Balancing Health and Taste to Empower Your Brain

To empower your brain, you must first consider the relationship between Alzheimer’s disease and blood glucose levels. After all, basic tasks like memory and learning depend upon neurons in the brain. When those neurons cannot respond to insulin, as in the case of insulin resistance, the formation of plaques in the brain increases. Therefore, a buildup of these plaques can replace normal brain cells. Researchers believe that an insulin deficiency in the brain is the cause of cognitive decline.

It doesn’t take much to imagine how devasting glucose levels in the bloodstream of individuals with pre-diabetes or metabolic syndrome similarly double the likeliness of developing Alzheimer’s. Foods that replace healthy fat with sugar open the door to diabetes and insulin resistance, the cause of morbid obesity in children and adults.

Too Many Carbohydrates Impede Better Brain Health

A 10-year study ending in 2018 that followed more than five thousand people discovered that having elevated glucose levels in the blood is related to the rate of cognitive decline. This observation was regardless of whether the person had diabetes or not. In short, even in diabetics, it was noted that the higher the blood sugar was, the faster the accompanying decline.

Two of the biggest myths should be observed to defeat the perils of the American diet. Number one is that a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet is healthy, and number two, dietary cholesterol is unhealthy.

FACT #1: The brain is the most cholesterol-rich organ in the body, comprising 70-80% cholesterol. The body requires so much cholesterol to function correctly that the liver manufactures it.

FACT #2: High levels of dietary fat (minus trans fats) have been vital to health and to empower your brain.

Cholesterol Exists to Empower Your Brain

The 1948 Framingham Heart Study, with its recruitment of 5,209 men and women between the ages of thirty and sixty-two, is one of the most prized studies ever done in America. Researchers at Boston University in the mid-2000s set out to explore the relationship between total cholesterol and cognitive impairment. Of the original group, they looked at 789 men and 1,105 women. All were free of dementia and stroke at the beginning of the study and followed for sixteen to eighteen years. The study observed memory, concentration, learning, and all other features compromised in Alzheimer’s patients. The 2005 report stated:

…participants with ‘desirable’ total cholesterol (less than 200) performed less well than participants with borderline high total cholesterol levels (200 to 239) and participants with high total cholesterol levels (greater than 240).

It became evident from this evaluation that the higher cholesterol levels contributed to higher scores on cognitive tests than those with lower cholesterol levels.

Avoid Taking Statin Drugs To Empower Your Brain Function

If there is only one thing I want you to take away from reading this article, cholesterol is your friend. Cholesterol-lowering statin drugs are the enemy. My opinion, along with naturopathic physicians, is that MDs who still prescribe statin drugs to their patients after telling them their cholesterol is too high should go to jail. Doctors persist in prescribing these drugs despite the FDA’s warnings on labeling these products. Just read below, or you can click the link above.

Adverse Event Information
Information about the potential for generally non-serious and reversible cognitive side effects (memory loss, confusion, etc.) and reports of increased blood sugar and glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels has been added to the statin labels. FDA continues to believe that the cardiovascular benefits of statins outweigh these small increased risks.

In light of what I have just explained, the American Medical Association calls your memory loss and the possibility of developing Alzheimer’s disease a small increased risk. This also raises the question, “To whose benefit is this?

Watch this quick video for more information about the blood sugar-lowering benefits of B1 (benfotiamine).