Big Idea Daily | Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind
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A Powerful Plan to Improve Mood, Overcome Anxiety, and Protect Memory for a Lifetime of Optimal Mental Healthby Georgia Ede, MD |
“Optimal mental health requires that your whole brain be made of the right stuff, so if you have a mental (or physical) health problem of any kind, the first place to look isn’t your medicine cabinet, it’s your pantry.”GEORGIA EDE, MD |
BIG IDEA
What is a Brain-Healthy Diet?
FROM THE BOOK“I propose that for any dietary pattern to be considered brain-healthy, it must fulfill all three of the following criteria:
These are the principles I used to create the dietary strategies I share with you in this book, and these very same principles apply to the rest of the body as well. All of our cells require the same nutritional care, which is fortunate, as eating a different diet for every organ we possess would be inconvenient, to say the least.”
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Brian's Notes
That’s from the second chapter called “The New Science of Hope” in which Dr. Ede gives us the high-level framework for her approach.
In the final section of the book called “Hope Is on the Menu,” she walks us through her “Quiet Diet Approach” and says: “We’ve been fed the wrong information on nutrition for generations, which means that, if you’re like most of us, you’ve been feeding your brain improperly all your life. The silver lining around this cloud is that you have no idea how much better you could feel if you ate a brain-healthy diet. Get curious! You owe it to yourself to discover what’s possible. Your outlook on life could change in ways you wouldn’t have imagined.”
Note: When I read that, I thought of wisdom from Peter Attia’s Outlive where he talks about “baseline resetting.” Most people have been so chronically sub-optimal for so long that they don’t even realize just how bad they feel. It’s like having an old-school color TV and thinking that’s just how great it gets then getting a fancy new HD TV and realizing just how flat your life was.
Dr. Ede continues by saying: “Which dietary changes are most worth making, and why? Let’s return to our touchstones of nourish, protect, and energize and create a fresh new set of brain rules grounded in biology instead of ideology, questionnaire-based guesswork, or wishful thinking. A brain-healthy diet must:
Nourish the brain by providing all the essential nutrients. Include animal foods because they are nutrient-rich. Avoid plant foods high in antinutrients, especially grains and legumes.
Protect the brain by excluding foods that contain damaging ingredients. Follow whole-foods principles. Avoid refined carbohydrates, vegetable oils, and alcohol because they cause inflammation and oxidative stress. Avoid high-toxin plant foods such as cassava, flaxseed, and most nightshades. Consider eliminating all dairy products. Listen to your body. Limit any food that causes you physical or psychological side effects such as digestive distress, insomnia, fatigue, or brain fog, as symptoms such as these may indicate inflammation.
Energize the brain in ways that protect brain metabolism over the life span by keeping blood glucose and insulin levels in a healthy range. Avoid refined carbohydrates. Avoid dairy protein powders. Customize carbohydrate quantity to achieve healthy glucose and insulin levels.”
Those are Dr. Ede’s three food rules. I repeat: If we want to change our diet to change our minds, we need to make sure we are NOURISHING, PROTECTING, and ENERGIZING our brain.
Get the book for the full details on her Quiet Paleo, Quiet Keto, and Quiet Carnivore approaches. For now, let’s take a quick look at a few other practical Ideas.
Big Ideas
01: MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS
02: A BRAIN-HEALTHY DIET
03: THE ORIGINAL “SUPERFOOD”
04: CONSUMER BEWARE
05: QUIET CARNIVORE
“People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are healed by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.”WENDELL BERRY |
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