Help! My Brain Isn’t Working! Nutrition & Healthy Lifestyle Tips

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Life is busy, busy, busy – Who has time for a brain that doesn’t work? Without brain health, nothing else in your life will work right. In this article, I’ll give you some free health and nutrition tips about how to improve your brain function. These include nutrition, vitamins, drinks and healthy lifestyle habits.

Get More Sleep, Better Sleep for Improved Brain Function

I’ll admit, I have trouble getting myself into a nice warm bed before midnight. I somehow don’t want to– Is this a leftover from my childhood days of being forced to go to bed? I often feel like I am missing the fun. And it seems like we are somehow proud (even bragging) of how much we are abusing our bodies by not allowing ourselves to sleep.

The truth is that sleep is restorative on many levels, including helping to regulate blood sugar, which could help your metabolism work better, and maybe even avoiding cancer. Going to sleep earlier can help you not snack just before bed, which definitely leads to weight gain and trouble sleeping because the body has to digest that snack. So going to sleep earlier can help people achieve a healthy weight, as well as lowering one’s cancer risk.

woman sleeping peacefully on pillow, restful sleep and health, sleep and detoxification, sleep benefits

And amazingly enough, if we make it into bed and deep sleep by 10pm, our body detoxes during that time!! That means it takes out the trash and does all the things it needs to while we are not digesting. Having less toxic stuff in the brain will help it work better.

I tell you more about Magnesium below, which could have you sleeping like a baby!

You Need Exercise for Brain Health!

As a person with fatigue and dull thinking at times, I can tell you that simply taking a twenty minute medium-fast paced walk around several blocks can invigorate you! I can literally feel my brain working better afterwards. When we move, our lymphatic system is able to remove toxins from all over (in a system that looks like the reverse of the blood system).It is triggered by movement. No movement, no detox! Then we add oxygen to our blood through breathing, which also goes into the brain.

The Hidden Secret of Roman Soldiers

Roman soldiers allegedly refused to march forward without this favorite food…Can you guess what it is? It involves seafood, which sits in a barrel, in the sun, and then everyone waits for a while, letting it sit and sit. This concoction must have smelled terrible! But it became fermented fish oil. And yes, the Roman soldiers demanded it before they would keep invading.*

This delicacy is highly anti-inflammatory for human tissues. And while I can’t see into your brain, nor know your health state, I believe that inflammation anywhere really means inflammation all over. (Caution: talk to your doctor before use if you are on medications!! This substance can relax blood vessels and blood pressure. Your medication has you balanced already.)

I only know of one source online for fermented fish oil: GreenPastures.com (NOT an affiliate link).

I personally take normal, non-fermented cod liver oil. Nearly all brands are tested for heavy metals. And don’t forget this source of fish oil: wild sardines and wild salmon!

wild salmon, cauliflower, black olives, healthy fish oil, paleo lunch sample — **Wild Salmon** has great fish oil, and is high in Omega 3’s! *(Read more about healthy Omega 3 Essential Fatty Acids here.)*

A few years ago, the Weston A. Price Foundation’s recommendation of this traditional food was challenged by a nutritionist that they favored at their conferences. It was a “nutritional fracas”! Here is what the foundation has to say; “Those unfamiliar with worldwide fermentation traditions have applied the terms “dangerous,” “rotten,” “rancid” and “putrid” to the new cod liver oil product. Yet testing shows that fermented cod liver oil is safe and even superior in many ways to today’s highly processed brands of cod liver oil.”

There is also krill oil at health food stores (at $45 per bottle!). (I wonder what whales will eat, if we are eating krill…)

add fruits and vegetables to recipes, add vitamins to baked goods, blueberries, orange bell pepper, red bell pepper, sweet potato, strawberries, fruit and vegetables in a group, how to make recipes healthier, how to add vitamin A to baked goods and recipes, how to add antioxidants to recipes and baked goods, colorful vegetables, colorful fruits — **Eat a Rainbow in Your Menu Each Day!**

Anti-Oxidant Foods and Vitamins for Brain Health

When our bodies make energy (called ATP) all the time in our cells, we literally produce free radicals. This means unstable cell chemistry that wants to attract another piece (electron) from one of your cells to stabilize itself. This leads to cell damage of the robbed cell. (Think premature aging of your face! Yikes!)

In addition, fried foods with awful-for-you vegetable oils (all except olive), and burnt meats like charred barbecue, also cause oxidation. When we eat these we up our inflammation quota.

whole fruit smoothie, fruit blended into a drink, fruit smoothie drink is healthy, antioxidants in fruit drink, homemade natural drink — **Whole fruit smoothie:** a great way to get **antioxidants**!

How to fight it? Simply add anti-oxidant foods to your menu. These include green tea and its hard to blend cousin, matcha green tea (make in tea ball), and all brightly colored fruits and vegetables. Think berries, pomegranate, beets, peppers, rainbow chard, spinach, tomatoes. We really DO need to eat a rainbow each day!

Roasted Beets and Carrots Close Up View, roasted root vegetables, coconut oil, how to roast winter root vegetables, high antioxidants — **Beets and Carrots, Oven-Roasted in Coconut Oil and Sea Salt**. Coat with sea salt and coconut oil or animal fat (not butter, which smokes at low heat). Cook 20 minutes at 350-375F, stir, and cook for another 20 minutes. Remove when fork tender.

How about these vegetables? Fresh Salsa or Pickles!!

fresh green tomatillo salsa at the Fort Collins Winter Farmers Market in at the Transform Health booth, fresh homemade salsa for sale — **Fresh Green Tomatillo Salsa, Homemade**

Stay away from, or just eat LESS of, the beige and white diet: white flour, white rice, bananas, apples, cheerios… Years ago, while feeding a toddler, I realized that the milk, brown rice cereal, banana on the brown table were all remarkably devoid of any color!

If you want more free recipes, read the ones on this website. Search “recipe” to find them.

Olive oil and olives are other anti-oxidants. Unfortunately, there is a lot of food fraud going on. Many of the olive oil bottles contain bad-for-you other vegetable oils, and they don’t even have to list it on the bottle! Why pay $9-12 for corn or soy oil that retails for $2? (Read more about olive oil fraud in my article here.)

Drink Water for Brain Health

I know you have already heard (ad nauseam) about how much water to drink. Water helps our blood filters to work and takes out the trash.

Just start tallying your cups on a paper stickie on your bottle, or on a notepad or chalkboard by the sink. (Once when I counted, the total was only 3 cups!! Oops!)

colorful herbal tea, Fort Collins herbalist, herbalist northern Colorado, Loveland herbalist, plant medicine, consult an herbalist, local herbalist, custom herbal mix, custom herb mixtures created, custom herbal mixtures made, herbalist Windsor, herbalist Laporte — **Herbal Tea** in the mixture process. The red are rose petals. The yellow are calendula.

You can count any herbal tea or soup with broth (see below) in your cup count. Whole milk, too. You could count about half the volume of an all fruit smoothie that you make yourself. (Half of it is pulp. The store bought ones include fiber-free apple juice. See below.)

photo of coconut chicken soup recipe. GAPS legal chicken soup recipe, SCD legal chicken soup recipe, free recipe from www.TransformHealth.Biz, free coconut chicken soup recipe from nutritionist Diana Sproul at Transform Health

You may not count any caffeinated drink like coffee, black tea, or soda in your cups per day. I love my coffee, too – But when we drink one of these, we need to have one cup of water to balance the coffee or black tea, because they are diuretics. Then we can start counting our positive water. (I still like green tea, because of its health effects.)

Black coffee and sugar reduced short bread cookie, how to reduce sugar in desserts and baked goods, brown cookie wedge on saucer — **Black Coffee is a diuretic (you lose water).** Subtract the coffee cups you drink from your water total, or drink the same amount water as coffee before starting your daily water cup count.

You also can’t count juice. This stuff is a super bad idea – it literally leaps into your blood stream without the fruit fiber being present. (And nearly all of us are on our way to blood sugar issues. Just say no!)

I would not recommend nut milks, because they include guar gum, locust bean gum, and others that wreck our digestive system’s intestinal lining. This can lead to leaky gut, which leads to food allergies.

Vitamins for Brain Health

We need the full gamut of vitamins to help our body and brains work well. Two common vitamin deficiencies include Vitamin D3 and the mineral Magnesium. These two alone touch 400 and 300 body processes, respectively!!! So if you have anything wrong with your body, think about including these in your menu.
(NOTE: If you are on medications, check with your doctor before taking supplements.)

We used to get vitamin D3 in our animal fats, butter and raw milk, before fats were demonized. D3 is still available as vitamin supplements, grass-fed pork lard, and tiny shrimp called ‘salad shrimp.” Some cow milks have the right form (yay!). Grass-fed (pastured) raw milk from cows raised in sunshine does have the right form.

Coconut oil and grass-fed pork lard on a plate, coconut fat, pastured pork fat, healthy fats for heating, healthy fats for desserts, healthy fats for baking, saturated fats, vitamin D — **Grass-Fed Pork Lard** (lower left, **this one has vitamin D3**) and Coconut Oil (top). These saturated fats help vitamin absorption, and react in a healthy way to the heating during baking. Coconut oil contains brain-healthy lauric acid. Pastured pork lard contains vitamin D, which many of us who experience any winter are lacking.

magnesium rich food list, where to find magnesium in foods — **Where to find magnesium in gluten-free foods.** [I do not recommend eating soybean, unless it is **organic** and **fermented** into miso, soy sauce or natto.] Source: ods.od.nih.gov

Magnesium used to come in our vegetables. I’m not sure what went wrong with the soil/farms/food, but it isn’t there anymore. There are six forms. Three have a normal effect on the body, and three others cause loose stools (M. citrate powder that fizzes is one). Choose whichever is most helpful for you. And by the way, this helps us SLEEP!

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Citations

*Nourishing Traditions book by Enig and Fallon