Prevent Alzheimer’s, improve Depression, Anxiety, and Brain Fog: The Food's Power | Episode 17 of 18

the objective here is to make sure that as we age and as we go on in our lives our brains get healthier get better instead of getting sicker and sicker which is generally what happens if we're not conscious of what we should be doing to protect [Music] them hello angels and welcome to the glucose goddess show I'm Justin chusp a biochemist obsessed with helping you understand your body your brain your food so that you can feel your absolute best and Thrive and live the life that you want to live because that's what we all want

in this episode we're going to discuss the brain all things brain brain fog personality irritability mood swings mental health and long-term Alzheimer's disease and this topic of the brain is super dear to my heart because the reason I even got into health and glucose in the first place is because my brain was broken for a long time I suffered from a lot of mental health issues in my early 20s depression anxiety dissociation panic attacks uh it was it was super rough and while I was going through that phase I realized that I didn't know very

well how my brain functioned and uh the brain is still a very mysterious organ it's not like we have it all figured out we don't really know how it works completely yet but science is advancing and showing us some really interesting things and you might not know but actually the way that you eat how you're eating what you're eating has a much bigger impact on your brain than you might think and that in turn has a huge impact on how you feel on a daily basis and on who you are as a human being so

for my part mental health was my primary issue and it took me years to figure out how to start improving it until I discovered the world of glucose and I realized that when I was having a lot of glucose spikes on a daily basis that was making my mental health worse that was triggering episodes of dissociation that was increasing my anxiety my depression Etc and so when I fixed my food and stabilized my glucose levels that was the beginning of healing for me and it started all from the brain so today I'm going to tell

you a bit more about the relationship between food glucose and different brain symptoms and then we're going to cover some easy tips that you can start applying today to help your brain be in Optimal Health because I think the objective here is to make sure that as we age and as we go on in our lives our brains get healthier get better instead of getting sicker and sicker which is generally what happens if we're not conscious of what we we should be doing to protect them so let's get started the first topic I want to

cover is brain fog now if you've never experienced brain fog I used to have it so so so so much it is kind of like if somebody had replaced your brain with a bunch of cotton you feel a little bit underwater your vision is not completely clear you're feeling a bit removed from what's going on your memory is kind of messed up you're having a hard time just focusing and doing anything so brain fog is just a sort of abstract term for this these symptoms of feeling like your brain is not working the way that

it should be working and some people have it every single day some people have it 24/7 for others it can come and go you might have one hour or two hours of brain frog here and there for a long time we had no idea what brain frog actually was but now fascinating science is starting to shed some light on this very interesting topic and I want to mention two scientific studies that are really interesting in this domain the first one is called effects of differences in postrenal glycemia on cognitive functions in healthy middle-aged subjects uh

this one showed us that what we eat in the morning impacts our cognitive performance our memory how well our brain works and whether or not we have brain fog so the scientists found that if you had a breakfast that led to a big glucose bike your memory attention cognitive tests were worse if you had a breakfast that kept that kept your glucose level steady your brain was functioning better so that was already pretty interesting then a second one second study that's really cool this one is called the mechanisms of glycemic variability accelerate diabetic Central neuropathy

and diabetic peripheral neuropathy in diabetic rats so this was a study done in rats but what they found was that when the rats were fed in a way that created lots of glucose spikes over and over again the speed of information going from brain cell to brain cell so your neurons the speed of information between the neurons slowed down so as the rats were experiencing lots of glucose spikes their brain was literally working more slowly the information passing through was going way more slowly and this speed of information between neurons is called the nerve conduction

velocity and if you have low nerve conduction velocity you will feel it also as a human being your memory will not be as good you won't be able to perform as well you might feel a little bit fuzzy in there which sounds a lot like brain fog so this study gave us a clue about the fact that glucose spikes were creating this state in the brain this state of inflammation of insulin resistance Etc that was slowing down the speed of neurons that was slowing down the speed of signal between neurons so all in all what

we understand from these two studies and a bunch of other ones in the field is that if you eat in a way that creates a bunch of glucose spikes in your body that's going to be felt by your brain and you're going to have significant impact on the functioning of your brain and this is an interesting one for breakfast in particular because in the morning we tend to Gra gravitate towards sweet breakfast foods because sweet Foods in the morning release dopamine in the brain which is the pleasure molecule so when you eat like an orange

juice and cereal dopamine floods your brain in response to the Sweet Taste but that's very shortlived and that pleasure then gets replaced by these negative impacts on your neurons and on your brain leading to potential brain fog so that's the first link between glucose and the Brain glucose spikes increase the risk of brain fog so if you want to feel sharp if you want to feel alert awake if you want your brain to function at its best it's very important to keep your glucose level steady so that you don't trigger this reaction now let's move

on to the topic of mood irritability this study I'm about to share has to be one of my favorite studies of all time just because it took so much courage courage for the scientists to perform this study and to organize it um seriously hats off it's it's very impressive uh and this study looked at glucose levels and married couples it's a very funny study uh the study is called low glucose relates to Greater aggression in married couples so here's how the study went the scientists recruited over 100 cou they gave each person in the couple

a voodoo doll representing their spouse so their husband or their wife so all of these couples got voodoo dolls representing the person they were married to and then the researchers asked the participants for three whole weeks to do the following every time their partner irritated them they were instructed to put a pin like a needle in the voodoo doll representing the fact that ooh my husband or my wife really ignored me right now at the end of the three weeks the researchers got all the voodo dolls back they counted the pins in the voodoo dolls

and they also measured the glucose levels of the participants over a period of time they found that in people who had steady glucose levels so no big spikes no big drops below Baseline those people had put fewer pins in the voodoo dolls that they had representing their spouse so they were less irritated by their partner however the scientist also found that the people the participants who had a lot of incidents of low glucose levels so low blood sugar those people tended to have put way more pins in the vood doll representing their spouse so when

the participants had variable glucose levels and lots of low moments in their glucose levels and by the way the low moments usually happen after a Spike Spike and then a crash those people were way more irritated by their partners and it showed in the poor voodo dolls that had a bunch of pins in them I love this study because it shows us that our glucose levels and the way that we eat can actually impact our personality and the relationships we have with others another good example of this is many parents tell me that now that

they've Incorporated the glucose hacks into their lives their relationship with their kids has improved they are more Zen they have more patience and also their kids are more Zen throw Tantrums have a steadier mood so you're you're not necessarily somebody who gets irritated or even being hangry being hangry is such a common sign of being on glucose roller coaster I used to be hangry all the time being hangry means that when you haven't eaten in a few hours you are a nightmare to deal with like guys I used to be a nightmare like do not

talk to me if I'm hungry kind of Vibes like I would snap at people be super rude I'm not proud of it but it's just a situation and what I didn't realize is that my glucose level was on a total roller coaster all the time all the time so I had big spikes and then big drops and those drops really added ated me and made me a not very nice person now in terms of if you want to be a nicer person and you think you might be experiencing glucose spikes and glucose drops which by

the way most of us are um if you want to know how to get started there's a link in the description of this episode with one page recapping my 10 super easy glucose hacks so just go ahead and download it then you can start with that and then if you want more there's my books Etc but that's a free resource that I have for you now let's think about a little bit why we see such an impact between glucose and personality irritability so the scientists believe that this is due to the fact that when we

have a lot of glucose spikes there are some molecules in our brain that get altered in particular big glucose Spikes have been shown to lead to lower levels of tyrosine and tyrosine is a neurotransmitter that is in charge of helping our mood be nice and balanced so it's possible that these big glucose spikes are impacting our tyrosine levels which in turn is creating these different personality changes and this irritability so all in all if you're married highly recommend studying your glucose levels you're welcome maybe you can print out the one pager of the hacks and

just put it on your partner's desk as if nothing happened and maybe they'll be less irritated towards you anyway this is science pretty interesting hey really quickly if you can't always do my food hacks and you want to eat the carbs that you love with less impact on your glucose levels I created a capsule just for that it's called anti-spike formula you take two before a meal it cuts the glucose Spike of carbs by up to 40% 100% made out of plants and tested by over 25 clinical trials link is in the description okay back

to the episode uh another one I want to talk about is the link between food glucose and mental health so as I mentioned the reason that I got into glucose in the first place was because my mental health was in shambles and so this topic is super important to me and I think there's not enough conversations going on that are about the fact that the way we eat and our lifestyle the way we live our life can actually directly impact our mental health to give you an example if you're eating in a way that's creating

lots of glucose spikes we know that glucose spikes increase inflammation in the body and when there's glucose spikes in the body there's also glucose spikes in the brain the blood brain barrier really protects the brain from Big variations in glucose levels but there are still still felt and inflammation that is created in the body because of glucose spikes also gets created in the brain and this in turn can lead to symptoms like depression anxiety Etc so the brain is not immune to what's going on and when there's something wrong in our brain it cannot alert

us with pain like other organs do because there are no sensory nerves in the brain all the brain can do is make us feel certain ways so if you're struggling with mental health ISS ises it's a good idea to look at the way you're eating because you might be making something worse without even realizing and of course a mental health is a very multifaceted issue it's not all about food but for me getting my glucose level stable was the foundation that then helped me build on it and you know I did a lot of therapy

EMDR was amazing for me EMDR is something to help you process difficult emotions difficult trauma and because I broke my back when I was 19 I had a lot of stress my body a lot of emotions that were stuck from that experience so that helped me so so so much but the food piece and the glucose piece was the first step for me and I think if you're trying to improve your mental health listen it's it's a journey you know it's work but if your glucose levels are super variable and you're on a roller coaster

all the time you're not going to have the energy and the solid foundation to then go and heal your brain and you know heal whatever's going on in your life so it's so key to get your glucose right in order to have a good footing on which to stand so anyway back to the science so the relationship between glucose and mental health is an emerging field of study it's very very interesting but the studies show us that the more glucose spikes you have the more you're going to experience symptoms of anxiety and depression if you're

somebody who already has those conditions and as the glucose spikes get more extreme the symptoms get worse so here's a study I want to mention it is called incident major depressive disorder predicted by three measures of insulin resistance a Dutch cohort study uh so in this study the scientists looked at about 600 participants male and female 18 to 65 years old without any signs of insulin resistance or mental health issues and these participants were followed for nine years so when they enrolled in the study they had no glucose issues because insulin resistance and glucose go

hand inand and they had no mental health symptoms okay as they were followed for the next 9 years the scientists found that becoming insulin resistant so if one of the participants became insulin resistant probably because of too many glucose spikes leading to that condition they then had an 89% increase in risk of developing major depression so insulin resistance was a strong risk factor for developing depression it's linked guys it's all connected connected if we experience insulin resistance if we have lots of glucose spikes inflammation glycation all of these things are also felt by the brain

so again it's an emerging field field of study but we have enough data and evidence to support a strong connection between how we eat and our mental health the way we eat also impacts our gut health and gut health in turn impacts mental health especially when we're thinking about these very easy hacks that I'm going to share with you there's no reason not to try them so if you're somebody who struggles with mental health have a test see if you feel better for me it was in a matter of days it completely changed my brain

so I highly recommend testing it out and of course I'm just going to say this again glucose is not the whole answer it's not going to solve all of your mental health problems but it's an important solid foundation that you need to have in order to go after all the other layers and finally in this episode I would like to talk about Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease is becoming more and more common in the world at younger and younger ages interestingly we're starting to discover a strong link between glucose insulin and Alzheimer's disease so much so

that some scientists call Alzheimer's disease type three diabetes or diabetes of the brain I know that sounds pretty surprising but the explanation is simple the reason that some people call alzer's disease type 3 diabetes or diabetes of the brain is because of two things first in people with Alzheimer's disease scientists are noticing that their brain also shows signs of insulin resistance insulin resistance inflammation and glycation which are telltale signs in a body that has Type 2 diabetes so they're seeing a connection they're seeing patterns that are super super similar and what they're noticing is that

in people who have Alzheimer's they also have this kind of situation where their brain has Type 2 diabetes so it's all connected and the second thing is that people who have type 2 diabetes are at significantly higher risk of developing Alzheimer's disease and there's one study that I'll cite it's called midlife lipid and glucose levels are associated with Alzheimer's disease in this very big study 3,000 200 participants aged 35 to 50 years old were followed up for 38 years that is that is a long time that's a lot of work kudos to the scientists and

a lot of things were measured triglycerides blood pressure glucose levels and what the scientists found is that the people who had high glucose levels at midlife so at 35 40 years old had a 14.5% higher risk of developing Alzheimer's later in life because the scientists could follow these people for so long they were able to see this PA pattern they were able to see that if somebody and looking back of course they were able to see this looking back they were able to see that if somebody had high glucose levels in their midlife then they

were more likely to then develop Alzheimer's later in life and so we have these two things we understand sort of the mechanisms a bit more that Alzheimer's might be a met metabolic disease with insulin resistance and the brain and we have data like this one that shows us oh yeah it appears that high glucose levels at midlife is a risk factor for developing Alzheimer's disease later on but there is hope first of all from this data we can sort of get a sense that Alzheimer's disease is not 100% genetic and that we can do something

about it so keeping our glucose level steady as early as we can is going to be helpful to our brain in the future and second there are some studies even showing that some cognitive decline may be reversible if you significantly change your diet and that's really amazing it shows us that the way we're eating is impacting our brain and that we have agency and we have power and we can change how our health is going to look like in the future so if you're interested in all of this if you want to help your brain

get healthier as you age not get sicker as you age my glucose hacks are a really easy place to start and I'm going to tell you my four favorite glucose hacks right now and again you can download all 10 in the fre PDF in the description of this episode so my four favorite glucose hacks for brain health are number one have a Savory breakfast not a sweet one as we saw in the early paper if you have a sweet breakfast that's going to lead to glucose spikes and that's going to lead to poor cognitive function

lower memory brain fog from the glucose spikes slowing down the speed of signal between your neurons second hack that I would highly recommend is the veggie starter so before your lunch or before your dinner add a plate of vegetables to the beginning of your meal the fiber in the veggies is going to protect your body from too big of a glucose Spike coming through during the rest of the meal third hack never eat sugar on an empty stomach if you want to eat sugar and guys I love sugar as well so this hack is really

key for me if you want to eat sugar let's say you want to eat like a chocolate cake or something do not have it first thing in the morning and do not have it between your meals have it as dessert at the end of a meal because if you have sugar on an empty stomach or between meals the glucose molecules in it are going to go really quickly to your blood blood stream because there's going to be nothing holding them back if you have the sugar at the end of a meal instead then the food

that's already in your stomach is going to slow down how quickly that sugar is going to get to your bloodstream and as a result it's going to slow down the appearance of glucose in your blood and it's going to reduce the glucose Spike of that sugar and final one is moving after eating so after your meals whenever you can whenever it's easy use your muscles for 10 minutes you can go for a walk you can clean your apartment you can do some calf raises like this uh at your desk so just by putting your feet

on the ground and raising your heels for 10 minutes uh you can dance you can go to the gym and lift weights you can do whatever you want but these are really easy tools that that are going to help your brain so you can feel better today and also prevent any issues long term have a look at the free pdf in the description of this episode with my 10 hacks and that is all we have time for today I hope you enjoyed the science I'm really fascinated with this topic I think it's so so so

so cool um yeah so if you want to be a better wife or husband as well you should study your glucose levels okay I'll see you next time bye [Music]