The UltraMind Solution (32 page)

Carbohydrates are the single most important food for long-term health and brain function.

This may be a shocking statement given the low-carb movement and “carbophobia” in America, but it’s true.

Of course, I don’t mean the overprocessed, refined, sugary white food we commonly think of as carbohydrates, such as doughnuts, bread, bagels, muffins, colas, juices, and most junk food.

And I don’t mean the cheap, supersweet, government-subsidized high-fructose corn syrup that is driving our epidemic of obesity and disease and contributing to our epidemic of mental illness.

The carbohydrates I am talking about are the real, whole, nourishing plant foods that the human species has thrived on since the dawn of evolution.

In
UltraMetabolism: The Simple Plan for Automatic Weight Loss,
I explained that most of the foods consumed by humans over the years have been carbohydrates.

Plant foods are composed mostly of carbohydrates:
vegetables, fruits, beans, whole grains, nuts, seeds, herbs, and spices.

These foods contain slowly released sources of sugar that prevent surges of blood sugar and insulin, toxic to the brain (see
chapter 7
).

The slowly released carbohydrates from whole, unprocessed plant foods also helps keep our serotonin levels even.

Carbohydrates also contain
all
the vitamins (except B
₁₂
) and minerals our bodies need to operate normally and optimally.

They also contain fiber, which helps normalize our digestive function and slows the absorption of sugar and fats into the body, which keeps us balanced.

The bonus factor in plant foods are
phytonutrients
—colorful healing compounds made by plants to protect themselves, but which also protect us against aging, obesity, brain damage, and more.

For example, broccoli and the rest of the cruciferous vegetable family contain powerful detoxifying compounds that protect us against environmental toxins. Green tea contains anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and detoxifying properties. Resveratrol from red grapes boosts our energy production and protects our cells. These are just a few examples of the thousands of phytonutrients in the plant foods that should be the foundation of our diet.

Michael Pollan, the author of
The Omnivore’s Dilemma,
summed up all nutritional research in three simple principles:

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

In fact, you need know nothing else to be vibrantly healthy.

That’s it. Eat real, whole food as it comes from the earth: fresh vegetables, fruits, beans, whole grains, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices, and lean animal protein like fish, chicken, and eggs. Imagine what your great-grandmother would recognize as food, or what might have been on her dinner table. Just food. There is really no such thing as junk food—there is just food, and then there is junk.

I don’t think people need vitamins and they are a waste of money...

That is
only
if they eat wild, fresh, whole, organic, local, nongenetically modified food grown in virgin mineral-and nutrient-rich soils and not transported across vast distances and stored for months before being eaten. And if they work and live outside, breathe only fresh unpolluted air, drink only pure, clean water, sleep nine hours a night, move their bodies every day, and are free from chronic stressors and exposure to environmental toxins.

Then we don’t need vitamins.

But, of course, I have described absolutely no one on the planet. In reality, we
all
need vitamins.

Most people don’t understand the role of vitamins and minerals in our bodies. I certainly didn’t when I finished medical training.

I thought if we just had enough to prevent us from some horrible deficiency state like scurvy (vitamin C deficiency), then we didn’t have to worry about how much we were getting.

I also thought that if we ate “enriched food” like white flour with a few vitamins added back in, or milk with vitamin D added in, additional vitamin supplementation was a waste.

What most people don’t realize is the same thing I was unaware of when I first started practicing medicine: the real reason our food supply must be “enriched” is because it is so processed that it is “impoverished” to start with.

So why can’t you just eat “nutrient-rich” food, instead of eating “nutrient-poor” food?

Today, even with our “enriched food,” more than 92 percent of Americans are deficient in one or more vitamins. That doesn’t mean they are receiving less than the amount they need for optimal health. It means they receive less than the
minimum
amount necessary to prevent deficiency diseases.

In a study published in the
American Journal of Public Health,
researchers found that 6 percent of those tested had serious vitamin C deficiency and 30 percent were borderline low.
²³
A report in the journal
Pediatrics
found obesity and malnutrition coexisting. Obese, overfed, and undernourished children with cognitive disorders were found to have scurvy and severe vitamin D deficiency or rickets. These deficiencies damaged their brains.
²⁴
You never think of overweight people as malnourished, but they can be!

A USDA survey showed that 37 percent of Americans don’t get enough vitamin C,70 percent not enough vitamin E, almost 75 percent not enough zinc, and 40 percent not enough iron.
²⁵

I would say 100 percent of us don’t have enough of the basic nutrients to create optimal health or give ourselves a metabolic tune-up.

There are many reasons the foods you eat no longer contain the nutrient levels you require for optimal health. Crops are raised in soil where nutrients have been depleted. Plants are treated with pesticides and other chemicals so they no longer have to fight to live, which further diminishes their nutrient levels and their phytonutrient content (not to mention the toxic exposure you receive from such chemicals). Animals are cooped-up in pens or giant feedlots instead of roaming free, eating the nutrient-rich wild grains and grasses they once consumed. Since cows’stomachs are adapted to grass instead of the corn they now eat, they must take antibiotics to prevent them from exploding.

To complicate this further, all of us are exposed to hazardous toxins and chemicals that poison our bodies, we live with too much stress, we don’t sleep enough, we don’t exercise enough, and we are inflamed, making the nutritional demands on our bodies even heavier.

In today’s world
everyone
needs a basic multivitamin and mineral supplement. The research is overwhelming on this point.
²⁶

The question is not how much of a certain nutrient or vitamin do we need not to get sick, but how much do we need to be optimally healthy!
*
In fact, lower amounts recommended by the government may
not
be high enough.

For most people, a high-quality multivitamin; a calcium-magnesium supplement; vitamin D; fish oil; and special B vitamin complex including folate, B
₆
, and B
₁₂
will take care of the basics. I will give you specific guidelines on this basic supplement program in Part III.

I have tested for vitamin and nutrient deficiencies in thousands of patients and found that by correcting them people feel better, improve their mood, mental sharpness, memory, and ability to focus, as well as have more energy, and even lose weight. Correcting deficiencies also helps prevent disease. I have seen depression, anxiety, bipolar disease, autism, ADHD, mood swings, Parkinson’s, and dementia go away or dramatically improve.

The basic vitamin recommendations outlined above (which I will discuss in more detail in Part III) include nutrients that form the backbone for proper brain function, for mood, memory, behavior, and attention problems. They are needed to fix your broken brain.

Let’s take a look at the way nutrient deficiencies affect our health and our brain function.

Nutrients are powerful in both sickness and in health. Imagine a world where hundreds of debilitating, severe, often life-threatening diseases could be cured within days by taking substances without any side effects; substances that are completely safe and cost only pennies a day. That is the power of vitamins and minerals.

Now imagine that very few people were being treated with these cost-effective, safe, extremely effective strategies.

Imagine what the medical ward might look like.

As you walked the halls you would see endless suffering: people with teeth falling out and bleeding gums, blindness, insanity, dementia, scaly bloody skin, uncontrollable diarrhea, severe depression, diabetes, and heart attacks. You would see people unable to walk because of lack of balance, children unable to talk and locked in their inner worlds, those whose bones bend under the weight of their bodies, people with loss of nerve function, severe infections that can’t be cured with antibiotics, pale skin, hair falling all over the floor, and peeling or grossly deformed fingernails that take the shape of spoons.

These are the symptoms of vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Today we live in such a world. For some, symptoms of nutrient deficiency may be subtle. In fact, they are often invisible. But they cause no less suffering.

Many
of the day-to-day complaints we think we have to live with as we age are the result of nutritional deficiencies.

These nutritional deficiencies range from problems like the epidemic of broken brains (which can be traced back to our nutrient-depleted toxic diet) to problems like reflux, allergies, and asthma to chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.