Royane Real
To Keep Your Brain Healthy - Eat Like a Cave Man!
By Royane Real
Do you know what kinds of food you should be eating to keep your brain healthy? Do you know what kinds of food you should avoid? Believe it or not, the diet that cavemen ate many thousands of years ago was probably a lot better for their brain than the diet most of eat today.
Does that surprise you?
Many of us today don’t really eat in a way that is healthy for our brains. You can't really boost brain power without giving your brain the kind of nutrition it needs.
Unfortunately, our modern diet contains many foods that are harmful to brain health.
Surprisingly, a diet that is closer to what our cavemen ancestors ate can actually provide better nutrition for our brains.
Cavemen didn’t have a lot of sugar, salt, transfats, and artificial additives in their food. Cavemen got a lot of exercise. They didn’t spend much time watching TV or playing video games.
We like to think we have made a lot of progress since those caveman days. But is progress always good? When it comes to the issue of food supply, our food today is much more easily available. Unfortunately, a lot of the food we choose to eat is very low quality and does not contribute to our body health or our brain health.
Our brain uses a lot of energy, because it has a lot of important jobs to do. To get this energy, brain cells need to receive good nutrition from the food you eat. Brain cells also need a steady supply of oxygen that depends on having a healthy heart and circulatory system. To keep our brain healthy, we need to make sure our circulation is very good.
The fact that we can get food so easily today just means we eat a lot more of it. We mindlessly put all sorts of junk food in our mouths without much concern for what that food is doing to us.
Our bodies and our brains would benefit if we took up at least a few of the habits of the early cave dwellers. We don’t need to adopt all the habits of cavemen, but we should adopt just a few of their habits that would be good for us.
For example, we should try to eat food that is much closer to its original natural state, and that has not been processed with a lot of additives and fats. We should get more exercise.
Our caveman ancestors had to work a lot harder to get their food than we do. That meant they spent many hours each day walking around and looking for something to bring home to share with the family. Nobody could order take-out in those days.
Your brain needs to burn a form of sugar called glucose for fuel. Where does your brain get sugar?
Thousands of years ago, sugar was very hard to come by. You had to spend time searching for fruits and berries and other carbohydrates to get enough sugar in your blood stream to keep your brain happy.
Today, sugar is everywhere, in almost all of our processed foods. This added sugar makes things taste good, but it adds to the modern epidemic of obesity. Still, we seem to crave more sugar. This powerful built-in sugar craving is meant to ensure we get at least enough sugar to keep our brains working.
The problem is, we don’t seem to have a way of easily switching off our sugar cravings. Many of us eat far too much sugar, creating insulin surges in our blood stream, and adding to our obesity. This doesn't keep our brain healthy.
Our brains have a huge need for good fats because two thirds of our brain is actually made out of fat! Unfortunately, many of the fats we eat today are the wrong kind, and we eat far too much of those bad fats. Eating harmful fats in our diet can contribute to inflammation of our brain cells and cellular damage.
In addition to good fats, our brain needs good proteins, and a steady supply of antioxidants in our foods to offset the damage caused by dangerous free radical molecules. Eating a good supply of fresh fruits and vegetables each day will help to supply needed antioxidants.
You can't really take up the life of a caveman nowadays, but your brain and your body will probably benefit from eating more foods in their natural state, and by avoiding highly processed foods as much as you can.
If you want to learn more ways to keep your brain healthy and improve your learning power, get my book: How You Can Be Smarter - Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better and Be More Creative
Learn more about how to use your brain and keep it Download it today or get the paperback version at http://www.lulu.com/real
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