#FOOD FOR THE BRAIN PROFESSIONAL#

There are, however, some important and urgent best practices that we need to get into peopleвЂ™s kitchens. In terms of the food that helps, there is no single miracle food or supplement that will keep us young, healthy and bright-eyed with a perfect memory (and beware anyone who tells you there is). The bottom line is this: the more processed, packaged and refined foods that you consume on a regular basis, the higher your risk of cognitive decline further down the line. These are all signs of accelerated ageing and increased risk of future dementia. Subsequent studies provided even more alarming evidence that people on the western diet had started developing AlzheimerвЂ™s plaques already in their 40s and 50s. For example, when we compared the scans of middle-aged people who had eaten a Mediterranean diet most of their lives with those of people of the same age who ate a western diet with processed food, processed meats, sweets and fizzy drinks, we saw the way the latter groupвЂ™s brains had shrunk prematurely. These effects are particularly evident by looking at brain scans of people on different diets. It comes perhaps as no surprise that other foods such as fast food, fried food, excess fatty foods and refined sugar are downright harmful instead, slowing us down in general, making us feel sluggish and tired, while at the same time deeply increasing our risk of dementia. They not only shield the brain from harm, but also support cognitive fitness over the course of a lifetime.ДЇast food slows us down, making us feel sluggish and tired. Studies using next-generation imaging and genomic sequencing, both central to my work, have helped reveal that some foods such as vegetables, fruit, fish, wholegrains, nuts and seeds are neuro-protective. The good news is that we have learned so much about what every one of us can do to optimise our brain health day to day. For the last 15 years, we have been doing long-term studies to demonstrate the ways that diet prevents, delays or leads to cognitive conditions such as AlzheimerвЂ™s. This has been the focus of my work as the associate director of the AlzheimerвЂ™s prevention clinic at the Weill Cornell medical college, New York City. In the long term, this affects every one of us, because food affects not just our moods and thoughts but also the way we age.

#FOOD FOR THE BRAIN PROFESSIONAL#

For anyone lucky enough to use their brain for a living, this has immediate professional outcomes. In concrete terms, this means that whatever you just ate will be part of what you will think. To put it simply, the human brain is made of food. It only became obvious in retrospect: the sodium, potassium, magnesium and sugars referenced were the same nutrients as in diet books or on food labels. When I was a neuroscience student, I would marvel at how apparently simple substances such as sodium, potassium, magnesium and sugars determine whether our brain cells fire or not, grow or not, form new connections or wilt and die. And, for what it is worth, neither are scientists. Medical students are not trained in nutrition. In fact, contemporary medicine often disregards the ways that our diet helps shape our cognitive health. This is in part due to western societyвЂ™s fascination with appearance, and medicineвЂ™s bias towards drugs and surgery. Yet the focus of most diets is on the way we look rather than the way we think. We all use food to soothe our moods and clear our heads without seeming to think much about it. When you are feeling low, you reach for chocolate when you are tired, you crave coffee. W e all intuitively appreciate that the foods we eat shape our thoughts, actions, emotions and behaviour.

Food for the brain