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Healing Your Brain with Nutrition:
Reclaiming Your Best Brain Health
By Pamela Costello, MD, PhD, Holistic Neurological Surgeon, Neuroscientist
Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food. – Hippocrates 460-370 B.C.
Hippocrates, the Ancient Greek philosopher, considered to
be the ‘Father of Medicine’, stated in the 4th century B.C.
that disease was a product of environmental factors, diet,
and lifestyle. Proper nutrition can serve to heal the brain and nervous
system through multiple modalities. A healthy diet can support
the neuroimmune system, aid in detoxification, repair the gastrointestinal
tract, create a healing pH, decrease inflammation, and
correct Candida overgrowth and bacterial imbalances (dysbiosis).
We all have individualized genetic makeups, with predispositions
to disease. The increasingly deleterious effect of our toxic environment,
including that of our altered food supply, has had an
increasingly negative effect on that template. This contributes to
higher incidences of neuroinflammatory disease, from developmental,
behavioral, and neuromuscular disorders of the nervous
system in children, to increasing cases of multiple sclerosis, ALS,
CIDP, chronic pain syndromes, cognitive dysfunction and mood
disorders in adulthood, and to earlier onset of dementias and other
neurodegenerative disease in the elderly.
Reclaiming your physical health and intellectual independence,
therefore, requires a focused renewed strategy of identifying and
removing major dietary stressors and enhancing the diet with
those foods supportive of healing your gut, immune, and nervous
systems. Such an approach begins with realizing the relationship of
your immune system to your gut, or gastrointestinal tract, and its
health to the nervous system. Approximately 75% of our bodies’
immune system lies in our gut wall. The effects of exposure to
environmental toxins, particularly adverse dietary choices, take a
heavy toll on your gastrointestinal health, which can predispose
you to virtually any neuroinflammatory illness.
Dietary stressors are typically components of the foods
themselves, but also include additives, preservatives, and products
of the food containers. Some general dietary guidelines to follow:
1. Buy Organic. Toxins such as heavy metals, aluminum cans,
plastics, pesticides, radiation, additives, artificial sweeteners,
and solvents in our food and water acquired during processing,
preparation, and packaging, are all neurotoxic.
2. Glycemic Index. High glycemic index foods cause immune
imbalances and adverse inflammatory reactions that directly
affect the brain.
3. Avoid GMO foods. Genetically modified foods (GMOs)
such as wheat, soy, corn, etc. stress our nervous and immune
systems, create inflammation, and are neurotoxic.
4. Dairy Intolerances. Milk, cheese, yogurt, butter, cottage
cheese, and ice cream, are all potential sources of inflammation,
due to compromised tolerances of the protein (casein) and
sugar (lactose) components.
5. Gluten-free. Gluten, which is highest in wheat and other grains,
is a troublesome protein for nervous and immune systems,
creating an increasing incidence of neuroinflammatory
illness. Understanding which foods contain gluten, as well as
safe gluten-free alternatives, is critical to neuroimmunologic
recovery.
6. Macronutrients. Adequate consumption and proper
balance of the ratio of macronutrients (fats, proteins, and
carbohydrates), is required for detoxification and establishing
a healthy immune system; e.g., some fats cause inflammation,
while others reduce it , repairing brain tissue!
7. Alkaline pH. Our bodies degenerate under acidic dietary
imbalances and heal with an ideal blend of a majority ratio of
alkaline to acidic foods.
8. Direct Neurotoxins. Alcohol, tobacco, and neuroactive
substances of abuse cause brain chemistry imbalances and
directly kill brain cells.
9. Irradiated Foods. Remove microwaves from home and work
environments. Replace with toaster or convection ovens.
10. Micronutrients. Maintain sufficient daily intake of
micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), which are best
utilized by our bodies when in their most bioavailable form,
i.e., through dietary sources.
If you are interested in an individualized nutritional assessment
as part of maximizing your neuroimmunological
health, please contact my office at 505-503-8325 for an appt.
Read more articles online: by Pamela www.trulyalive.net
Costello online: www.trulyalive.net
Truly Alive | September/October 2013 19