Nourish Your Brain with These Powerful Superfoods

Primary Topic

This episode focuses on how certain superfoods can significantly enhance brain health and cognitive function.

Episode Summary

In this impactful episode, Dr. Mark Hyman explores the profound effects that specific superfoods have on brain health. He delves into how everyday food choices can either nourish or harm our cognitive functions and overall mental wellness. Dr. Hyman discusses the detrimental impact of the standard American diet, loaded with sugars and processed foods, on our brain health, contrasting it with how superfoods like dark green leafy vegetables, certain fish, and berries can reverse brain aging and protect against neurodegenerative diseases. With a blend of scientific insights and practical advice, this episode is a compelling guide on using diet to boost mental acuity, mood, and overall brain health.

Main Takeaways

  1. Superfoods can significantly enhance brain function and protect against cognitive decline.
  2. Diet plays a crucial role in mental health, where certain foods can either enhance or impair brain health.
  3. Green leafy vegetables are essential for their antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties.
  4. Omega-3 rich fish reduce inflammation and are linked to lower depression rates.
  5. Berries, particularly blueberries, support brain health through their anti-inflammatory effects and high antioxidant levels.

Episode Chapters

1: Introduction to Brain Health Superfoods

Dr. Hyman introduces the concept that food choices directly impact brain health. He outlines the episode's focus on specific superfoods that can enhance cognitive functions and mental health. Mark Hyman: "Food is medicine that can prevent, manage, and treat disease, and this is especially true when it comes to brain health."

2: The Role of Diet in Mental Health

Discussion on how the standard American diet contributes to cognitive decline, and how superfoods combat this effect. Mark Hyman: "The food we eat can either be the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison."

3: Detailed Discussion on Superfoods

In-depth analysis of each superfood category, their benefits, and how they protect and nourish the brain. Mark Hyman: "Each superfood has unique properties that contribute to our mental well-being and cognitive longevity."

Actionable Advice

  1. Incorporate more dark green vegetables into meals daily for their brain-protective nutrients.
  2. Eat omega-3 rich fish multiple times a week to lower inflammation and support brain health.
  3. Add berries to your diet, focusing on blueberries for their high antioxidant levels.
  4. Consider supplementation for omega-3s if fish consumption is limited.
  5. Engage in regular dietary reviews to ensure balance and adequacy in nutrient intake.

About This Episode

Harness the power of nutrition for a healthier, sharper mind. In this episode of "The Doctor's Farmacy," I explore the science behind five remarkable superfoods that can sharpen your mental acuity, rejuvenate your brain, and safeguard against neurodegenerative diseases. Plus, I share actionable tips to seamlessly integrate these brain-boosting foods into your daily diet, enhancing your cognitive function and overall well-being.

People

Mark Hyman

Companies

Essentia, Ripa University

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

None

Content Warnings:

None

Transcript

Mark Hyman
Coming up on this episode of the doctor's pharmacy. Now, the higher adherence to the diet was correlated with a 55% lower risk of depression symptoms. Increased fish intake was linked to a 44% reduced risk of depression overall and a 56% reduction in women. It seems that every day more and more patients come into my office bringing ever increasing amounts of healthcare information with them. And I love it when this happens.

Because it means people are taking ownership of their health, but it also means I have to stay on the top of my game. So, as a healthcare practitioner, how do you make sure that when a patient. Walks into your office and says, hey. I really want a dutch complete or a GI map, that you have the right answers and tools? The answer is Ripa University.

They are the number one educational institute for root cause medicine, with over 20,000 practitioners a year learning about functional and specialty lab testing. Not only do they have absolutely free. Lab classes hosted every week, but they. Bring in industry experts to teach in depth six week boot camps on all the most popular functional tests. If you want to level up your knowledge of functional lab testing, make sure.

To visit roopainiversity.com dot hey everyone, it's Doctor mark. Sleep is the foundation of wellness and happiness. But when you're sleeping on a so so mattress, getting deep, restful sleep can be difficult. Thankfully, my friends at Essentia have solved the problem of less than stellar mattresses. Their mattresses have the latest in sleep technology to help you achieve quality sleep that you need to optimize your health and wellness.

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Enjoy an extra hundred dollars off your organic mattress purchase with the code Hymen at checkout on essentia site. Visit myessentia.com forward Slash Drmarkheiman that's myessentia.com Dash Arkhyman and now let's get back to this week's episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy. Now, before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone by my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand. Well, you if you're looking for data about your biology, check out function health for real time lab insights.

And if you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, well check out my membership community doctor Hyman plus. And if you're looking for curated, trusted supplements and health products for your health journey, visit my website, drheiman.com for my website store and a summary of my favorite and thoroughly tested products. Welcome to the doctor's pharmacy. I'm Doctor Mark Hyman, and this special episode of Health Bites are juicy little health bites to help you live better, longer. Imagine being able to enhance your mood, your mental acuity, your overall cognitive function, just by what you choose to put at the end of your fork.

You see, food is not just sustenance for energy to fuel our bodies. It's one of the most potent forms of medicine that's available to us. Literally medicine. In today's episode, we're exploring the impact of food five specific foods. We call them superfoods, but really they're just foods that help boost our mental health, reverse brain aging, and protect us from chronic, ever more common neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, dementia, and Parkinson's.

Unfortunately, the typical american diet, which the vast majority of Americans eat, is loaded with sugars, starches, ultra processed food like substances, science projects, basically, and inflammatory fats, which can do the exact opposite, drive inflammation that harms our physical health and clouded our brains, strips us of our zest and vitality for life, and makes us prone to sadness, anxiety, and depression. It literally breaks our brain, and that's why so many of us are walking around with a broken brain. Now, in previous episodes of the podcast, I've discussed in depth how food influences our mood and mental state, which I strongly encourage you to check out and I'll link to them in the show notes. However, today I want to zero in on the research behind five specific foods that you can add to your diet for tremendous capacity to support your brain and health and make us feel, think, and perform better. Now, some of you may be familiar with a few of these foods, but others may surprise you.

So let's jump right in with the first food that can literally change the way your brain works for the better. The first is dark green leafy vegetables and specifically a category called cruciferous vegetables, also known as brassicas. Basically the broccoli family kale, collards, spinach, arugula, swiss chard, collard greens, mustard greens, bok choy, romaine lettuce, turnip greens, beet greens, watercress, endive, escarole, broccoli, rabe, dandelion greens, radicchio, watercress, lettuce, chicory. Pretty much anything green. What is the mechanism of green leafy veggies and the positive effect on their brain?

Well, there's a lot of reasons. Antioxidants and protective phytochemicals. Now, we don't think of phytochemicals as essential nutrients, but they kind of are. They're protective foods. We know harmful foods like sugar and processed food and so forth, but they're also protective foods, and we want to eat more of those and less of the harmful foods.

Now, green leafy vegetables contain anti inflammatory molecules and antioxidants, things like vitamin C and e, carotenoids, which are the green orange things, actually, also. But they're in the green vegetables. Lutein, which is great for eyes. Alpha linolenic acid, which is plant based omega three s. They contain polyphenols, which are these plant based anti inflammatory chemicals, flavonoids, things like camprol, all these things reduce oxidative stress, which causes inflammation, and then reduce, more importantly, neuroinflammation, which is inflammation of your brain.

Now, oxidative stress damages your cells and it can contribute to the formation and accumulation of something called beta amyloid plaques. And you might have heard of amyloid theory of Alzheimer's. And amyloid, just to be clear, is not the cause of Alzheimer's, although many for many years thought it was. And we spent billions of dollars studying research to prove that it was. But we never could be successful.

It's sort of a side effect of inflammation, and it's the body's attempt to deal with a bad set of circumstances. So it's sort of a bystander in the process of dementia, and it does gum up your brain, but it's really not the issue. It's the inflammation that's driving the amyloid development. And some of these foods can be protective. Right?

So some studies suggest that polyphenols can inhibit the formation of beta amyloid fibrils, which are these plaques that are common in response to inflammation in the brain. And they gum up the brain that ends up causing dementia. Now, they also promote clearance of these plaques in the brain. So these polyphenols actually help the brain clear amyloid, which is great. This explains probably maybe some of their effects on the cognitive function that we're seeing.

There's also other nutrients, like vitamin K, filiquinone, that plays a crucial role in regulating calcium and activates proteins that help keep calcium out of areas where it shouldn't be, such as the brain's blood vessels. Vitamin K also has anti inflammatory effects and that can reduce neuroinflammation. It's also involved in the synthesis of important fats called sphingolipids. Doesn't matter what they call them, but basically it's a class of lipids that are crucial components of your brain cell membrane. So your brain cells have membranes and they have to be made of the right fats.

And if they don't have the right fats, you end up with more inflammation. Now these lipids play a role in cell signaling and they may maintain the integrity and the function of your brain cells. Really important. So what else besides green leafy vegetables is protective for your brain? What's the second big group of food or foods that can do this?

Well, small cold water fish. I'm explaining why. Now, I call these the smash fish. Salmon, mackerel, anchovies, sardines and herring. Now, you might not like them, but they are the most nutritionally dense, the lowest in toxins and the highest in omega three fats.

Plus, trout and oysters are also great. Now, why is fish good for our brains? What does the research actually say? Well, a new study published in the British Journal of Nutrition looked at the diet of 798 adults aged 65 to 97, and they looked at 102 item questionnaire using the center for Epidemiologic Studies depression scale. Now participants were categorized based on adherence to the mediterranean diet.

Now we can argue, what is the mediterranean diet? Is there a better diet out there? But it's basically a whole foods, healthy diet, right? And it's not. And basically, what is mediterranean diet?

It could be pizza and pasta. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about whole foods, right? Lots of veggies, fruit, olive oil, nuts, seeds, fish, whole grains, beans. That's a mediterranean diet.

Now, the higher adherence to the diet was correlated with a 55% lower risk of depression symptoms. Increased fish intake was linked to a 44% reduced risk of depression overall and a 56% reduction in women. Now, each additional gram of fish per day decreased a woman's depression risk by 2%. And three or more servings of fresh fish a week reduced depression by 62%. Now think of that in the context of our mental health crisis.

I mean, we're all taking prozac and being in therapy and doing all these things. But what if we just ate a can of sardines three times a week? Right? You might have no friends. They might like how you smell, but maybe you won't be depressed now.

I'm just kidding. I love sardines, and they're great, and they're Delicious. And I just came from Europe where they have fresh sardines. They're so good. Now, what they found was interesting.

There was no effect with canned tuna. And tuna is also high in omega three s, but it's also high in mercury, which can actually cause depression. And it can be a concern. So I would stay away from those big fish like tuna, swordfish, halibut and so forth. Now, you can use the guide from the environmental working group, ewg.org, and you can see their guide on choosing fish with the lowest amount of mercury.

So just go to ewg.org and you'll learn about it. So why? Why is this so good for our brain? Well, the brain diseases that we see, right, whether it's depression, Alzheimer's, even autism, and add are inflammation of the brain. Brain on fire.

And omega three s are powerful anti inflammatories. You see up to 60% of our brain made up of fat. So you literally are a fat head. Half of that fat, by the way, is omega three fats. So they're essential.

These are called essential fatty acids. They're not optional in your Diet. And yet most of our diets are deficient in these essential fatty acids. So they're like a vitamin or mineral. If you don't get them, you're going to get deficiency.

And it shows up as depression, dementia, and a whole host of other things. Now, as we expanded our brain, our cerebral cortex, and our executive function and memory and intellect, it seemed to coincide with the introduction of fish and seafood into our Diet. About 35,000 years ago, even hunted land animals had higher levels of omega three s than industrial raised animals. So, like, for example, wild bison have higher levels of omega three s than a feedlot cow. Now, it makes sense that we need these omega three s to keep our brains functioning properly, and that a lack of fish or omega three s can lead to omega three deficiency.

And that leads to mood and memory issues. Now, the two most important forms of fish oil are EPA or icosapentanoic acid. You don't remember that? And dHA or docosaenoic acid, it just comes from the chemical structure. These come from fish.

You can't get them, really from plants. Alpha linolenic acid or ala is also an omega three. It's a plant based form of omega three and it comes from things like walnuts, chia seeds, flaxseeds, hemp and some leafy greens. The problem is that only about 10% of the plant based omega three s, the ala, is converted to the ones we actually need, the EPA and DHA. So if youre vegan, youre not necessarily going to be getting this and its a big risk for deficiency.

So you have to figure out how to get your levels up by taking fish oil. And there are concentrates of plant based fish oils where they kind of jack up the amounts and convert it. And its kind of a bit of a project, but there are some around EPA and DHA. These essential omega three fats play crucial roles in the body's inflammatory system. We learned this in medical school.

This is not a new science. We know how they regulate icosanoids, prostaglandins, all these inflammatory systems in our body, and they produce a whole class of anti inflammatory molecules, also called resolvins and protectants. Right. They resolve and protect you from inflammation. They resolve inflammation and they protect you.

Now these are great names, I love these names. But basically a lot of fish oil has this in it. But sometimes at low levels. I'm going to tell you a minute about one you can get, there's a high levels of these protective things. Now when we're deficient omega three s, it increases our risk, inflammation of the body and the brain.

And it can show up like depression, mood disorders, memory disorders. EPA specifically has been shown to reduce neuroinflammation. Right? Remember, the neuroinflammation is linked to memory issues, dementia, Alzheimer's, depression, anxiety, add autism, bipolar disease, schizophrenia. All of these problems of the brain have been linked to neuroinflammation.

And EPA actually is inversely correlated with all these problems. So there are actually studies from Harvard that show you can treat bipolar disease by giving fish oil. Surprise or add by giving fish oil, or depression by giving fish oil, or improve dementia by giving fish oil. That's how powerful these are. And they regulate all, all sorts of compounds in the body regulate neuroinflammation.

Now when you have low levels of EPA, it increases your risk of heart disease. Not just brain diseases, but also heart disease, skin disorders, diabetes and lots more. In fact, these fats are absolutely essential for life. We gotta get them from our diet. But 90% of Americans are deficient in these critical fats.

And im going to explain to you more where to get them and how to take them. But I think at this point in history, unless you want to poison yourself with mercury from eating a lot of fish, you're going to need to take omega three s from supplements. I mean, unless you want to eat sardines every day, which most people don't. Now, vitamin D receptors are found all through the brain, and vitamin D inhibits a really critical pathway in the brain that controls inflammation. This is really important, guys.

There's something that the body produces called transcription factors. And there are many transcription factors. And these transcription factors regulate which genes are transcribed or which genes are turned on or off. For example, are inflammation genes turned on, or are the anti inflammatory genes turned on? Now, the main transcription factor that drives inflammation, that turns on the genes that produce inflammation in the body is called nf kappa b or nuclear factor kappa.

Bike, don't if you remember that, but just remember that there's a switch that turns on inflammation. Now, vitamin D lowers NF kappa B, which leads to a reduction in the production of these inflammatory molecules called cytokines. You all heard about the cytokine storm from COVID Same thing. It also increases the production of anti inflammatory cytokines and regulates the expression of something called neurotrophins, which is a group of proteins that stimulate the growth of nerve cells. That's a great thing.

So one, you turn off inflammation, two, you turn on the anti inflammatory system, and three, you turn on the expression of these growth factors for the brain that actually help grow new brain cells. That's pretty good for vitamin D. Now, vitamin D also stimulates macrophages, kind of like Pac man, like white blood cells that kind of gobble up bad stuff. So they help macrophages go into your brain and clear the amyloid beta. Amyloid beta, is that gummy plaque stuff we talked about that's found in Alzheimer's disease.

Now, a deficiency of vitamin D also has been linked to an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease. And about 80% of Americans either either deficient or insufficient in vitamin D. It's really important. So you got to get your levels checked, and you can also do that through function, health. But it's really important to know your numbers here.

All right, so we've got omega three s, we got vitamin D, we got selenium. What else you got? Fish for me? Well, something called astaxanthin. Now, astaxanthin, it's a big word.

It's a carotenoid, which you might know, sounds like carrots, right? It's the Orange color in vegetables. Right, or fruit. And carotenoids are one of the antioxidant families. It's a precursor of vitamin A.

In fact, when you eat salmon, why is salmon pink or Orange? And by the way, when you have wild salmon, it's much darker. If you notice that wild caught salmon is very dark. It's actually what gives salmon its color. So if you have salmon and they're eating Orange salmon, that's why it's because of the carotenoids.

So what's great about astaxanthin? It's one of the most powerful antioxidants that's around. And it. It helps also reduce neuroinflammation. It scavenges free radicals and it activates this incredibly important pathway called NRF two, which is an anti inflammatory antioxidant pathway.

We all have it, but we don't activate it enough. This maintains the integrity of the blood brain barrier. When you have low levels of nrf two and you have more oxidative stress, you get damaged to the blood brain barrier. So that means the brain is more susceptible to injury from outside influences. Uh, and also what's so great about astaxanthin is that it suppresses NF Kappa B.

Right? Remember we talked about that? That's the pathway, that is the gene transcription factor that causes you to produce lots of inflammatory molecules called cytokines. So more estaxanthin, less cytokines.

Hey, everyone, it's Doctor Mark here. Now, a good diet is foundational to living a long, healthy life. But because our food just isn't as nutritious as it once was, most of us have to supplement to get all the vitamins and minerals we need. Unfortunately, finding high quality, no filler supplement used to be a real challenge, but not anymore. That's why I choose momentous.

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Well, grass fed, this might shock you. Grass fed regeneratively raise meat, right? Things like lamb, beef, bison, venison, wild game, like deer, elk. So why is grass fed meat good for our brains? Well, grass fed meat contains higher quality protein and more bioavailable nutrients than, for example, certain plant foods that have protein.

A report by the Food and Agriculture Organization, or the FAO, examined more than 500 studies and 250 policy documents, and they concluded that animal foods offer a crucial source of much needed nutrients. Animal protein contains all the essential amino acids for supporting human health, for supporting immunity, for anti inflammatory pathways, the raw materials for synthesizing our hormones, our neurotransmitters that are important for memory and cognition, and the amino acids and the bioactive factors with high digestibility that are found primarily in animal foods. Things like carnitine, creatine, taurine, hydroxyproline, anserine. These are all nutrients that are not available in plant foods. Tyrosine, for example, is an important precursor to dopamine.

Tryptophan is a precursor to serotonin, which is important for mood. Anal protein is also rich in bioavailable micronutrients that help protect against deficiencies like iron, zinc, and b twelve. And they're also, if you have the right rigidity, raised or grass fed finished animal foods, they have higher levels of the essential fatty acids that are important for brain health, cognition and metabolism, and neurodevelopment. So it's not just fish that had the omega three s. For example, all the Native Americans who were eating bison all got their omega three s not from eating fish because they lived in the middle of America.

They got it from eating bison. They were eating wild plants that they converted into EPA and dHA. There's also something in animal foods called heme iron, which is essential for the growth and branching of neurons during fetal development. Also, zinc is found in high levels in animal foods, and it's really important for memory and for learning, for immunity. B twelve also is critical, and it's only available from animal foods.

There are some, you know, plants sources that you can kind of get, like nutritional yeast and weird things, but basically it's, it's, it's pretty much absent from most plant foods. And that's why vegans need to supplement with b twelve. Now, b twelve helps because it maintains the myelin sheath and protects nerve cells. I learned, for example, in medical school that b twelve, if it's low, will cause depression. It can also cause neuropathy, meaning damage to your nerves, because it's so critical for maintaining the nerve sheath.

So I hope you can see that high quality animal protein is the superfood for your brain, and also many other aspects for your health that I like to talk about, like longevity, including muscle health, which is very important. We've had some podcasts on that, we're gonna have some more. Now, there are controversies around meat, right? Right. Many studies link red meat to risk for all cause mortality, for cognitive decline, for Alzheimer's, for heart disease, for cancer, diabetes, et cetera.

And this may be attributed to other factors. And there are observational data, so there's a whole confounding set of things called the healthy user bias. In other words, people who, in most of these large studies, who ate meat, it was during a time when meat was, seem to be not good for your health. So if you ate me, you typically were not healthy, right? You ate more food.

In fact, the study show you ate 800 calories more a day, you smoked more, you drank more eating fruits and vegetables, you didnt take your vitamins, you didnt exercise, so of course you had more disease. Right? It may not be the meat itself now, there may be other factors like TMAO or saturated fat for some people, we just dont know. Now, we have to kind of be more sophisticated if you look at nutritional data. But the problem is that nutritional data is just inherently weak, and we have to do the best we can by looking at all the studies, the mechanisms, and the science behind it, right?

So it's combining basic science data, animal data, population study data, randomized controls that are small trials, large randomized controlled trials. Looking at all of it together, you can kind of read this tea leaves and see the smoke signals and get a sense of what we should be doing. And basically the bottom line here is that we've been eating meat and animal foods for as long as we've been human. It's basically not the meat that's bad for us, it's the quality of it. And maybe if it's grain fed or if it's conventional.

And for eating ultra processed meats like hot dogs and hamburgers. And maybe we're eating it with other stuff, right. Maybe we're just not paying attention to health. So we're eating our burger with a can of fries and a 32 ounce coke. Right.

That may be the reason it increases risk. So the reason many population studies show plant based diets, maybe healthier, is what we call the healthy user bias. I sort of mentioned that earlier. Vegetarians tend to have overall healthier habits and don't smoke, they exercise regularly and more. It's, it's not the vegetarian or vegan diet that protects them.

It's all their other healthy habits. In fact, the vegan diet may be hurting them. There was actually a study, I like to quote, which looked at meat eaters and vegetarians who shopped at health food stores, and they both had the risk of death reduced in half. Why? Because they were eating whatever they were eating in the context of an overall healthier diet.

So what's the takeaway here? How do you apply this to your life? Well, grass fed meats are good. And if you can get the regeneratively raised meats, that's even better. So I recommend places like farmers markets, which are around everywhere in America.

Places like thrive market force of nature, which has incredible sourcing of Virginia meats from around the world, and butcher box try to eat. Depending on your biology, you might not tolerate saturated fat as well. You might lean, leaner cuts of meat. Saturated fat from high quality sources is not necessarily the enemy. Uh, in fact, saturated fat is important for your brain.

And those who have lower saturated fats in their diet tend to have more stroke because it's so important for the structure and function of your brain. Uh, and it's a very nuanced topic. So it's not the saturated fat necessarily problem, it's what you're eating it with. So if you eat saturated fat with carbohydrates and starch, bad combo. So butter and bread, bad combo.

Ice cream, bad combo, uh, you know, french fries, bad combo. Because you're eating starch and fat at the same time, all that's really bad. But saturated fat, for example, butter on your broccoli, may not be so bad bad. And of course, it's very different, right, depending on the person. Personalized medicine is where we all need to be going, and we need to understand our own biology and how our own biology reacts to what we're doing.

So there's no one size fits all diet, one size fits all prescription and you have to look at your weight, your lipid metabolism, right? And you don't want to, like, be a carnivore, right? And forget everything else. You want to eat meat, but be smart about it. Most of your diet should be plants, and meat is a side dish, right?

Four to 6oz, which still gets you plenty of protein, but veggies should be the main dish. So you can have animal protein every meal. You can have at meat from dinner, for breakfast. For lunch, you can try grass fed beef sticks as a snack. Or there's now maui nui.

I don't have any connection to them, but they're great for venison meat sticks. You can have canned salmon or sardines, even canned chicken on a salad for lunch. All right, so that's me. Grass fed meat. We got greens, we got fish, we got grass fed meats.

The third category of food we should be thinking about for our brain is pasture raised eggs. So why are eggs good for your brain? Well, the yolk has everything you need to grow and maintain a healthy brain. The eggs are often described as perfect food or nature's perfect multivitamin. Now, think of what they do, right.

They have an incredible nutritional profile because they provide all the nutrients for a brand new life, all the nutrients for growth and development. And that helps grow a new chick and provides lots of benefits for us, too, for humans, in terms of neurodevelopment, mental health, and cognition. So what's the mechanism here? Right. What are the nutrients responsible for these brain boosting effects?

Well, the first one is called choline. Choline is an essential nutrient that often doesn't get as much attention as it deserves for brain and mental health. Choline is a micronutrient, important for many vital functions in the human body. Now, in the brain, it's necessary for neurodevelopment, for making new brain, right, for nerve cell function, for muscle function, and for making new neurotransmitters, particularly by its conversion to something called acetylcholine. Now, acetylcholine is critical for memory, in fact, one of the drugs we use for dementia, which doesn't work well, but it's designed to increase acetylcholine.

So acetylcholine is involved in memory and learning, cognition, mood, mental health. It also plays a major role in neurogenesis, making new brain cells and synaptogenesis, which is the formation of new connections and new neural networks and pathways in the brain, which is important for learning and memory and cognition and pretty much everything your brain does. So this concept is known as neuroplasticity. The idea that our brains are plastic can have the ability to grow and create new nerve connections throughout our whole life, into adulthood, and right up into death. Really important to understand, your brains are not fixed, so you need to take care of your brain.

We all think, oh, we're going to take care of our heart. We're going to eat better, exercise. We have to learn how to take care of our brains. And when you're buying eggs, look for the following labels on poultry and eggs. Enter grocery store co op.

Right. It should say pasture raised, maybe animal welfare approved, certified humane, organic. But pasture raised is really the best because organic could be feeding an organic corn, and it's not necessarily what you want your eggs to be eating. So pasture regions really the best. There are even some companies that create scorecards to rate different egg companies based on how they treat their hands.

You can eat eggs for breakfast. My favorite way to have them is to buy a jar, premade, shakshuka. Pour in a cast iron pan, put three eggs in it, throw in the oven until the eggs are poached and yum. Now, you can also make an omelet or hard boiled egg as a snack to take with you on the go. Those are easy.

And the last of the five foods we're going to talk about today is blueberries. Now, you might have heard a lot about blueberries, but we're going to talk a little bit more about them. Now, why are blueberries good for our brains? And I think blueberries, and it can be really any dark, colorful berry, which is rich in phytochemicals and a set of compounds called proanthocyanidins, which are found in dark berries. But blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, all that's great.

They're anti inflammatory nutrients in them, and they're an incredible source of polyphenols or anthocyanins, a phytochemical. They're responsible for giving blueberries their blue color. Right. And they also have flavonols, they have resveratrols, they have vitamin c, they're high in fiber, they're great for the microbiome. They increase something called butyrate, which is an anti inflammatory postbiotic that's made by healthy bacteria.

And you're feeding those. And all this does is help fight neuroinflammation, and it also suppresses the toxicity of beta amyloid. So really important blueberries basically fight brain inflammation. And as I mentioned, brain inflammation is the root of all of the issues with the brain, whether it's mood disorders, neurogenic disorders, attention disorders, autism, you name it. So what's the mechanism?

Right. How do blueberries work? What's responsible for these brain boosting effects? Well, it improves something called endothelial function in vascular health. Right.

Endothelium is the lining of your blood vessels. It's super important for your overall health, and it helps your blood flow, and it reduces inflammation. All these are great effects for your brain. And the last of the five foods we're going to talk about today is blueberries. Now, you might have heard a lot about blueberries, but we're going to talk a little bit more about them.

Now, why are blueberries good for our brains? And I think blueberries, and it can be really any dark, colorful berry, which is risk in phytochemicals and a set of compounds called proanthocyanidins, which are found in dark berries. But blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, all that's great. They're anti inflammatory nutrients in them, and they're an incredible source of polyphenols or anthocyanins, a phytochemical. They're responsible for giving blueberries their blue color.

Right. And they also have flavonols, they have resveratrols, they have vitamin C, they're high in fiber. They're great for the microbiome. They increase something called butyrate, which is an anti inflammatory postbiotic that's made by healthy bacteria. And you're feeding those.

And all this does is help fight neuroinflammation. And it also suppresses the toxicity of beta amyloid. So really important blueberries basically fight brain inflammation. And as I mentioned, brain inflammation is the root of all of the issues with the brain, whether it's mood disorders, neurogenic disorders, attention disorders, autism, you name it. So what's the mechanism?

Right. How do blueberries work? What's responsible for these brain boosting effects? Well, it improves something called endothelial function in vascular health. Right.

And is the lining of your blood vessels. It's super important for your overall health, and it helps your blood flow and it reduces inflammation. All these are great effects for your brain. So what are the takeaways here? How do you apply the science to everyday life?

Well, at least a serving of blueberries every day, one cup. Now, personally, I like to buy the frozen wild blueberries because they're the most nutrient dense. So you can have them in your smoothie in the morning. You can saw them out and just mix them in with yogurt or whatever. But they're great and I encourage you to eat that.

I hope you enjoyed this little summary of some of the five most important foods you can use to support your brain health, to take care of your brain, to reduce brain inflammation, to reduce cognitive decline, and to help your mood. Thanks for listening today. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. Leave a comment on your own best practices on how you upgrade your health and subscribe wherever wherever you get your podcasts and follow me on all social media channels drmarkheiman and we'll see you next time on the doctor's pharmacy. For more information on today's episode, please check out my new video and audio podcast, Health hacks.

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Again, that's drheiman.com markspicks. Thank you again and we'll see you next time on the doctor's pharmacy. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness center, my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health, where I'm the chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests opinions, and neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only.

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