The UltraMind Solution (69 page)

Nutritional Deficiencies: Fallout from a Damaged Gut

As you learned in chapter 6, nutrients such as the omega-3 fats, magnesium, zinc, and vitamins D and B
₁₂
are critical for normal operations in the brain and a robust mood and mental functioning. These nutrients also have the most trouble being absorbed when things go wrong in the gut.

When the gut is damaged, inflamed, and filled with nasty bugs that don’t normally belong there; when enzymes are damaged by mercury and other toxins; when you take acid-blocking drugs that lower the essential acid necessary to absorb minerals and vitamin B
₁₂
, it is hard to absorb these essential ingredients for life and be well nourished.

Keeping your digestive system healthy is critical for proper brain function, because ultimately you are not only what you eat; you are truly only what you absorb.

Fix Your Digestion

I imagine this has been an eye-opening chapter, and I recognize that the discoveries I have told you about are mostly off the radar of conventional medicine. But not for long. The emerging story from the research is clear. The evidence I have seen in my patients is irrefutable.

In a healthy body, our bacterial tenants and our brains are locked in a fine dance. Your “brain” brain is in constant and synchronous communication with your gut brain.

Our gut must tangle with potentially mischievous neuropeptides from omnipresent gluten and dairy in our diet. It must contend with an onslaught of toxins, allergens, and bugs that interact with our gut immune system with widespread effects on our health and brains.

And it must try to stay nourished all the while to provide the “neuro” nutrients necessary for optimal brain function.

This is not an easy task, but it is very much within our reach if we understand how our bodies work, what goes wrong, and how to fix it. The road map for this new territory is
The UltraMind Solution
.

In Part III and Part IV I will give you the detailed tools and instructions for achieving energy, vitality, happiness, and a sharp, focused, alert mind and brain for life. This is a major part of UltraWellness. One of the keys to unlocking it is learning how to give your gut what it needs to stay in balance and avoid the things that send it into chaos.

If you want to eliminate morphinelike molecules that poison your brain, if you want to eliminate the possibility of “autointoxication,” if you want to reduce the inflammation in your gut that is setting your brain on fire, the solution is simple: eliminate the dietary and environmental factors that are traumatizing your gut and feed it what it needs so you can live in harmony with it. Later in the book I will show you how.

For now let’s turn our attention to toxins, how they affect our brain, and how they lead to systemic breakdown that contributes to almost every brain-and mood-related problem we face.

There are two things most physicians never learn in medical school:

1.
The role of nutrition and food in health and disease.

2.
The role of toxins and the importance of detoxification in health and disease.

And they are probably the two most important things we need to know to cure disease and create health.

In today’s world, food and toxins are more important than ever. The nutritional value of our food has been compromised by factors that range from corporate agribusiness, overfarming, and depleting the nutrient levels of the soil to food conglomerates like Kraft, Nestlé, and Nabisco putting highly processed, high-glycemic-load foods on the market that contribute to every health problem we see today, from heart disease to dementia.

The poor nutritional value of our food is further complicated by the extraordinary amounts of toxic chemicals that have entered our food supply and our bodies. Since the 1800s, more than eighty thousand new, largely untested chemicals have been introduced into the environment. Today, many are used as pesticides to “protect” our food supply.

And our exposure to poisonous substances doesn’t end there. Toxins are everywhere—from household cleaning products to plastics in our kitchen-ware, phthalates and bisphenol A in our plastic water bottles, and even in our tap water and air supply.

We live in a sea of toxins, and a large body of growing evidence shows that these toxins are, in part, responsible for the epidemic of disease we see in the twenty-first century. Toxic exposures affect the health of all brains, young and old.

We must also deal with all the by-products and toxic metabolic wastes
created by our own bodies. These self-produced toxins make us sick if our kidneys or livers fail or work at less than optimal levels.

In this chapter we will review the scientific evidence of the dramatic impact toxins have on the health of your brain. I will explain how I came to understand the importance of toxins in health and disease, and I will tell you how you can avoid the toxins that may be making you lose your mind.

But first, take the quiz below to find out if you are toxic.

In the box on the right, place a check for each positive answer. Then find out how severe your problem is using the scoring key below.

TOXINS QUIZ *
I have hard, difficult-to-pass bowel movements every day or every other day.
I am constipated and go only every other day or less often.
I urinate small amounts of dark, strong-smelling urine only a few times a day.
I almost never break a real sweat.
I have one or more of the following symptoms:
Fatigue
Muscle aches
Headaches
Concentration and memory problems
I have fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome.
I drink unfiltered tap or well water or water from plastic bottles.
I dry clean my clothes.
I work or live in a “tight” building with poor ventilation or windows that don’t open.
I live in a large urban or industrial area.