Power Up Your Brain (25 page)

But even more important than the fact that we are blessed with a lot of brain matter is the intriguing fact that, gram for gram, the human brain consumes a disproportionately huge amount of energy. While only representing 2.5 percent of our total body weight, the human brain consumes an incredible 22 percent of our body’s energy expenditure when at rest. This represents about 350 percent more energy consumption in relation to body weight compared with other anthropoids like gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees.

So it takes a lot of dietary calories to keep the human brain functioning. Fortunately, the very fact that we’ve developed such a large and powerful brain has provided us with the skills and intelligence to maintain adequate sustenance during times of scarcity and to make provisions for needed food supplies in the future. Indeed, the ability to conceive of and plan for the future is highly dependent upon the evolution not only of brain size but other unique aspects of the human brain.

It is a colorful image to conceptualize early
Homo sapiens
migrating across an arid plain and competing for survival among animals with smaller brains yet bigger claws and greater speed. But our earliest ancestors had one other powerful advantage compared to even our closest primate relatives. The human brain has developed a unique biochemical pathway that proves hugely advantageous during times of food scarcity. Unlike other mammals, our brain is able to utilize an alternative source of calories during times of starvation. Typically, we supply our brain with glucose from our daily food consumption. We continue to supply our brains with a steady stream of glucose (blood sugar) between meals by breaking down glycogen, a storage form of glucose primarily found in the liver and muscles.

But relying on glycogen stores provides only short-term availability of glucose. As glycogen stores are depleted, our metabolism shifts and we are actually able to create new molecules of glucose, a process aptly termed gluconeogenesis. This process involves the construction of new glucose molecules from amino acids harvested from the breakdown of protein primarily found in muscle. While gluconeogenesis adds needed glucose to the system, it does so at the cost of muscle breakdown, something less than favorable for a starving hunter-gatherer.

But human physiology offers one more pathway to provide vital fuel to the demanding brain during times of scarcity. When food is unavailable, after about three days the liver begins to use body fat to create chemicals called ketones. One ketone in particular, beta hydroxybutyrate (beta-HBA), actually serves as a highly efficient fuel source for the brain, allowing humans to function cognitively for extended periods during food scarcity.

Our unique ability to power our brains using this alternative fuel source helps reduce our dependence on gluconeogenesis and therefore spares amino acids and the muscles they build and maintain. Reducing muscle breakdown provides obvious advantages for the hungry
Homo sapiens
in search of food. It is this unique ability to utilize beta-HBA as a brain fuel that sets us apart from our nearest animal relatives and has allowed humans to remain cognitively engaged and, therefore, more likely to survive the famines ever-present in our history.

This metabolic pathway, unique to
Homo sapiens
, may actually serve as an explanation for one of the most hotly debated questions in anthropology: what caused the disappearance of our Neanderthal relatives? Clearly, when it comes to brains, size does matter. Why then, with a brain some 20 percent larger than our own, did Neanderthals suddenly disappear in just a few thousand years between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago? The party line among scientists remains fixated on the notion that the demise of Neanderthals was a consequence of their hebetude, or mental lethargy. The neurobiologist William Calvin described Neanderthals in his book,
A Brain for All Seasons:
“Their way of life subjected them to more bone fractures; they seldom survived until forty years of age; and while making tools similar to [those of] overlapping species, there was little [of the] inventiveness that characterizes behaviorally modern
Homo sapiens
.”
¹

While it is convenient and almost dogmatic to accept that Neanderthals were “wiped out” by clever
Homo sapiens
, many scientists now believe that food scarcity may have played a more prominent role in their disappearance. Perhaps the simple fact that Neanderthals, lacking the biochemical pathway to utilize beta-HBA as a fuel source for brain metabolism, lacked the “mental endurance” to persevere. Relying on gluconeogenesis to power their brains would have led to more rapid breakdown of muscle tissue, ultimately compromising their ability to stalk prey or migrate to areas where plant food sources were more readily available. Their extinction may not have played out in direct combat with
Homo sapiens
but rather manifested as a consequence of a simple biochemical inadequacy.

Our ability to utilize beta-HBA as a brain fuel is far more important than simply a protective legacy of our hunter-gatherer heritage. George F. Cahill of Harvard Medical School stated, “Recent studies have shown that beta-hydroxybutyrate, the principal ‘ketone’ is not just a fuel, but a ‘superfuel’ more efficiently producing ATP energy than glucose. . . . It has also protected neuronal cells in tissue culture against exposure to toxins associated with Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.”
²

Indeed, well beyond serving as a brain superfuel, Dr. Cahill and other researchers have determined that beta-HBA has other profoundly positive effects on brain health and function. Essentially, beta-HBA is thought to mediate many of the positive effects of calorie reduction and fasting on the brain, including improved antioxidant function, increased mitochondrial energy production with an increase in mitochondrial population, increased cellular survival, and increased levels of BDNF leading to enhanced growth of new brain cells (neurogenesis).

FASTING

Earlier, we explored the need to reduce caloric intake in order to increase BDNF as a means to stimulate the growth of new brain cells as well as to enhance the function of existing neurons. The idea of substantially reducing daily calorie intake will not appeal to many people despite the fact that it is a powerful approach to brain enhancement as well as overall health.

Interestingly, however, many people find the idea of intermittent fasting to be more appealing. Fasting is defined here as a complete abstinence from food for a defined period of time at regular intervals—our fasting program permits the drinking of water. Research demonstrates that many of the same health-providing and brain-enhancing genetic pathways activated by calorie reduction are similarly engaged by fasting—even for relatively short periods of time. Fasting actually speaks to your DNA, directing your genes to produce an astounding array of brain-enhancement factors.

Not only does fasting turn on the genetic machinery for the production of BDNF, but it also powers up the Nrf2 pathway, leading to enhanced detoxification, reduced inflammation, and increased production of brain-protective antioxidants. Fasting causes the brain to shift away from using glucose as a fuel to a metabolism that consumes ketones. When the brain metabolizes ketones for fuel, even the process of apoptosis is reduced, while mitochondrial genes turn their attention to mitochondrial replication. In this way, fasting shifts the brain’s basic metabolism and specifically targets the DNA of mitochondria, thus enhancing energy production and paving the way for better brain function and clarity as well as a deeper connection with the divine feminine energy.

Given that beta-HBA enhances brain function, Alzheimer’s researchers are evaluating ways to increase the delivery of the valuable ketone fat to the brain without fasting. In a recent report in the journal
Neurobiology of Aging
, researchers stated that administering simple fats called medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) as part of MCT oil significantly raised levels of beta-HBA in as little as 90 minutes after consumption. More important, they observed markedly improved cognitive function in patients who received MCT oil in comparison with those who received a placebo.
³

MCTs are unique among dietary fats because they do not require bile salts for digestion and absorption, and are readily absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract without having to undergo modification, as is the case with longer-chain fats. Most commercially available MCT oil is derived from coconut oil, which is nature’s richest source of this important precursor to beta-HBA. Coconut oil contains about 66 percent MCTs. Health-food stores across the country carry high-quality organic, virgin coconut oil. The designation “virgin” is important as it means the oil hasn’t been heated during its extraction process and this prevents damaging the oil and making it less healthful.

Coconut oil, with its rich content of MCTs, provides another approach to modify gene expression and enhance brain function by improving mitochondrial function and enhancing BDNF production. These mechanisms provide fertile ground in which the seeds of enlightenment can germinate. How fitting it is that in traditional Hindu worship the coconut is offered to the Lord as a symbol of divine consciousness.

Fasting is powerful medicine well beyond anything even remotely considered by modern pharmaceutical science. Indeed, the concept that dietary choices are healing is embodied in this famous quotation from the father of Western medicine, the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates: “Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.”

The Power Up Your Brain Program includes total food restriction for one complete day (24 hours) every four weeks. During this fast, you should drink adequate amounts of water in order to remain very well hydrated.
Fast only after consultation with, and
approval from, your physician.
Ask also for his or her direction regarding whether or not to take medications during your fast.

In general, however, remember that the purpose of your fast is to eliminate calories. Therefore, supplementation during the fast should avoid powdered meal replacements, protein supplements, or any product that contains sugar. As described in the program below, you will increase your intake of DHA and continue with turmeric on the day of fasting.

While any day of the month would be fine for fasting, the Power Up Your Brain Program recommends that you fast on the 11th day after the full moon, which is the day considered auspicious for fasting in Ayurvedic texts. We believe there is a special advantage to fasting on the same day as the many other people who participate in the Power Up Your Brain Program. When you fast with others, whether they are physically present with you or halfway around the globe, you enter into intentional resonance with those persons. This will make it easier for you to attain brain synergy as you, along with others, collectively awaken the capabilities of the prefrontal cortex. Please check our website,
www.PowerUpYourBrain.com
, for recommended days of fasting according to Ayurvedic and shamanic calendars.