Food for Thought:

How Diet Influences Brain Health

The Ohio State University wenk.6@osu.eduWeb Site: http://faculty.psy.ohio-state.edu/wenk/Psychology Today Blog: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-brain-food

Gary L. Wenk, Ph.D.

Feeding your brain for good mental healthI. What Controls Thinking and Feeling

II. How Foods Affect Thinking and Feeling

III. Take Home Message

IV. Questions

Acetylcholine neurons control diverse functions related to attention and memory

Acetylcholine influences many aspects of a cognitive process

..such as reading the word “ball” and thinking about its meaning.

When you are expecting something important to occur this EEG wave appears over the frontal lobes of your brain

Following the degeneration or impairment of acetylcholine neurons the wave does not develop to the same degree

Acetylcholine & Expectation

Components of the diet are used to produce Acetylcholine

ACETYL is made from sugar in the diet.

CHOLINE comes from the diet (found in many common foods, e.g. lecithin. (Donuts contain sugar and lecithin!)

Because of CHOLINE’s role in MEMORY, many over-the-counter products contain it.

Smoothie Smart Blend drink:

Contains niacin, ginko biloba, choline, inositol, lecithin, glutamine, and green tea.

Including products intended to mislead us

DOPAMINE

Controls Happiness

False smiles do not involve dopamine-controlled brain regions;

Genuine smiles do.

False

Genuine

AmphetaminesCocaineOpiatesMarijuanaPCPCaffeineSexAlcoholBarbituratesChocolateNicotine

FOOD

All rewarding things activate dopamine

SEROTONIN

Controls Sleep, Dreaming & Moods

Coma, seizures & death

G.I. Disturbances

Sexual Dysfunction

Insomnia

Anxiety

Bulimia

Panic

OCD

Depression

Too Little Serotonin

Too Much Serotonin

Adapted from: Stahl SM. Essential Psychopharmacology. Cambridge Univ. Press.

SEROTONIN

Dietary Sources of Tryptophan

This neurotransmitter system is impaired… in these conditions

Acetylcholine

Dopamine

Serotonin

Alzheimer’s Disease, Autism, Learning disabilities

ADHD, Borderline personality disorder, Bipolar Illness, Risky behaviors

Depression, Anxiety, Aggressiveness, Sleepiness, Autism

How does food affect your brain?

• Almost everything you choose to consume will directly or indirectly affect your brain.

• The most important consideration is to get enough of the chemical from within the food to its site of action in our brain to actually produce some kind of effect that we can notice and associate with consuming that particular food.

• Most of the time, this simply does not happen

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How does food affect your brain?

• Three ways:

1. Fast Acting (e.g. coffee, sugar, heroin, alcohol, nicotine, marijuana and some spices)

2. Intermediate Effects (“pre-cursor loading”)(e.g. tryptophan, carbohydrates, mineral supplements, lecithin,

vitamins, apples/cranberries/prunes)

3. Long-term Effects(e.g. anti-oxidant foods, anti-inflammatory plants and drugs)

Caffeine enhances the function of acetylcholine neurons.

How does caffeine help us to pay attention and learn?

Not all fast-acting foods work through acetylcholine though!

How does food affect your brain?#2: Intermediate Effects

Some foods affect your brain slowly over a period of days to weeks usually with the intent to affect mood or general cognitive function. Their purpose is to bias the

function of a specific transmitter system.

This is called “precursor-loading.”

Examples:• Tryptophan• Carbohydrates• Mineral supplements• Lecithin• Vitamins• Apples/cranberries/prunes

Image from Orlando Florin Rosu - Fotolia.com

How does food affect your brain?#3: Long-Term Effects

Some foods slowly affect brain function over many years or a lifetime.

The benefit comes from the fact that all of these foods provide our brains with some form of protection against the most deadly thing we expose ourselves to

every day – oxygen

Examples:

• Anti-oxidant rich foods (e.g. colorful fruits and vegetables, fish and olive oils)

• Anti-inflammatory plants and drugs (e.g. aspirin, some steroids, cinnamon and some other spices, nicotine, caffeine and chocolate, the fat-soluble vitamins, nuts, legumes,

beer and red wine). Image from http://healthylifecarenews.com/brain-is-very-greedy-for-oxygen/

What do we eat that can harm us?• Food Additives• Pesticides• Non-declared Drugs• Arsenic• Mercury

• Prednisone• Testosterone• Cadmium• Lead• Lots of food

Adapted from TRENDS IN PHARMACOLOGICAL SCIENCES, Volume 23.

Fatty foods cause obesity and aging

of the brain

Study followed 22,000 men and 100,000 women

for 20 years!N Engl J Med 2011;364:2392-404.

• Evolution: the fittest individuals preferred a high calorie diet, ate to capacity, stored excess calories as fat and used those stores as efficiently as possible.

• Social: high caloric food during gatherings with friends.

• Humans tend to overeat whenever tasty (fat & sugar) food is readily available.

• We will keep eating no matter what our body tells us – “ingestion analgesia” functions to defend eating from ending. Foo, H. et al. J. Neurosci. 2009;29:13053-13062

Why do we eat fatty foods?

• Average quality-of-life rating assigned to U.S. children with cancer:

Obesity’s Consequences

• Average quality-of-life rating assigned to obese children:

69 (on a scale of 100)

67

“Belly fat is an important pathway by which depression contributes to the risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes," “… depressive symptoms were clearly related to deposits of visceral fat, which is the type of fat involved in disease.“

-Psychosomatic Medicine, May 2010

Obesity and Mood Control

Obese people have elevated levels of endogenous Marijuana-like chemicals

Fat cells release bursts of marijuana-like chemicals that induce “the munchies” and lead to binge eating of high fat foods.

Thus…

These Foods Defend Your Body

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Curcumin, DBM

Resveratrol

Diosmetin, Diosmin

Galangin

Kaempferol, Quercetin

Benefits of Chocolate

• Men who eat chocolate live longer than men who do not eat chocolate.

• Estrogen-like compounds may explain why (the effect was not seen for women who have an ample supply of their own estrogen until menopause).

• Chocolate also contains magnesium salts, the absence of which in elderly females may be responsible for the common post-menopausal condition known as “Chocoholism.”

• Anti-oxidants & flavonoidsFOOD SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL 11:159, 2005

So how much is enough?

Let’s compare wine and chocolate.

200 ml (6.7 oz) of Cabernet Sauvignon

50 grams (1.7 oz) of dark chocolate (71% cocoa)nearly identical

quantities of flavonoids

• Recommended daily wine intake to produce the most health benefits in a typical adult.

• Increased blood flow to the brain within two hours and increased performance on a complex mental task in young female adults

No studies have yet proven a true cause-and-effect connection between the life-long consumption of anti-oxidant-rich diets and a reversal of age-related

deterioration in learning or general mental function.

Anti-oxidant activity

What’s the solution? Less eating or more exercise?

• Simple exercise contributes little to weight loss.

• Physical activity consumes only a small portion of total energy.

• 80% of energy is used to maintain resting physiological processes and to digest food.

Tape worms are actually making a resurgence as an option for losing weight

(A)Body weight

(B) Percent survival

(C) Life-span

THE BEST PROTECTION IS TO EAT LESS FOOD

WHY?• The risk is due to the fact that we keep breathing, eating &

exercising

• Energy production from food converts 2% of oxygen into toxic molecules (oxygen free radicals that can damage DNA).

During the 20-year study,

Caloric restriction can prolong life span and retain more cognitive abilities into advanced age.

50% of the monkeys allowed to eat freely

have survived

80% that ate the same foods but with 30% fewer

calories remain alive

Effect of Caloric RestrictionFewer cancerous tumors among those on restricted diets

Source: R.T. Bronson and R.D. Lipman, Growth, Development and Aging, 1991.

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Take Home Messages

• What you eat may affect brain function – effects and duration depend on how often and how much you consume of a particular substance.

• A single good dietary habit is not enough to provide protection for your brain.

• Obesity due to overeating impairs quality of life, impairs cognitive function and predisposes you to diseases that are common in old age.

• Eat as little food as possible. Caloric restriction is the only valid, scientifically supported dietary intervention that has been shown to slow the aging process, improve health and maintain good brain function into old age. It also saves you money!

• It’s never too late to slow brain aging. Do something good for it every day.

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