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The brain requires more energy than any other individual organ in the body. For a day of not too intense work, the brain consumes 250-300 kilocalories, that is, about a quarter of the energy that goes to the main exchange.
At only two percent of body weight, the brain consumes 25 percent of its energy. The question is, where is it better to take this energy from?
The idea that sugar is vital for the brain is rather speculative and stems from the fact that glucose is the easiest and most affordable source of carbohydrates for us.
Maybe the whole thing is in the history of science: it so happened that the energy role of carbohydrates was studied earlier and better than other compounds. One way or another, today not only a huge number of scientific papers but also bestsellers have been written about how sugar actually affects the brain.
Carbohydrates destroy our brain. And not only sugar and flour, but even whole grain cereals, which nutritionists call useful and prescribe for weight loss. Everything that contains sugar or starch causes senile dementia (Alzheimer's disease), attention deficit disorder, anxiety, chronic headaches, depression, decreased libido and impotence, epilepsy, and generally almost all neurological diseases.
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Most cereals, including durum wheat or coarse rye flour, are actually harmful. All grains have a too high glycemic index, which means that one and a half to two hours after eating, the blood glucose level jumps sharply and hits the brain.
Proteins, fats, and carbohydrates are believed to be equally important to health. In fact, we can easily do without sugars, because our body can perfectly synthesize them from proteins and other substances so that a person does not have the vital need for sugar or starch.
The classic ratio looks like this: 60 percent of calories the body extracts from carbohydrates, 20 percent - from proteins and another 20 percent - fats.
A healthy ratio is 75 percent fat, 20 percent protein, and 5 carbohydrates. This means that a day you need to eat no more than 50-80 grams of sugar. That is, for example, one serving of fruit salad.
The main sources of energy, in this case, are butter and nuts, avocados and all kinds of vegetables (not starchy), fish and meat. This is a healthy ratio, if only because our ancestors had eaten like this for hundreds of thousands of years until they learned how to make flour and sugar.
The theory of economical genes (thrifty gene hypothesis), suggests that the human body is programmed to store energy in fat times in the form of fat, and then spend it in hungry times.
In a modern society of abundance, one does not have to starve, therefore the body only stores up - many metabolic diseases flow from here.
During fasting, the body first produces glucose from glycogen, which is found in the liver and muscles, and then begins to eat ketones, which it receives when burning fat. Ketones are healthier food for the brain than glucose.
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Senile dementia, parkinsonism, multiple sclerosis, and other neurodegenerative diseases are associated with the destruction of brain tissue, it is based on inflammation, and inflammation is based on sugar and gluten.
The same applies to the cardiovascular system, a heart attack begins with inflammation. Carbs serve as the cornerstone of inflammation, which leads to the destruction of tissues, including the brain. It is inflammation that leads to “leaks” in the vital barrier between the blood vessels and the brain.
Even a slight rise in blood sugar increases the likelihood of Alzheimer's.
At the same time, Alzheimer's disease is preventable and about half of the cases of the disease could not have happened at all if it had not been for sugar.
A diet rich in fats reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease and is firmly associated with a reduced risk of dementia. This is shown in a Mayo Clinic study published in The Journal of Alzheimer's Disease in January 2012.
A diet rich in fats reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease and is firmly associated with a reduced risk of dementia. This is shown in a Mayo Clinic study published in The Journal of Alzheimer's Disease in January 2012.
The problem is especially aggravated over the years: after 70 years, the risk of cognitive or intellectual impairment increases almost four times if a person eats a lot of carbohydrates - this was proved in a study that included more than 1200 people from 70 to 89 years old.
Later, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that even people with slightly elevated blood sugar who cannot be called diabetics have a significantly higher risk of dementia than people with normal sugar levels.
The idea of the benefits of low-fat products, which has been driven into our heads and stomachs, is completely groundless and guilty of most modern diseases.
International databases store millions of scientific research. If desired, in them you can find evidence of diametrically opposite thoughts. For example, there is evidence that if you deprive the brain of glucose, then in the short term it will lead to memory impairment and a slowdown in reactions.
“The brain needs glucose, and low-carb diets can be harmful to learning, memory, and thinking,” says Holly Taylor, a professor of psychology at Tufts University, who wrote this study.
However, the authors did not really see what was happening in the long run. Of course, if you deprive the brain of all glucose overnight, which it used to use for the whole life, it will be a lot of stress.
“The brain needs glucose, and low-carb diets can be harmful to learning, memory, and thinking,” says Holly Taylor, a professor of psychology at Tufts University, who wrote this study.
However, the authors did not really see what was happening in the long run. Of course, if you deprive the brain of all glucose overnight, which it used to use for the whole life, it will be a lot of stress.
The brain is getting used to the new fuel, and its quality of life is even improving. For example, in 2012, the work of Robert Cricorian and his colleagues at the University of Cincinnati was published, in which they compared the effect of a low-carb and high-carb diet on 23 elderly people with mild intellectual disabilities.
After six weeks, the participants in the low-carb group not only decreased their blood sugar and insulin levels, decreased their weight and waist, but also improved their memory.
Moreover, its improvement correlated with a decrease in insulin levels and an increase in the level of ketone bodies.
A work of Australian scientists led by Dr. Grant Brinkworth was published in 2009 in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine. During the year, the authors observed two groups of obese people.
Participants in both groups consumed the same amount of calories (about 1,500 per day), but some ate a lot of fat and few carbohydrates, others, on the contrary, a lot of carbohydrates and little fat. After a year, both those and others lost about the same weight — on average, by 14 kilograms.
During and at the end of the year, the authors evaluated the psychological state and mental abilities using standard tests. By the end of the year, it became clear that a low-carb, high-fat diet better strengthens memory, mood, and emotional state.
Back in the early 1920s, the ketogenic diet was used to treat epileptic seizures in children. Doctors have found empirically that the frequency and strength of seizures depend on the amount of sugar and starch in food.
Later, drugs pushed dietary treatment into the background, but in the mid-1990s, the second wave of interest in this approach began, after the keto diet helped relieve the attacks of the child of Hollywood producer Jim Abrahams. This impressed Abrahams so much that he directed a film based on the story, starring Meryl Streep.
Later, drugs pushed dietary treatment into the background, but in the mid-1990s, the second wave of interest in this approach began, after the keto diet helped relieve the attacks of the child of Hollywood producer Jim Abrahams. This impressed Abrahams so much that he directed a film based on the story, starring Meryl Streep.
Why does ketogenic metabolism cure epilepsy, and does sugar provoke diseases like Alzheimer's?
When we switch to ketones as the main fuel for the brain, we also change the amino acid metabolism.
By reducing glutamate levels, we reduce the risk of stroke and create conditions for the restoration of nerve cells. Glutamate itself is the main signaling molecule that transmits excitation in our brain.
However, many things are synthesized from glutamate in the brain, including GABA-the main inhibitory mediator, that is, a molecule that, on the contrary, suppresses excitement.
Too much agitation leads to neurotoxicity, which is associated with epileptic seizures, as well as other brain diseases, including depression, bipolar disorder, migraines, and dementia.
However, many things are synthesized from glutamate in the brain, including GABA-the main inhibitory mediator, that is, a molecule that, on the contrary, suppresses excitement.
Too much agitation leads to neurotoxicity, which is associated with epileptic seizures, as well as other brain diseases, including depression, bipolar disorder, migraines, and dementia.
Conversely, the more glucose, the greater the excitability and tendency to seizures. This can be explained by the features of energy metabolism, that is, events that occur in the mitochondria of nerve cells.
Mitochondria are cellular thermoelectric power plants in which glucose and ketone bodies are burned. Even 20 years ago, in biochemistry, it was believed that glucose is the preferred, more pure and efficient fuel.
Relatively recently, it turned out that everything was exactly the opposite: ketone bodies are more energy-efficient, and glucose burning is more “smoky,” that is, it leads to the formation of a large number of free radicals that damage both mitochondria and the cell as a whole.
But we remember that the brain is the most energy-intensive organ in our body, it requires a lot of strength to constantly switch from excitation to inhibition and vice versa, to pump glutamate, GABA and hundreds of other molecules through cell membranes.
Of course, if a lot of glucose constantly comes from the blood into the brain, then the brain will use it as the most accessible resource.
However, if you screw this sweet flow and supply more ketone bodies to the brain, then as soon as the cells switch to a new way of metabolism, their work will be more energy-efficient and “environmentally friendly”.
Given all this, the sentence known from school as “the brain needs glucose” does not look convincing at all. Rather, the opposite.