The most HARMFUL foods for your brain....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 5-21-2015

The most HARMFUL foods for your brain:

Excess fructose & free fructose, hydrogenated oils, wheat,

                      & foods containing mercury, lead, cadmium, &/or  MSG

This post was inspired by an email from Mike Geary who is a first rate-health researcher and writer.

I like very much that he sends out valuable information for free.  To be sure he has things he sells with similar but more detailed or extensive information.

To see Mike’s article directly, check out his link.

http://www.truthaboutabs.com/brain-harming-foods.html

In this post I’ve added to his list and to his information and presented the parts Mike had a bit differently.

To avoid harming your brain with these avoidable foods, here are some things to do:

1.  Limit the dickens out of free and total fructose. 

Both harm your brain AND tend to cause blood sugar spikes, insulin resistance, too high blood sugar, and even type 2 diabetes. 

But even at lower levels of those than in type 2 diabetes, research shows they cause the development of Alzheimer’s disease.  Worse, over time they cause reduction of circulation to your brain by damaging the capillaries in it.

*Limit organic prunes to one a day & and eating organic prunes, raisins, etc to every other day.  Limit even no sugar applesauce to one spoon every other day but OK for one to three more every other day.

These are fruits that are higher in fructose.  So to avoid excess fructose overall be sparing half the time and don’t eat any at all half the time.

*Organic blueberries and other low glycemic fruit can be eaten daily and will benefit you and your health to eat!  Just limit how many to one or two servings a day.  Surprisingly, as sweet as they taste, bananas, while a bit higher glycemic, are NOT high in fructose.

*Eat yams, carrots, beans and lentils, squash, pumpkin, and quinoa for extra carbs every other day and limit all of them except some carrots and beans and lentils every other day.

The idea is to have health OK carbs on some days about half the time; and the other half the time have days where you eat little or none. 

This has been shown to help keep you lean or lose fat on the much lower carb days.  And the days with health OK carbs help keep your thyroid and energy and mood up and avoid triggering the famine response.

Note that ALL of those health OK carbs are low in fructose and high in fiber and nutrition.

*Eat or drink ZERO corn syrup or agave or high fructose corn syrup AND foods containing them.

Total fructose and free fructose are directly harmful. 

High fructose corn syrup is the worst because unlike sugar, sucrose, in high fructose corn syrup fructose and glucose are unlinked so you not only get extra fructose, sometimes a LOT more than in real sugar, with high fructose corn syrup it’s much faster acting and much more harmful. 

Since high fructose also contains mercury in about 30 % of it which is also harmful to your brain; and the high blood sugar spikes from ingesting it cause rebound hunger and carb cravings which reliably fatten you, the best policy is to never, ever eat or drink anything that contains it.

Agave nectar was once touted to be a health food because it was low glycemic.  Unfortunately, agave syrup is fructose, water, and what to me is a slightly bitter taste.

So even if to you agave tastes good or you find it in foods that otherwise have health OK ingredients, make a special effort to never eat any! It’s almost as harmful as high fructose corn syrup.

2.  Eat zero oils made from grains including canola as due to their processing in addition to pro-inflammatory omega 6 oils some of those become hydrogenated oils or do when heated.  

Eat no foods that contain MSG or list autolyzed yeast or “spices” or natural spices on the label.

Alzheimer’s disease is directly caused by excess inflammation. So each of these do so because they are so very pro-inflammatory, particularly MSG.

Eat raw nuts, avocados, and extra virgin olive oil instead.  And, take PS, omega 3 oils, and DHA.

In addition to this, hydrogenated oils, aka trans fats, have two horribly harmful effects.  They are a direct cause of the small particle LDL that cause heart and blood vessel disease. 

So when you have enough of them in your system, they actively cut circulation to your brain.  That causes vascular dementia.

Secondly, your body doesn’t just process hydrogenated oils in a single day.  It takes weeks to just get rid of half of it.  Guess what that means?  If you eat less of it or just a little bit of it every day, after only a month your blood levels are as high as if you ate a LOT of it.

And, that means the only safe intake for hydrogenated oils is literally zero!  So to protect your brain, eat no foods that are known to contains it.  Read labels and buy and eat or drink NO foods or drinks that list trans fats higher than zero or hydrogenated oils on their labels.

Eat no processed cheese (unfortunately it's often used in pizza), shortening, nondairy creamer, margarine etc and no commercial baked goods including pie crusts.

3.  Minimize all wines except California wines.  Other wines often contain lead.  Mercifully California wines generally do not.  I also think it likely that wines from Oregon do not.

4. Drink water filtered for heavy metals. (See our post last Tuesday, 5-19.)  

5.  Eat cilantro and drink Vitamix drinks that contain it and organic citrus peels.  Cilantro and citrus peels help remove the heavy metals from your body. 

And the heavy metals they remove such as lead and mercury and cadmium all harm your nerves and brain.

6.  Also, avoid eating any fish such as swordfish that are high in mercury.  And only eat tuna a few times a month or less as it’s a bit too high in mercury.  Wild caught salmon and smaller fish like sardines and herring are much safer to eat as they have very little mercury in them.

7.  Stay away 100% from tobacco and its smoke.  Cadmium causes brain damage and it’s in tobacco smoke enough that smokers have almost double the rate of Alzheimer’s disease as nonsmokers.

8.  And eat ZERO rice!

Rice and brown rice are very high glycemic foods and not a lot better for you than high fructose corn syrup.  Worse, the water they are grown in is high enough in arsenic, another brain harming chemical, they test as unsafe to eat and over the safe limit for arsenic!

9.  Only eat sprouted whole non GMO whole wheat once in two weeks or less, 

                               OR, better, EAT ZERO wheat ever and no other grains either.

GMO hybrid wheat, even as whole wheat, is enough higher in glycemic index than sugar, it’s about as harmful for you as high fructose corn syrup. 

That’s even more the case for the refined grain wheat flour that is what virtually all bread and baked goods are made out of.

In addition, hybrid wheat has an ingredient that causes excess inflammation and triggers more inflammation and gluten intolerance.

On top of this, all grains are high in pro-inflammatory omega 6 oils.!

The best solution is to never eat any wheat at all!

What can you eat instead?

Quinoa and wild rice are grain like OK foods.  And, barley and whole grain rye for people not super sensitive to gluten can be OK a few times a year.

And buckwheat and oats and whole grain buckwheat flour and steel cut or rolled oats are OK every other day for people not going 100% grain free temporarily to lose fat or totally grain free.

They are higher glycemic than other alternatives and, for people only mildly sensitive to gluten, oats and buckwheat have little or none. In fact, Bob’s Red Mill sells a buckwheat flour that is 100% gluten free according to its label.

NEVER eat bread, rolls, pizza dough, or pie crust, or commercial baked goods or hamburger buns  because they are all  made with refined hybrid GMO wheat.

Not convinced yet to avoid these foods?

They also have proven to harm your blood vessels, heart, liver, and kidneys too!

For example, NASH, fatty liver, which can cause fatal liver damage, is directly caused by eating things like high fructose corn syrup and wheat.  And eating hydrogenated oils also causes it.  People who do both as so many people still do are quite likely to get it.

Why does avoiding these brain harmful foods make fat loss easy?

Fructose, hydrogenated oils, and GMO wheat not only harm your brain, blood vessels, liver, and heart -- all proven by the way -- the average fat American takes in 30 to 55% of their calories from these foods and ingredients!

MSG, also found in virtually all fast food, is a double fattener.  People who ingest it are considerably fatter than people eating the same foods and the same calories but no MSG. Worse, if you eat MSG too long it damages and slows your thyroid and makes you even fatter!

AND, fructose, hydrogenated oils, and wheat are each fattening more than the calories they contain!

To be sure, when you stop them all, you do have to add back some calories in the health OK and health supporting foods and oils you eat instead.  

But that leaves you full and LESS hungry and cuts your total calories by 10 to 40%.  

That's why stopping them all is such a huge lever for fat loss and for keeping off the fat you lose!