and copper. Check out How To Optimize Curcumin Absorption for more on circumin.

Supplement with Vitamin B3 and B1

UCI scientist Kim Green conducted a study on the effect that nicotinamide (vitamin B3) has on mice with Alzheimer’s disease. This B Vitamin completely prevented the loss of cognition in the mice. Clinical trials are now being carried out using vitamin B3 as a treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease.

Thiamine or vitamin B1 is also a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. Our brain uses up 20% of our energy, and in doing so, it uses enzymes that depend on thiamine for their function. When we don’t have enough thiamine, it can lead to memory deficits and excessive plaque buildup. With enough thiamine, the cells in the brain can metabolize sugar effectively and function properly.

Cook with and Consume Coconut Oil

Coconut oil, especially the medium chain triglycerides found in coconut oil, provide an alternative fuel source for brain cells, which may prevent neuronal cell death. It has been found to help improve cognitive function in women with Alzheimer’s, people without type 2 diabetes who had Alzheimer’s, and people with severe cases of Alzheimer’s. Coconut oil is also a great oil to cook with because it is not easily oxidized like polyunsaturated oils. Check out what else coconut oil can do for you.

Eat More Cruciferous Vegetables

Cruciferous vegetables contain sulforaphane, a compound that activates a transcription factor called Nrf2.What this means is that sulforaphane helps to set off a cascade of processes that detoxify and protect the body and brain from oxidative damage. sulforaphane works synergistically with circumin to reverse the aging of our cells due to oxidative damage.

The best source of sulforaphane is broccoli sprouts, and they can easily be sprouted at home in 7-9 days. If you don’t have access to broccoli sprouts, any cruciferous vegetables will do. Check out this salad recipe.

Increase Your Acetylcholine

Acetylcholine is the most used neurotransmitter in the brain and body. It is essential for muscle contraction, alertness, concentration, focus, and memory. Feeding your body with the components of acetylcholine and/or blocking the enzyme that breaks it down can be very effective for reducing the effects of brain aging and Alzheimer’s disease.

One of the primary components of acetylcholine is choline, and it is an essential nutrient that you must include in your diet. The best sources of choline are egg yolks, heavy cream, fatty fish, fatty meats, and liver. Make sure you source your meat, dairy, fish and eggs for people that treat their animals humanely and feed them what they are meant to eat. This will ensure that your animal products have a high amount of good quality fats and choline.

To ensure your brain gets the choline it needs, you can take a supplement like Alpha-GPC. This is a form of choline that can easily cross the blood-brain barrier. DMAE is another supplement that increases the level of acetylcholine in the brain while reducing beta amyloid plaque.

Other supplements like galantamine and huperzine-A increase acetylcholine in the brain by preventing the enzyme cholinesterase from breaking down acetylcholine.

What if Nothing is Helping?

Take the holistic approach, and improve your brain health by improving the health of your whole body. The gut and the brain are inexorably linked. Just like you can dimish cognitive function with poor health choices, you can improve brain function with a better diet. Research in brain regenration is making groundbreaking strides lately. Recently, many studies on mice have surfaced that use commonly used technologies, like ultrasound, to reverse Alzheimer’s disease. In one study researchers used a “…focused therapeutic ultrasound, which non-invasively beams sound waves into the brain tissue.” These sound waves activated the brain’s microglial cells so that they could do their job of removing the beta amyloid plaque. The results were tremendous with 75% of the mice with Alzheimer’s disease regaining their cognitive function. This means that this treatment may help reverse Alzheimer’s disease by using the brain’s own natural waste removal processes. This may be the miracle we have been searching for to treat Alzheimer’s.

Related Reading:

• The Alzheimer’s Aluminum Connection – Organic Lifestyle Magazine
• Increase your IQ with the Right Foods, Herbs, Vitamins
• Mental Health, Physical Health & B Vitamins – Nature’s Valium
• Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones

Related Products:

• Shillington’s Brain Tonic
• Coconut Oil
• Vitamin B
• Beneficial Fats

Sources:

• Ageing and the brain — NCBI
• Brain Tour — Alz.org
• Molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease — NCBI
• Oxidative stress in brain aging, neurodegenerative and vascular diseases: An overview — Science Direct
• Macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor is subjected to glucose modification and oxidation in Alzheimer’s Disease — Nature
• Repeated Stress Causes Cognitive Impairment by Suppressing Glutamate Receptor Expression and Function in Prefrontal Cortex — NCBI
• Alcohol Use and the Risk of Developing Alzheimer’s Disease — NIH
• Why neurons die: cell death in the nervous system. — NCBI
• Different kinds of physical activity shown to improve brain volume, cut Alzheimer’s risk in half — Science Daily
• The Adaptive Brain: Aging and Neurocognitive Scaffolding — Annual Reviews
• Caffeine suppresses β-amyloid levels in plasma and brain of Alzheimer’s transgenic mice — NCBI
• The effect of curcumin (turmeric) on Alzheimer’s disease: An overview — NCBI
• Vitamin B1 (thiamine) and dementia. — NCBI
• Vitamin B3 reduces Alzheimer’s symptoms, lesions — UCI News
• [COCONUT OIL: NON-ALTERNATIVE DRUG TREATMENT AGAINST ALZHEIMER´S DISEASE]. — Europe PMC
• The Nrf2/ARE Pathway as a Potential Therapeutic Target in Neurodegenerative Disease — NCBI
• How to Improve Memory with Acetylcholine — University Health News
• Galantamine–a novel cholinergic drug with a unique dual mode of action for the treatment of patients with Alzheimer’s disease. — NCBI
• Toxic air pollution particles found in human brains — The Guardian
• New Alzheimer’s Treatment Fully Restores Memory Function — Science Alert

If you’re a gardener, the single most time-consuming thing you probably do for your greens is to weed them. Unless you have a killer raised bed setup, the odds are good that your wimpy garden plants won’t be able to withstand the onslaught of weeds perfectly optimized to thrive in the conditions you’ve created.

Watching your kale get overrun by chokeweed is enough to make the most seasoned gardener despair, but what if the way you are thinking about these garden nuisances is actually completely wrong?

Weeds aren’t always bad. Ralph Waldo Emerson once famously proclaimed that weeds were simply misunderstood, as “…a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered”. Though it might be hard for you to match his candor, the truth is that there’s a lot to like about common weeds that few of us are aware of.

As it turns out, weeds have far more benefits for our health than you can imagine.

Garden Weeds: Even Healthier Than Your Vegetables?

It takes a tremendous amount of effort to get garden plants to produce food. No matter how carefully you try to coax your tender plants to thrive, the odds are good that without some significant effort on your part, the close-growing weeds will soon take them over. While it’s easy to hate weeds for their effortless abilities to overwhelm your hard work, the truth is that the scrappiness of weeds is part of what makes them so special.

To understand this, keep in mind that every garden plant once started as a weed that was carefully grown over centuries until it came to resemble the plant that it is today. Fruits got bigger, inedible seeds got smaller, and unpleasant bitterness in leaves slowly became reduced. However, as the traits humans enjoyed best slowly became more prominent, the biggest benefits of these plants – their nutritional content – was slowly weeded out.

Wild plants don’t get the benefit of careful gardening to keep them alive, so they’ve adapted to defend themselves. For this reason, weeds are often full of phytonutrients, essentially an “arsenal of chemicals” that helps them fend off diseases and predators. While the bitter taste they produce often keeps the hungry away, these chemicals are full of health benefits for humans that help them fight off diseases like heart disease, dementia, and even cancer. Filled with vitamins and mineral levels that regular vegetables can’t compete with, garden weeds are truly more nutritious than supermarket greens. If you want the easiest, most efficient way to fill your diet with foods as close to nature as possible, chomping on wild weeds is a great place to start.

Types of Edible Weeds

The complete list of edible weeds is far too vast for any web article, but this list of common weeds from around the world should get you started.

Clover

You’ll find yourself lucky in a patch of clover even when four leafed varieties are nowhere to be found. Red clover is full of the phytoestrogen genistein, a substance that has been studied to treat colon and prostate cancers. While you might have to compete with the honeybees for your supply, raw clover can be chopped into salads or sauteed with other greens. However, there is some concern for pregnant women. Studies have shown that the large amounts of the phytoestrogens in clover may increase your risk of breast cancer and possibly birth defects.

Lambs Quarters (Goosefoot)

Young, tender, and very versatile, lambs quarters can be used as a substitute for spinach in any recipe. This is great news for salad lovers, as lambs quarters peak right when spinach is winding down for the summer. Loaded with vitamins A, C, and K and full of calcium and protein, you are actually better off eating this wild spinach over the cultivated variety. If you are filled with patience, the seeds from lambs quarters can also be collected and cooked as a quinoa-like grain filled with 16% protein.

Dandelions

Though you might cringe at the sight of their sunny-hued flowers blanketing your lawn, dandelions are actually nutritious and surprisingly delicious when used well. In fact, European settlers first brought the dandelion to the U.S. for use as a salad green. One cup of raw dandelion greens contains well over your daily needs of vitamin A and vitamin K.  The best ways to eat dandelions tends to be raw in salads or dried into herbal teas. For those feeling a little more adventurous, the yellow flowers can be breaded and fried for a tasty snack.

Catnip

Not simply a treat for cats, catnip actually has some fascinating health benefits for humans, too. Native to Europe, catnip easily grows around the world and makes for a great herbal tea that encourages relaxation. The mild mint flavor is tasty when snacked on raw or sauteed with other greens

Plantain

Though it has little resemblance to the tropical fruit with the same name, plantain weeds grow all over the world and make for a stellar medicinal plant that can be used topically to soothe skin ailments like rashes or burns. Even better, the younger leaves are tasty in salads and can be steamed, boiled, or sauteed. If you take the time to harvest the seeds, they can be ground into a nutritious flour that’s great for baking.

Bamboo

Though bamboo’s versatility has been put to use on everything from flooring to kitchen cutting boards, few people are aware that this fibrous plant is also edible. Often described as tasting like corn, bamboo shoots can be harvested when they are less than two weeks old and added to your favorite stir fry. Simply peel off the outer leaves and cut the tender middle into one-eighth inch slices before boiling them in an uncovered pan for twenty minutes. After the bitterness has been boiled out, you can eat bamboo any way you choose.

Garlic Mustard

Though it’s highly invasive throughout much of the world, garlic mustard originally came from Europe. The flowers, leaves, seeds, and roots of garlic plants make them great for weight loss and controlling cholesterol levels, and their faint garlic scent makes them a tasty addition to any dish. You can harvest garlic mustard all season long, but the tastiest roots need to be collected in the early spring.

Green Amaranth

Similar to lambs quarters but with a more mild taste, green amaranth is also known as redroot, pigweed, and wild beet. Because of the detergent-like qualities of the saponon on raw leaves, green amaranth is best cooked before eating to eliminate the strange aftertaste. For this reason, it’s often best to serve green amaranth with a stronger tasting vegetable to offset its mild flavor.

Watercress

There’s no avoiding the high price tag of watercress in classy grocery stores, but you can harvest it yourself for free. This weed can be found throughout the U.S. Adding it to your salads is a foolproof way to boost up your daily antioxidants.

Kudzu

While “the weed that ate the south” is a symbol of despair for millions in America, this voracious plant is actually edible itself. Simple to make into jams and jellies and tasty when the flowers are pickled, there’s a lot of ways to experiment with this tricky vine. Commonly used as a digestive aid in China, you can also chop up a cup of kudzu leaves and boil them for thirty minutes before drinking the health-infused creation.

Mallow (Cheeseweed)

Common to see in yards around the world, mallow is a blessing for adventurous eaters to enjoy. Both the leaves and seed pods are edible and can be enjoyed steamed, boiled, or raw as a salad green. Mallow is full of vitamins and minerals that make it useful as an herbal medicine, especially when used as an anti-inflammatory, diuretic, or laxative.

Purslane

If you only choose to eat one weed from your garden bed, purslane should be the one. This succulent looking plant grows close to the ground and in between the cracks of the sidewalk. If you find some, you’re in luck. This juicy, lemon-tasting green is filled with omega-3 fatty acids. It is tasty eaten raw, cooked or blended in a smoothie. Because every part of the plant can be eaten, you won’t have to worry about shoving it all in your mouth at once. As an extra benefit, purslane consistently produces a bumper crop of edible seeds, which can be used for baking. All you need to do is dry out the seeds for several weeks on a sheet of plastic before winnowing out the tiny, black seeds.

In Summary

The benefits of spending your summer days wrist deep in garden dirt cannot be underestimated, but there’s a lot you can do to enjoy fresh grown produce without the effort. Garden weeds are equipped to thrive where your vegetables suffer, and most of them actually contain more vitamins and minerals than conventionally grown produce. If you’re ready to enjoy the benefits of these long-valued “famine foods”, give your garden weeds a try and see how they make you feel. You might be amazed at the results.

Related Reading:

• The Amazing Benefits of Stinging Nettles, with Recipes
• Mulberries and Mulberry Recipes
• How to Start a Vegetable Garden – How to Grow Vegetables
• Dandelions
• The Health benefits of Moringa: A Modern Miracle Tree

Sources:

• Breeding the Nutrition Out of Our Food – NY Times
  Phytoestrogens – Wikipedia 
• Eight Weeds You Can Eat – Rodale’s Organic Life
• Please Eat the Dandelions: Nine Edible Garden Weeds – Treehugger.com

The pain is in your head.

Seriously, it is.

Knee pain, lower back pain, sciatica pain, and even stomach pain would never exist if it wasn’t for the brain.

However, any practitioner who says your pain is in your head without giving you a means to deal with it, shows their ignorance.

Let’s explore what is really meant by  “the pain is in your head“.

Pain is the Brain’s Way of Protecting You

You are walking without shoes on and suddenly your pinky toe slams into the corner of a wall. Small nerves in your toe called nociceptors send this noxious stimulus (potentially dangerous information) to your spinal cord, which then relays the message to the thalamus of your brain. The brain receives the message that something dangerous has happened in the area of your left pinky toe. At this point, there is a brief pause as your brain decides how to react, and then… ouch! you feel the pain intensify so fast that you can’t help but yell.

It hurts, but as you keep moving, it begins to feel better. After 15 minutes, you forget that it even happened. A couple hours later, you go to put your shoes on and… ouch! The pressure on your pinky toe feels as if you stubbed your toe again. This is a natural protection mechanism called central sensitization that is elicited by the brain to keep you from overusing the damaged tissue as it heals. After a few more days, your pinky toe is back to normal.

This is the stereotypical story of pain and it is referred to as nociceptive pain. The tissue is damaged in some way, the brain receives the signal and creates pain and inflammation for healing, and it heals.

Simple.

It may even sound too simple, and that’s because it is.

Pain Is Your Brain’s Opinion

Pain is an opinion on the organism’s state of health rather than a mere reflective response to an injury. There is no direct hotline from pain receptors to ‘pain centers’ in the brain.” – Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, Neuroscientist

The pain that your brain creates depends on many more factors than just tissue damage. These other factors are what can turn nociceptive pain into chronic pain. For more on brain health, check out Increase your IQ with the Right Foods, Herbs, Vitamins, and Exercises for Your Brain.

When Pain Becomes Chronic

Chronic pain is usually defined as pain lasting longer than 12 weeks. There are at least two ways to create chronic pain in the body:

1. Chronic Re-injury

One cause of chronic pain is chronically re-injuring damaged tissues. If you keep stubbing your toe, your toe will never heal, and you will continue having pain.

Chronic pain with the primary cause being chronic tissue re-injury usually has these attributes:

• There are specific movements that always make the pain worse (ex. it hurts hurts every time the lower back is rounded forward.)
• The pain is consistently in one area, and there is no pain anywhere else.
• The pain slowly gets worse with an increase of demand on the tissues (ex. lifting more than usual or working more often)
• Pain is relieved when the painful tissues are not being used.
• There is inflammation around the site of pain.

If your pain is consistent with these criteria then letting the injured tissue heal will most likely relieve the pain. For this type of chronic pain, it is best seek guidance from a skilled physical therapist that can help provide you with treatments to speed the healing process, exercises to strengthen your body, and lifestyle modifications that relieve your pain.

It makes sense that the brain would create pain in cases of chronic tissue re-injury, but what happens when pain cannot be explained by tissue damage?

2. Chronic Central Sensitization

Central sensitization is one of the processes our body carries out in response to tissue damage. When you stub your toe,  your toe (and the tissues around it) becomes hypersensitive to any other stimulus like hot, cold, or pressure, so that your body can heal the damaged tissue without interruption. This is absolutely necessary for your survival because if your body can’t move properly due to damage then you can’t protect yourself from danger.

However, there is one important caveat to mention — your brain cannot tell the difference between real danger and perceived danger. This means that the mechanism of central sensitization can become active even when there is no tissue damage.

Pain is a Response to Danger, Not Damage

The perception that you have hurt yourself can create a pain response even when there is no real damage.

Here is a perfect example of how the brain does this from the British Medical Journal in 1995:

A builder aged 29 came to the accident and emergency department having jumped down on to a 15 cm nail. As the smallest movement of the nail was painful he was sedated with fentanyl and midazolam. The nail was then pulled out from below. When his boot was removed a miraculous cure appeared to have taken place. Despite entering proximal to the steel toecap the nail had penetrated between the toes: the foot was entirely uninjured.

Throughout our daily lives, we tend to do the same thing as the builder. We react to danger when danger is not there, which leads to more pain and tension. If danger begins to paint every moment of our day, it can lead to chronic pain and symptoms of depression like helplessness. This explains why depression has been found to be a better predictor of low back pain than MRI findings.

Another factor that can increase pain sensitivity and make pain chronic is chronic inflammation. Inflammation is necessary for the body to heal damaged cells from the cells of a stubbed toe to the cells that are damaged by toxic exposure. When the damage becomes chronic so does the inflammation. This only adds to the “DANGER!” messages that the brain is already receiving. Not only does this make pain more intense and stick around longer, it lengthens the healing process as well.

Become Your Own Pain Relief Specialist

Everything you do, you become better at. The longer you are in pain, the better your brain gets at creating the pain.

Luckily, the opposite is true as well. You can reverse and, in most cases, completely relieve chronic pain by practicing these simple pain relief principles:

1. Give Your Brain More Pain-Free Input

Have you ever hit your hand on something and immediately began rubbing it with your other hand? This actually helps, but not in the way you think.

Rubbing our hand when it is in pain feeds our brain with non-threatening information. According to the Gate Control Theory of pain, this stimulation provides enough non-threatening information to the brain that it overwhelms the “DANGER!” signals. In response, your brain decreases pain.

Although relieving pain is more complex than simply giving your brain pain-free information all the time, applying these ideas to chronic pain can be very effective. For example, instead of focusing on what you can’t do because of the pain, focus on things that you can do that you enjoy. This will show your brain that you are not in danger, while you give it more positive information than threatening information.

For the activities that are painful that you can’t do without, try new ways of moving that don’t provoke pain. If this doesn’t work, try the other suggestions on this list before doing the activities that are normally painful.

2. Stimulate the Parasympathetic Nervous System

Pain is a response to danger. When we experience life as a persistent string of dangerous and uncertain events then our brain will chronically respond with pain and sympathetic nervous system activation. In this state of uncertainty, our brain will not allow our parasympathetic nervous system to activate. This makes it impossible for our bodies to rest, digest, and recover.

The simplest way to activate your parasympathetic nervous system is by breathing. Try letting go of all the air in your lungs for the longest exhale of your life. Inhale through your nose, deep into your abdomen, and finish the breath by letting your rib cage gently expand. Finally, let go of your air once again for an even longer exhale than before.

When you have a nagging pain or even a nagging thought, bring your attention to your breath. This will activate your parasympathetic nervous system and relieve pain and tension.

3. Reduce Chronic Inflammation

In order to reduce inflammation we must be mindful of our diet and environment. Refined foods, sugar, oxidized fats, pesticides, commercial bread products, factory farmed animal products, and other toxic ingredients like aspartame and MSG all damage the cells in our body and lead to inflammation. If we decrease our consumption of these foods, we will be able to stop the accumulation of damage and inflammation. Environmental factors that cause cell damage like polluted air can be removed by using indoor plants like Sansevieria trifasciata laurentii and Areca palm, which have been found to improve air quality and reduce pollution tremendously.

4. Cognitive Functional Therapy

Cognitive functional therapy is one of the most effective treatments for reducing chronic low back pain and is most likely effective for other forms of chronic pain as well. This kind of therapy targets the beliefs and fears of each individual regarding their pain and how it effects their lives.

The first step in cognitive functional therapy is to understand the different causes of pain and how chronic pain can be related more to fear, anxiety, and negative beliefs than actual damage. Motivational interviewing is also used to find new ways of moving and relating to the body that make activities more enjoyable. During this process, the person who has chronic pain gains confidence in themselves because they realize that they are not broken. In fact, their body is strong and adaptable.

Becoming Your Own Cognitive Functional Therapist

To come up with your own solutions right now, make a list with 2 columns.

Label one column “Danger” and the other “Safety”. Under the “Danger” column right down everything that makes your pain worse and everything that makes you feel stressed from a smell to an activity. In the “Safety” column write all the activities or things that you enjoy, feel safe doing, and that don’t create pain. Add more of the things in your “Safety” column to your life while reducing the amount of
“Danger” you experience.

If you can’t eliminate specific things in the “Danger” column from your life, try using the other suggestions in this article like breathing. Deep breathing will reduce the amount of danger you feel while you are doing the activity, which will lead to parasympathetic activation and less pain.

For example, is the action of bending over in the “Danger” column because it creates pain? Try taking deep breathes before and while you are bending over, it will most likely feel better.

5. Find a Quality Health Practitioner

If you want some guidance on your journey to becoming pain-free, find a quality health practitioner (physical therapist, doctor, chiropractor, etc.) that meet these criteria:

• They look at the body from a biological, psychological, social, and environmental perspective and how each one can contribute to your pain.
• They make sure you understand what is going on in your body and let you know why they are doing a certain treatment or prescribing a specific exercise.
• They don’t religiously use one modality or another. Instead, they use the appropriate modalities for you.
• After every session, you have a decrease in symptoms, more confidence, and know exactly what to do to progress on your own.
• They admit to you if they cannot help you and refer you to someone who can.

If most of these criteria are met by your health practitioner then you are probably good hands. If you are not sure, then check in with yourself by asking yourself these questions.

• Do you have a clearer understanding of what is going on in your body?
• Are you feeling better than you did before you started seeing that practitioner?
• Do you know what to do to continue the progress on your own?
• If you can’t confidently answer these questions then that practitioner may not be right for you.

Conclusion

Pain is the brain’s response to danger, whether it is perceived or real. A real danger like the damage caused by stubbing your toe will provoke a pain and inflammation response that decreases and disappears as the damage is healed. A perceived danger may lead to a pain response as well, but if perceived dangers become chronic, so will the pain.

Chronic pain can be relieved by activating the parasympathetic nervous system, doing more of what you love, moving in different ways that don’t provoke pain, reducing chronic inflammation by changing your diet and environment, and removing perceived dangers from your life.  If you need guidance, don’t hesitate to find a skilled practitioner to help you relieve your pain.

Most importantly, we must remember that we are not damaged goods. Our bodies are strong and adaptable. Just because you feel pain now does not mean that you have to feel pain for the rest of your life.

Related Reading:

• Mercury Fillings, Root Canals, Cavitations – What You Need to Know
• What Causes Chronic Inflammation, and How To Stop It For Good
• Understanding Stress, Chronic Stress, and Adrenal Fatigue
• Naturally Treat Multiple Sclerosis – Therapies, Diet, Pain Management, Alternative Medicine
• How to Cure Lyme Disease and Virtually Any Other Bacterial Infection, Naturally

Sources:

• Efficacy of classification-based cognitive functional therapy in patients with non-specific chronic low back pain: A randomized controlled trial. — NCBI
• Pain and Why It Hurts — University of Washington
• Three-year incidence of low back pain in an initially asymptomatic cohort: clinical and imaging risk factors. — NCBI
• Central sensitization: Implications for the diagnosis and treatment of pain — NCBI
• A pain neuromatrix approach to patients with chronic pain. — NCBI
• Learned Helplessness in Humans: Critique and Reformulation — Appalachian State University
• Is there a link between pain and depression? Can depression cause physical pain? — Mayo Clinic
• MRI Reveals Relationship Between Depression And Pain — Science Daily
• Longitudinal associations between incident lumbar spine MRI findings and chronic low back pain or radicular symptoms: retrospective analysis of data from the longitudinal assessment of imaging and disability of the back (LAIDBACK). — NCBI
• Depression Can Lead To Back Pain — Science Daily
• Chronic Pain: Symptoms, Diagnosis, & Treatment — NIH Medline Plus
• Pain is Weird — Pain Science
• The sympathetic nervous system and pain. — NCBI
• A study of interior landscape plants for indoor air pollution abatement — Archive
• DIM SIMs — Noijam
• Classification based cognitive functional therapy for back pain — Body in Mind

It is important to gain control over what goes into your mouth. Understanding where your food comes from is great for your body and the health of the environment, but starting another container tomato plant or a itty-bitty herb garden in your kitchen window can start to get old after a while. If you’re sick of sprouting greens and eager to try your green thumb at something new, the wonderful world of mushrooms might be calling your name.

Cast off your concerns that all homegrown mushrooms are poisonous. That’s something mothers tell young children to prevent them from chomping on a death cap in the backyard. In truth, there are dozens of mushroom varieties that you can grow right at home, all without putting your health at risk. Best of all, homegrown mushrooms are incredibly tasty and versatile. Rich in flavor and easy to toss into any recipe, homegrown mushrooms infuse an earthy taste into every dish you add them to, all for far less cost than buying them at the store.

What is a Mushroom, Anyways?

Not a plant or a vegetable, mushrooms are in their own fungal family. Often called saprophytes or organisms that extract nutrients from decomposing plants and animals, mushrooms get their nutrients by breaking down tree stumps, leaves and other material on the forest floor. Scientists estimate that there are over 140,000 species of mushrooms in the world today, though less than 10% have been fully studied at this time. However, the ones that have withstood scientific scrutiny are nothing less than impressive. Ranging in color, texture, shape and toxicity, mushrooms open an entire world of culinary adventures, though only a small number of edible mushrooms actually make it to the supermarket shelves.

Benefits Of Eating Mushrooms

No other food can quite compare to the health benefits of mushrooms. Not only can regular consumption help reduce your risk of developing breast cancer and diabetes, but mushrooms also naturally lower bad cholesterol levels and fill you up with protein, vitamins, antioxidants and more. Mushrooms are full of valuable substances like riboflavin, pantothenic acid, folate, thiamine, and niacin. As they are the only naturally vegan dietary source of vitamin D, mushrooms can naturally help inhibit the growth of cancer cells. One cup of stir fried shiitake mushrooms provides 3 grams of fiber, which helps you feel full for longer after your meal. Because most varieties are almost 90% water, mushrooms are extremely low in calories but still make for a top rate meat substitute that will leave you feeling satisfied.

Top Reasons to Grow Your Own Mushrooms

Your mushroom experiences have been stunted if you haven’t branched out beyond boring portabello mushrooms. Despite what you might think, growing your own mushrooms doesn’t require acres of farmland or specialized knowledge. All you need to get started is a little knowledge, the right spores, and motivation. The techniques for mushroom cultivation tend to be very basic, meaning that a little experience will take you a long way towards becoming self-sufficient and sustainable with your fungi consumption.

Top Three Types to Grow Yourself

Risotto fans, rejoice! Growing your own mushrooms is a simple way to enjoy the benefits of these fascinating fungi, and there are dozens of delicious mushroom varieties that are simple for the beginner to grow. Once you start growing one of these three mushroom varieties, you will soon start branching out into ever fancier varieties to grow. But be warned; mushroom cultivation is addictive, and once you start, it’s too hard to stop.

Pearl Oyster Mushrooms

You don’t need lots of yard space to grow these guys. With the smallest amount of effort, homegrown pearl oyster mushrooms can be yours to enjoy. All it takes is a plastic container full of something you throw away every day without thinking: coffee grounds.

To make these mushrooms work, you’ll need to collect more than two gallons of coffee grounds. If your caffeine consumption can’t quite handle that rate, simply visit your local coffee shop and see what kinds of grounds they have to spare. You’ll be sure to come home with more than you need.

Once you have enough grounds to get started, add them to a two-gallon bucket and blend pre-bought mushroom spores into the top inch of coffee grounds. Use a spray bottle to keep the spore-soaked grounds moist, and cover the bucket with plastic wrap. Punch six or more holes into the plastic wrap. For an even better effect, you can also drill holes in the bucket just a few inches above the top of the grounds so that CO2 from growing mushrooms can escape with ease. Put the bucket in a warm, dark place and spray it down twice a day to keep it moist. In a matter of weeks, small mushrooms will start to appear that can be easily harvested and eaten. Once your bucket seems to slow down its production, you can swap out those grounds and get started with fresh ones.

Lion’s Mane Mushrooms

If you want to grow something that truly stands out, lion’s mane mushrooms might be the variety for you. These softball-sized clusters of white fungi grow with long, white spines down the sides that look like the long hairs made famous on the King of the Savannah. Not only do lion’s mane mushrooms taste amazing when sauteed with other vegetables, they also have been shown to have plenty of neurotropic capabilities and are excellent brain boosters, especially for people suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia. grow bagAll you need to get started is a grow bag. Mushroom grow bags come with roughly 5lbs of sterilized spawn that have been inoculated into a substrate. When kept in ideal growing conditions, most bags can produce

A grow bag is all you need to get started. Mushroom grow bags come with roughly 5lbs of sterilized spawn that have been inoculated into a substrate. When kept in ideal growing conditions, most bags can produce more than a pound of stunning lion’s mane mushrooms.

Keep your bag unopened until you’re ready to fruit it (refrigerators work best). Once you start to see white mycelium starting to form throughout the bag it is ready to fruit. At this time, set the bag on a dinner plate or shallow container and keep it somewhere where it will get light and consistent humidity. Make a small slit in a place where the white fungus is extra thick, being careful not to cut into the block. Next, roll down the top of the bag so that it’s tight against the block and pull a piece of fabric over the bag to keep it in the dark. Keep the fabric wet by misting it with a spray bottle a few times a day, checking it repeatedly to see if the mushrooms have grown (this usually takes a few weeks).

Once you start to see a large mushroom growing out of the slit, you can harvest it by twisting and pulling it out of the block. Don’t use a knife, as it might contaminate the block. It’s easy to enjoy your giant mushroom in your favorite dish. If you keep the block moist for several more weeks, you should get additional mushrooms to form through the same hole.

Shiitake Mushrooms

Popular in Asian cooking, shiitake mushrooms are full of flavor and have a highly distinctive, almost meat-like texture. They are delicious when sauteed or baked, and tend to be big successes at farmers markets or natural food stores because they are simple to dry out and can be re-hydrated in a matter of minutes to restore the full flavor. Though shiitake mushrooms are well suited for a small mushroom business, they are also an ideal mushroom for first-time growers to start with if they want to learn how mushroom logs work.

Like many mushroom types, shiitakes need to be grown on hardwood logs that stay moist, well shaded, and out of the way of fierce winds. While oak wood tends to work best, any hardwood can work in a pinch. The best time to cut down mushroom logs is in the late winter in order to allow them plenty of time to set before getting inoculated in the early spring. Logs that are between 3-8 inches are ideal, and each log shouldn’t be longer than 3-4 feet. Make sure to choose logs with intact bark, as gaps provide perfect openings for wild spores to get inside and compromise your mushrooms.

In order to inoculate your logs, a high-speed drill is necessary to drill holes that are one inch deep, 5/16 inches in diameter, and spaced six inches apart. After drilling, you can fill each whole with a mix of sawdust and shiitake spores, and then seal the mixture in place by covering the top with melted cheese wax.

Once the logs are inoculated, they need between six months to a year for the spores to fully spread throughout the log in a thread-like network called the spawn run. Throughout these months, the mushroom logs need to be stacked in piles that allow for good air flow while still being protected from wind and rain. The best strategy is to shoot for 35-45 percent moisture content at all times and keep the logs off the bare ground in order to prevent contamination from strains of wild fungi.

After the spawn run is complete, the shiitake mushrooms will start to pop up from the log every few days. Once the caps are just about completely open they are ready to be harvested. It’s easy for mushrooms to go from almost ready to overripe in a matter of hours, so make sure to check your logs often to ensure they are being harvested enough. Once harvested, shiitakes can be stored for many months so long as you keep them in well-ventilated containers or dry them out before storage. After the harvest of most of the logs fruiting bodies, it’s best to let it rest for the next few months in order to give the mycelium in the logs time to regain their energy in order to bloom again. When taken care of in this way, most shiitake mushroom logs can fruit for 2-8 years with no problems.

In Summary

The wild and wonderful world of mushroom cultivation is not to be underestimated. If your only experience with mushrooms has been the boring button varieties at grocery stores, the time has come to branch out. Start out with one of these three simple strategies for cultivating your own mushrooms, and you’ll soon be a fungi fanatic who can’t leave them alone.

Related products:

• Mushrooms (Nutritional)

Related Reading:

• Medicinal Mushrooms
• The Unique Mushroom that Balances Hormones
• Mushrooms Boost Your Immunity
• Shiitake Mushrooms Can Help Prevent Cervical Cancer, Study Finds
• How To Kill Candida, Fungi, Yeast in the Body
• 10 Most Profitable Vegetables To Grow

Sources:

• Health Benefits of Mushrooms – Organic Facts
• Vitamin D Health Benefits – Mercola
• How to Grow Pearl Oyster Mushrooms – Everything Mushrooms
• How To Grow Lion’s Mane in a Grow Bag – Sow True Seeds
• Getting Started With Shiitake Mushrooms – Living Echo

How many vegetables and fruits do you eat each day? Are you getting the maximum benefit from your food choices?

In the early 2000s, The World Health Organization (WHO) began a campaign to raise awareness of the connection between health and adequate fruit and vegetable consumption. The quality of health wasn’t the only issue. Mortality itself was measured in units of fruit and vegetable consumption.

WHO estimated 2.7 million lives could be saved each year if fruit and vegetable consumption was raised to a sufficient level. They stated that low consumption of fruits and vegetables was one of the top ten risk factors for global mortality. The recommendation equaled a minimum intake of 400g (14 ounces) of fruits and vegetables excluding potatoes and other starchy tubers. This is about 5 servings a day. This level of consumption reduced the risk of heart disease, cancer, and stroke.

The latest research says we should do better. Now the recommendation is 10 servings (800 grams or 28 ounces) of fruits and vegetables per day.

The study conducted by scientists from the Imperial College London, analyzed 95 studies on fruit and vegetable intake. It included “up to 2 million people,” assessing “up to 43,000 cases of heart disease, 47,000 cases of stroke, 81,000 cases of cardiovascular disease, 112,000 cancer cases, and 94,000 deaths.” Their conclusion was an estimated reduction of 7.8 million annual premature deaths if everyone followed this dietary advice.

When compared to not eating any fruits and vegetables, ten servings a day was associated with:

• 24 % reduced risk of heart disease
• 33 % reduced risk of stroke
• 28 % reduced risk of cardiovascular disease
• 13 % reduced risk of total cancer
• 31 % reduction in premature death

While we at OLM and many others promoting a plant-based diet agree with this conclusion, we believe there is more to healthy eating than the volume of vegetables. The study did say not all fruits and vegetable were equal, but it did not stress the need for a large variety of vegetables and fruits or to choose organic and mostly raw.

We’d also like to see five servings a day versus ten, and what about 15? When do the benefits wear off? Raw or cooked? Another question this raises for us is, are we needing to double our intake of produce because of nutrient depletion in our soil?

What we do know is that gut health provides the basis of our health. Gut health determines the strength and efficiency of our immune system, the intake of nutrients to fuel our entire body, the creation of many of our neurotransmitters, and the ability to detox. An unbalanced microbiome allows an overgrowth of one bacteria over others or an overgrowth of Candida or parasites. A leaky gut is like a sewer leaking filth and disease into the bloodstream.

We have always recommended a diet consisting of 80% raw, organic produce– a wide variety of vegetables and fruit, mostly vegetables. In addition, we recommend the elimination of all artificial colors, flavorings, and preservatives; refined sugar; trans fats; MSG; and GMOs. The perfect diet is all real food, with no packaged, processed concoctions added in. Real food doesn’t have an ingredient list. There are no added chemicals.

It is important that your vegetable and fruit consumption includes a wide variety. Every fruit or vegetable contains its own combination of nutrients. We need a variety to consume as many nutrients as possible. In addition, we don’t want to overfeed just one or a few of our friendly or not so friendly bacteria or yeast by favoring one food over others. We want to maintain balance in all ways. For instance, if all of our fruit choices are high sugar, Candida thrives. We need a diverse microbiome to fend off a wide array of pathogens and to achieve this, we need a wide variety of nutrients to feed a wide variety of helpful microbiome bacteria.

If you are ill or you don’t feel well, changing your diet will change your life. We’ve seen it over and over again. If we eat a perfect diet until all traces of disease are gone, we heal very quickly. No supplement can achieve the change of health we accomplish by eating one large, organic salad filled with 15 or more vegetables each day.

If you are ready to change your life, change your diet. Go for 10+ a day. And remember, variety is key! Check out the salad recipe in the first article below.

Further Reading:

• Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included
• Your Guide to Root Vegetables – Health Benefits, Recipes, and More
• The Difference Between Heirlooms, Hybrids, and GMOs
• How to Detoxify and Heal the Lymphatic System
• How to Cure Lyme Disease, and Virtually Any Other Bacterial Infection, Naturally

Sources:

• Eating more fruits and vegetables may prevent millions of premature deaths – Imperial College London
• We Should Be Eating 10 Portions Of Fruit And Veg A Day To Live Longer – IFL Science.com
• Forget five a day, eat 10 portions of fruit and veg to cut risk of early death – The Guardian

Your brain is the commander-in-chief of your body. It constantly receives information from your internal and external environment and decides the best course of action to take for your survival. The brain carries out this action by sending messages through the nerves of the nervous system to the appropriate parts of the body.

For example, when the sympathetic nervous system is activated, it will help simultaneously change the behavior of the heart, lungs, eyes, brain, digestive system, adrenal glands, bladder, and skeletal muscles. All of this is done to achieve one goal – survival. On the other hand, the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system stimulates digestion, recovery, and rest throughout the organs of the body when we are not faced with a threat.

These two branches of the autonomic nervous system help us explain how our brain controls our body, but can our body control our brain?

You are the Sum of Your Neurobiology

In his book, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, Neuroscientist David Eagleman explains:

…who you are depends on the sum total of your neurobiology.”

Neurobiology is dictated by more than just the brain. Just like any government, even a dictatorship, the leader is influenced by other members of the governing body. Even though the brain can affect every organ in the body through the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the nervous system, the brain cannot veto the power of the gut.

Our Second Brain

The gut is sometimes known as our second brain. In fact, it has its own branch of the nervous system called the enteric nervous system that can function on its own, even if it is disconnected from the brain.

The enteric nervous system also resembles a brain because it:

• has glial cells to support the neurons in the gut
• contains 500 million neurons
• uses 40 (and possibly many more) neurotransmitters
• produces 50% of the body’s dopamine (important for motility)
• produces 95% of the body’s serotonin (important for the enteric nervous system’s growth & cell protection)
• has a barrier that resembles the blood brain barrier
• may even have its own memory

How the Gut Influences the Brain

The brain and gut are intimately connected by the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve connects with most of the organs and plays a prominent role in activating the parasympathetic nervous system.

Around 90% of the signals passing along the vagus nerve come not from the brain, but from the enteric nervous system to the brain. This is because one of the brains most effective ways of learning about its environment is through the gut, and this relationship starts before we are even exposed to the outside environment.

The Development of the Brain & Gut Connection

When we were in the womb, we were constantly picking up signals about the outside environment.

Is there enough food?

Is it safe out there?

What adaptions will I need now to ensure survival?

All of these questions were answered by the chemical signals that we received from our mothers through the umbilical cord, and the development of our brain and gut depended heavily on these signals. For example, if there was a lack of nutrition in our mother’s diet, we may be predisposed to obesity due to altered metabolic function.

What we are feed in our youth also greatly impacts the development of our gut and its enteric nervous system. Breastmilk is essential because it promotes oxytocin and serotonin release, which promotes gut growth and the development of a healthy gut microbiome. When the gut is able to develop with a healthy gut microbiome, the risk of food allergies and gut issues later on in life is greatly reduced. A damaged gut, on the other hand, increases the risk of obesity, depression, anxiety, autism, multiple sclerosis, and cardiovascular disease.

Other common diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s may actually start in the gut. For example, in people that died from Parkinson’s disease, scientists found the same protein clumps that damage dopamine-producing neurons in the gut as they did in the brain. The same phenomenon exists in people with Alzheimer’s disease. Plaques and tangles that form in the brain of people with Alzheimer’s disease also form in their gut. This means that we may be able to use gut biopsies to diagnose and treat these conditions before they take hold of the brain.

Stress and the Gut

When we are stressed our sympathetic nervous system is activated to prepare our body for survival. At the same time, the hormone Ghrelin is released from our stomach. Ghrelin is known as our hunger hormone because it stimulates appetite and promotes fat storage. This explains why when we are stressed we may feel the compulsive need to eat.

Ghrelin also inhibits serotonin activity, which leads to digestive issues and increased anxiety and depression over time. Anxiety leads to more ghrelin production, and this starts a vicious cycle of stress that may have been triggered by a stressful fetal or neonatal environment.

Recommended Reading: How Candida Leads to Depression, Anxiety, ADHD, and Other Mental Disorders

Irritable Bowel Syndrome – When Gut & Brain Disharmony Becomes Chronic

Stress also increases the risk of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a digestive disorder that affects 10-15% of the world population. IBS  is what happens when the enteric nervous system, gut, gut microbiome, and brain are in disharmony.

It usually begins with a stressful childhood. Traumatic events, like maternal separation, can lead to a dysfunctional connection between the brain and gut. If these children are also feed the wrong food, their gut microbiome will not develop correctly. This establishes a dysfunctional gut microbiome that does not produce the substances needed for a healthy gut and a healthy enteric nervous system.

If the child continues to be deprived of nutrient dense food and human connection, their immune system will become hyperactive, leading to food allergies and a chronic state of stress. This vicious cycle of brain, gut, and gut microbiome disharmony continues into adulthood until it is defined as IBS.

Recommended Reading: Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases

The Gut, Brain, and Behavioral Disorders

The enteric nervous system, gut, gut microbiome, and brain disharmony play an essential role in the development of neurological/behavioral disorders like autism, ADHD, and various mood disorders. Antibiotics, environmental, infectious agents like vaccines, and other forms of neonatal stress create gut dysbiosis (imbalance in gut bacteria) and vagus nerve dysfunction. These two factors set the stage for neurological/behavioral disorders by stimulating an already hyperactive immune system and sympathetic nervous system that causes children to be extremely impulsive and in a state of persistent hyper-arousal. If these children are then fed a highly refined diet that keeps their blood sugar levels high, their symptoms will continue to get worse.

You may have actually experienced a small taste of what it’s like to have ADHD or autism the last time you ate processed foods filled with toxins. When you eat highly refined, toxin laden foods, your body must fire up its immune system and sympathetic nervous system to protect you from the threat. This will cause blood flow to be directed away from your prefrontal cortex while your blood sugar rises. When your blood sugar is high, it creates plaque build up in the brain and impairs blood vessel function, which reduces  your cognitive abilities. Combine that with the lack of activity in your prefrontal cortex, and you will feel impulsive and anxious and make illogical decisions.

When you add stress and poor food choices together, it creates a cascade of negative effects in the gut microbiome, gut, enteric nervous system, and the brain that lead to poor decision-making, a greater incidence of pain, more allergies, and more disease.

But don’t worry, even if your environment was filled with stress and poor food options from the womb to adulthood, even if you were diagnosed with ADHD, IBS, autism, depression, chronic pain, Parkinson’s disease, and/or Alzheimer’s disease, you can still restore the harmony between your gut, gut microbiome, enteric nervous system, and brain.

Synchronizing the Gut and Brain

One of the most effective ways to improve your health is by starting with what you put in your body. When you feed your body what it needs while eliminating the foods that cause issues, you will establish a healthy gut microbiome, heal your gut lining, and improve the function of your enteric nervous system. This will send the message to the brain that you are not under attack, the immune system will calm down, and your body will be able to rest and reverse disease.

Improving Brain Health with the Gut

Limit Your Consumption of FOD MAPs

FOD MAPs is an acronym that stands for:

• Fermentable – meaning they are only broken down through fermentation
• Oligosaccharides – made up of individual sugars joined together in a chain
• Disaccharides – a double sugar molecule
• Monosaccharides – a single sugar molecule
• And Polyols – sugar alcohols

These are short-chain carbohydrates that tend to be poorly digested by those with digestive issues like IBS. This is because when the FOD MAPs make their way through the digestive tract, they draw water into the large intestine from surrounding areas, which leads to bloating. Simultaneously, the bacteria in the large intestine starts digesting the FOD MAPs and producing gas which builds up along with the water. The intestines expand, the message is sent to the brain, and it responds with more pain, discomfort, and stress.

Eating a low FOD MAP diet has showed promising effects in treating people with IBS and may transfer to others with a comprised digestive system. It is commonly suggested to limit the consumption of  FOD MAPs for 3-8 weeks to help balance the gut microbiome, heal the gut, and reduce symptoms. After that time, it is best to slowly re-introduce high FOD MAP foods into your diet to see which ones are safe to eat and which ones cause the most issues for you.

Recommended Reading: Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting - Recipes Included

Eliminate Foods that Cause Problems for You

Food sensitives and allergies are becoming more and more common and the link between stress, the immune system, and the gut is mostly to blame. When the body is in a stressed and inflamed state, your immune system and gut may react to previously harmless foods as if they are a threat to the body.

To reduce your food sensitives and allergic reactions, start by eliminating these common, allergy-causing foods from your diet:

• Milk
• Eggs
• Peanuts
• Tree Nuts
• Soy
• Grains with gluten in them (wheat, barley, rye, and oats)
• Fish
• Shellfish

When you eliminate some of these foods from your diet, you may notice that you have more energy and less stress. This is a sign that you may be sensitive or allergic to one or more of the foods that you eliminated. Keep in mind that almost any food can trigger an allergy. If a certain food item always makes you feel worse after eating it then it is safe to say that you should eliminate it from your diet.

Think of this approach as a temporary experiment designed to see what the ideal diet is for you. After a couple weeks of eliminating a specific food from your diet, try periodically reintroducing that food back in. You may find that you can eat eggs or almonds again, and they make you feel energized now!

Recommended Reading: Increase your IQ with the Right Foods, Herbs, Vitamins, and Exercises for Your Brain

Increase Your Fiber Intake

Fiber cannot be broken down by the body, so bacteria in the intestines feast on it. As a result, the bacteria produce butyrate. This short chain fatty acid helps to improve the function of the digestive tract and protect and enhance brain function.

Supplement with Probiotics

Probiotics have been found to reduce anxiety and depression. In studies done on mice, the amount of lactobacillus in their gut effected the amount of a metabolite in the blood called kynurenine, which has been shown to drive depression. Probiotics also help produce serotonin in the gut, which has protective effects against irritable bowel syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and osteoporosis.

Recommended Reading: Probiotics, Bacteria, and Our Health

Make Sure You Consume Enough Folate and Vitamin B12

Folate and Vitamin B12 are essential for brain health, nervous system function, and overall health. They also help to prevent depression and heart disease. On its own Vitamin B12 decreases the loss of brain volume with age, while increasing cognitive function.

Although these vitamins are produced by the gut microbiome, we are not sure how much is actually made and absorbed by the body. It’s best to make sure you are consuming animal products like pasture raised eggs for Vitamin B12 and plenty of organic dark leafy green vegetables for folate.

Increase Your Intake of Omega 3s and Decrease Omega 6s

The omega 3 fatty acids, DHA and EPA, are effective at reducing the symptoms of depression, and positive effects may carry over to other neurological disorders as well. This is partly due to the decrease in inflammation that is associated with diets that are lower in omega 6s and higher in omega 3s.

To decrease the amount of omega 6s in your diet, replace vegetable, seed, and soybean oils with highly saturated fats like coconut oil, butter, ghee, and tallow. If you need a liquid oil for salad dressing use avocado oil or olive oil.

Omega 3s are best when consumed as minimally cooked and processed as possible. Wild caught salmon, sardines, mackerel, and oysters are great sources of DHA and EPA.

Before You Eat, Improve Your Gut with Your Mind

Before you take the first bite of food from your brain and gut revitalizing meal, take a deep diaphragmatic breath. This will stimulate your vagus nerve and prepare your body to digest your food. Chew each bite thoroughly, enjoy every flavor, and take at-least one deep breath after every couple of bites.

Use your brain to improve your gut and your gut to improve your brain. If you apply this advice to your life, you will replace the vicious cycle of disease with a nutritious cycle of vitality.

Related Articles:

• Candida, Gut Flora, Allergies, and Disease
• How to Improve Brain Health and Reduce the Risk of Alzheimer’s
• How to Detoxify and Heal the Lymphatic System
• Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones
• Increase your IQ with the Right Foods, Herbs, Vitamins, and Exercises for Your Brain

Recommended Supplements:

• Shillington’s Brain Tonic
• B Complex
• Shillington’s Cayenne Tincture
• Krill Oil
• Omega-3 w/CoQ10
• Shillington’s Intestinal Cleanse
• Formula SF722
• Floramend-Prime by Thorne

Sources:

• Probiotic Found in Yogurt Can Reverse Depression Symptoms — Neuroscience News
• Brain-gut axis in health and disease — Gastroenterology
• The microbiota–gut–brain axis: neurobehavioral correlates, health and sociality — Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience
• The Dutch Hunger Winter and the developmental origins of health and disease — PNAS
• Impact of stress and stress physiology during pregnancy on child metabolic function and obesity risk — NCBI
• Immune Responses to the Microbiota at the Intestinal Mucosal Surface — Cell
• Gut instincts: The secrets of your second brain — New Scientist
• An Integrative Review on Role and Mechanisms of Ghrelin in Stress, Anxiety and Depression. — NCBI
• Ghrelin inhibited serotonin release from hippocampal slices — Research Gate
• Maternal separation as a model of brain–gut axis dysfunction — Psychopharmacology
• Facts About IBS — About IBS
• Even More Evidence Has Linked Parkinson’s Disease to Our Gut Bacteria — Science Alert
• Sugar and the Brain — Harvard Medical School
• Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Is it Time to Reappraise the Role of Sugar Consumption? — NCBI
• Stress and Allergic Diseases — NCBI
• Butyrate, neuroepigenetics and the gut microbiome: Can a high fiber diet improve brain health? — Science Direct
• Gut-Microbiota-Brain Axis and Its Effect on Neuropsychiatric Disorders With Suspected Immune Dysregulation — Clinical Therapeutics
• Treatment of depression: time to consider folic acid and vitamin B12. — NCBI
• Vitamin B12 status and rate of brain volume loss in community-dwelling elderly. — NCBI
• The Complete Beginner’s Guide to a Low FODMAP Diet — Diet Vs Disease
• Microbes Help Produce Serotonin in Gut — Caltech
• Omega-3 fatty acids in depression: a review of three studies. — NCBI
• David Eagleman’s Incognito: Not The Masters Of Our Destinies — Science 2.0