Introduction-
Food is not only our basic need to fuel our body but also it is very important for our brain health. Food is part of our social connections. We divide our day into breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Our romantic life would be non-existent if we didn’t have the excuse of food to call somebody out for a date.
In my family and maybe in yours, the conversation around breakfast would be what is there for lunch, and in lunch, it will be dinner. So it’s safe to say that food plays a very important role in our lives, and Why not have yummy food is a pleasure to have and we need to survive.
Connection behind food and brain-
It is fascinating to learn about the neuroscience of eating. In this blog, I will share the science behind why we eat, what should we eat, and how fasting improves our brain health. One way to look at it is that we eat because we must. Our brain is wired to go out and look for food so that we can have the energy to do all the things we want to do. Whenever the body is low on energy, it sends signals to the brain.
Why We Eat –
The brain feels the desire to eat, what we call appetite, and it initiates food-seeking behavior. The part of the brain that does this is called the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is a small part of the brain that actually controls all the autonomic functions, that is, all the involuntary actions that are happening in the body. The hypothalamus is in charge.
Whether it is controlling your temperature, your heartbeat, your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, digestion, or endocrine systems, all of this is being controlled in the hypothalamus, and feelings of hunger and thirst are no different.
Within the hypothalamus, there is a part called “the Arcuate nucleus”, and in the Arcuate nucleus are Orexin neurons. Orexin comes from the Greek word “Orexes”, which means desire, and orexin is what gives you the desire to eat. You may have heard of “Anorexia” In this condition, a person does not feel any desire to eat, so the Arcuate nucleus controls our willingness to eat or not to eat.
But how does a hypothalamus make that decision for that? It asks the body if there are two hormones released by the gut that tell the brain whether it should eat or not. Those two hormones are Ghrelin and Leptin.
Ghrelin is released in the stomach, and whenever the stomach is empty, the ghrelin level goes up, which tells the brain that it is time to eat, whereas when we are full, the leptin level in our body goes up, and leptin, in turn, tells the hypothalamus that it is time to slow down, you don’t have to eat anymore.
So this is one practical mechanical way of thinking about food. When we are low on energy, we eat and replenish our energy stores.
But food is a lot more than that. Food is the source of pleasure and enjoyment; this is where our dopamine pathways kick in. When we eat food that we like, it triggers the dopamine networks and activates our reward pathways.
In the brain is an area called the “Nucleus accumbens”, which is the site of action of dopamine; this is where our pleasure system operates, and this is also the reason for addiction, excess dopamine affects brain health. Binge eating is a pathological condition where somebody has a compulsive need to keep looking for food and to keep eating it. This is because, in this condition, food becomes an addiction.
What should we eat
Now we shall discuss what to eat to improve brain health. Some foods have been proven to benefit your brain, while others have been shown to have a negative impact. So, let’s look at some foods to eat to improve your brain health and some foods to avoid.
Number one is omega-3 fatty acids. These are found in dietary fish, kiwi, chia seeds, flax seeds, and walnuts. Why is this important? There is a molecule called Docosa hexanoic acid(DHA). DHA is one of the most important components of the cellular membranes of the brain cells. It constitutes almost 30 percent of the neuronal membranes. This is not a molecule that our body can produce, which means that it can only come through our diet.
it is crucial for maintaining the integrity of the membranes of our brain cells. A deficiency of DHA has been linked to depression, ADHD, dementia, bipolar disease, and schizophrenia, and some studies have shown that omega-3 fatty acids can reduce damage after a traumatic brain injury.
The two major food groups that have polyphenol activity are flavonoids and curcuminoids in India; curcumin is widely available as turmeric, which has been traditionally known for its antioxidant and healing properties. Studies have shown that curcumin has antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-amyloid properties, and there is some evidence that it can improve cognitive function in patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
The other group with polyphenol activity is flavonoids, which can be found in fruits, vegetables, berries, tea, and red wine. Flavonoids also have antioxidant properties, and they improve neuronal function by increasing nerve signaling, which is how well neurons can talk to each other.
Green tea is high in flavonoids, and some studies in China have shown green tea to reduce the effect of aging on brain function. Green tea has been shown to improve memory and also protect the blood-brain barrier in case of brain damage, so while these are some things that you should be consuming to improve your brain health, there are other foods that you should avoid because these can cause harm. The two most important things that you should avoid to protect your brain are trans-saturated fats and refined sugar.
Both of these reduce the levels of BDNF i.e. (Brain-Derived Neurotropic Factor) which is an extremely important chemical in the brain. BDNF is responsible for forming new synapses, that is, brain connections, increasing the strength of existing synapses, and helping you in learning and forming new memories.
Studies have shown that a high-calorie diet rich in trans-saturated fats and refined sugar leads to increased levels of oxidative stress in the brain and reduces synaptic plasticity. That is, you find it more difficult to learn quickly, and this can be reversed by antioxidant treatment and exercise.
How Fasting affects the brain-
The Last part of the discussion is about how fasting affects brain health. Fasting is a natural thing. As I said, we do it all the time. We do it every night when we go to sleep. Binge eating at night breaks the fast and is extremely harmful. Every culture in the world has some kind of fasting, and they all recommend fasting. Why?
First of all, fasting is different from caloric restriction. Caloric restriction is reducing the number of calories that you eat, but the meal frequency is maintained. You still eat every four hours, five hours. Fasting is when you increase the distance between your meals, and you do not put in any calories during that time. What is the effect of fasting on the brain basically increases BDNF levels.
As your BDNF increases, your synaptic plasticity increases and your cognitive skills increase. Secondly, as you fast, you reduce the free radicals in your body. The lower the number of free radicals, the less neuronal damage, less neural damage, the more your neurons will survive, and your aging will slow down. The reason that this is so basic is because it is not new.
Right from the time unicellular and multicellular organisms figured out how to survive in the environment, they figured out that periods of fasting were going to be essential. We are not going to find food, and so everything has been built around the principle that we are not going to get to eat every day.
So let us build on this assumption: adaptive response is a very interesting thing that happens in our body when we start to fast. In the first 12 to 24 hours, our glucose levels drop, and glycogen storage in the liver reduces, so glycogen is where glucose goes and stores in the liver.
Once glycogen drops, our body needs energy, so we cannot rely on the liver anymore, so we switch over to our non-hepatic glucose utilization. We look at fat-derived ketone bodies as free fatty acids; now, the whole body can use free fatty acids, but the brain cannot. The brain uses ketone bodies, This is the principle of the keto diet.
The benefits of switching from constant eating to a calorie deficit are huge. It increases network plasticity, stress resistance, and neurogenesis and reduces free radicals. The effect is seen across the whole body, so even in your heart, in your muscles, in your brain, in your gut, in your kidneys, and in all the vessels in your body, the free radical damage is reduced. It reduces the chances of your heart attacks. It increases your metabolism power in your liver.
Conclusion-
In a nutshell, the crux of the above-mentioned information is that what we eat has a big impact on not only our body but also our brain health. Omega-3-rich foods like fish and flax seeds and antioxidants like green tea are very useful in keeping our minds sharp and healthy. On the flip side, food loaded with sugar and fat harms the function of the brain. Fasting is a good option for improving gut health and for our mental well-being.
