How to Become Smarter (27 page)

Finally, anthropological studies suggest that animal-source foods, which are rich in protein, have played a crucial role in the evolution of the human brain over the last several million years [
42
,
44
,
46
]. Therefore, these foods must be necessary for optimal mental performance, including good attention function.

• In line with the theory from the previous sections, studies show that high-protein meals and diets indeed improve attention. High-carbohydrate meals tend to worsen attentional performance.
  
• High-fat diets can have antianxiety properties.
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The studies that we reviewed in the previous sections suggest that two different approaches should improve attention control: 1) increased consumption of high-quality protein, 2) reduction or elimination of food additives from the diet.

There is a great number of ways of increasing protein content of the diet, not the least because there is a great variety of protein-rich foods of plant and animal origin. My personal experience (self-experimentation) over the last 19 years suggests that the following composition of the protein supplement is effective at improving attention:

• 90-95%: ground beef (or other types of red meat), chicken (or other poultry), fish or a combination thereof;
  
• 5-10%: nuts, such as filbert, walnut, chestnut, pecan, and others; it is best to grind nuts in a meat-grinder (electric or manual).
  

Why is this combination most effective? There is not a good explanation. I developed this protein supplementation approach through trial and error, without any coherent theory in mind. Nonetheless, I found possible theoretical argumentation some time later: we discussed it in the previous sections of this chapter. Red meat must be effective because it contains the highest quality protein [
120
,
318
,
319
]. It is possible that nuts are effective because they contain both protein and certain polyunsaturated fatty acids. The Taiwanese study of ADHD patients showed that they have some abnormalities in the metabolism of fatty acids [
302
]. Therefore, some fatty acids must be important for attention function. (It is also possible that the abnormalities of fatty acid metabolism and poor attention merely correlate and the former does not cause the latter.) It is possible that nuts contain certain fats that are important for attention function and this may explain their unusual attention-enhancing properties.

I consider nuts the most difficult and least healthy type of food. They can make me feel awful if I consume them in large amounts every day. (For comparison, this will not happen with such foods as bread or refined sugar, as we saw in the section “A diet that can worsen mental abilities quickly” in Chapter One.) You need to be careful with plant oils in general. I tend to develop a strange back pain or a pain in the area of the liver if I consume them in large amounts (3-4 tablespoons a day).

As for the practical aspects of protein supplementation, the best cooking method for animal products is steaming or boiling because the cooking temperature is moderate (100°C or 212°F). At this temperature the formation of mutagens and carcinogens in cooked animal products is miniscule or undetectable [
146
,
152
]. If I cook beef and fish by steaming or boiling, then these foods have almost no adverse effects, even if I eat them in large amounts every day for weeks and months. If you fry, roast, grill or microwave these animal products (high cooking temperature), then beef and fish can make you feel bad within a few days. This may be due to the formation of significant amounts of mutagens and carcinogens in meat and fish at high cooking temperatures [
129
,
152
,
158
]. In order to simplify cooking, you can vary the animal products day-to-day rather than meal-to-meal. For example, you can have ground beef one day, ground turkey the next, and fish on the third day. I often mix ground beef and ground chicken in equal amounts and cook them together.

In my experience, simple addition of large amounts of the above protein supplement (200-250 grams or 7-9 ounces) to each meal improves attention control. This is what I call the “
protein supplementation diet
.” This regimen does not forbid any types of food and adds large amounts of protein-rich foods to each meal. The aforementioned amounts of protein supplement are for a person whose energy needs are around 3000 calories per day. You may need to prorate the amounts according to your energy needs using this convenient calculator: [
337
]. The beneficial effects will kick in one to six hours after you start this high-protein regimen. You may find that distractibility decreases and the ability to concentrate on reading and writing tasks improves. Normally, you shouldn’t eat more than 200-250 grams (7-9 ounces) of cooked meat per meal. You will facilitate digestion of this food if you break up your daily dose of cooked meat into five parts and eat the meat five times a day. (This is inconvenient for many people.)

Fat content of red meat should be no less than 10%, better if it’s 20-25%. Fat content of poultry should be no less than 7%. If you feel well when you consume large amounts of lean meat daily, then you can ignore my recommendations regarding fat content of meat. I feel awful on diets that contain large amounts of lean meat. Fat content of fish does not matter. The nuts should be raw and it is best to grind them because most nuts are a hard food that can damage your teeth. In my personal experience, consumption of roasted nuts on a regular basis can lead to headache, which may or may not be true for everybody.

The protein supplementation diet is effective at improving attention control, based on my personal experience for the past 19 years. A high-protein meal allows me to concentrate on reading for 2 to 3 hours and to concentrate on writing for one to two hours. When my mind starts wandering, I take a short break, then eat a high-protein meal and start reading or writing again.

I recommended this approach to an acquaintance of mine, Natasha R. (I changed the name per her request.) She is a biomedical researcher and has to read a lot of scientific articles at her day job. For those of you who have never read a scientific article, this sort of literature is difficult to understand and boring to people who are not experts in the subject matter of the article. After testing the aforementioned protein supplement, Natasha told me that with this approach she can keep her attention in an article and can read for several hours at a time without distractions. This is in contrast to her previous experience with reading, when she was not able to keep her attention in a text longer than an hour or so, in one sitting. Neither Natasha nor I have a history of ADHD.
^K
Therefore, these data support the notion that high-protein diets should improve attention in healthy people.

Although protein supplementation alone is beneficial for attention, you will achieve even better attentional performance with a high-protein diet that excludes all artificial ingredients (food additives, junk food, and dietary supplements). Food additives include sugar, salt, nitrites, vinegar, seasonings, and others. You can find the list of all known food additives on Wikipedia, the article titled “List of food additives.”

The more complicated approach, which is the high-protein diet free of artificial ingredients, is the next step. This is the “
balanced high-protein diet
” and it consists of fruits, vegetables, “clean” juices (free of salt, sugar, and other additives), meat, fish, and nuts. This diet has the word “balanced” in its name because it contains sufficient amounts of carbohydrates. This diet is similar to the Paleolithic diet. You can drink water in any amounts that you wish. You can also use vegetable oils, if needed (not for frying). This diet does not allow any junk food, food additives, spices, seasonings, and artificial ingredients, such as dietary supplements. The same rules apply to the fat content of meat and fish as we talked about earlier. The balanced high-protein diet does not allow any food cooked at temperatures higher than the boiling point of water. It excludes all fried, broiled, grilled, and baked food. Smoked food is not allowed either. The unseasoned food in this diet may seem bland at first, but you can get used to it and discover that it has its own rich flavor. You can find some relevant recipes in
Appendix I
. The complete absence of all food additives and seasonings is unacceptable to most people. As a compromise, you can add small amounts of salt to various dishes because this does not affect mental abilities, in my experience. Another thing that makes this “bland” food tolerable is that this diet is temporary. You don’t have to use any special diets on days when you are not performing any demanding mental tasks.

A sample menu is shown below. The menu below lists essential ingredients of each meal and does not provide any recipes. You can prepare a great variety of dishes using various combinations of vegetables and animal products (meat or fish), such as stews and soups, to name just a few (
Appendix I
). You can also use eggs in recipes, but they have a modest effect on attention. Therefore, they are an optional component of the balanced high-protein diet. The amounts of food listed below are for a person whose energy needs are about 3000 calories per day. You may need to prorate these amounts according to your energy needs using this calculator: [
337
].

Breakfast:
A salad or vegetable juice, or cooked vegetables; 200-250 grams (7-9 ounces) of boiled or steamed ground beef; 10-15 grams (~0.5 ounce) of ground nuts (for example, walnuts);

Lunch:
Fruit or fruit salad or a glass of fruit juice; 200-250 grams (7-9 ounces) of boiled or steamed chicken or ground chicken; 10-15 grams (~0.5 ounce) of ground nuts;

Dinner:
A vegetable salad or juice, or cooked vegetables; 300-350 grams (10 to 12 ounces) of boiled or steamed fish (e.g., salmon); 10-15 grams (~0.5 ounce) of ground nuts (for example, pecans).

It is best to eat cooked meat in smaller amounts 3-5 times a day, rather than large amounts once or twice a day (
Appendix III
). You can replace any one of your meals with your usual food if you don’t have to perform any important mental tasks during the 3-4 hours after the meal.

I recommended the balanced high-protein diet to an acquaintance of mine, Anatoly C. (I changed the name per his request.) He was a graduate student and had to perform a lot of reading and writing tasks. Anatoly used to be a vegetarian and used to think that meat was bad for health and for mental work. Following my advice, he decided to test the balanced high-protein diet and meat cooked at moderate temperatures. He was amazed to discover that meat does not make him feel bad and on the contrary, it serves as an excellent fuel for the brain. He now considers fried meat and processed meats a poison that gives a bad name to meat. Anatoly told me that the balanced high-protein diet can increase mental clarity same as any diet that is free of junk food and artificial ingredients. In his opinion, only diets that contain sufficient amounts of meat and fish can improve capacity for work and mental concentration.

These two approaches, the protein supplementation and the balanced high-protein diet, can have adverse effects on health as described in the next section. For those readers who wish to test these treatments in a clinical trial with ADHD patients, the modified protein supplement and the modified high-protein diet are a better option.
^L
These two have fewer side effects and we will discuss them in a later section of this chapter.

• My self-experimentation over the last 19 years suggests that attention control will improve if you add the following protein supplement to the diet in liberal amounts: 90 to 95% of the supplement is beef, chicken, or fish; nuts constitute 5 to 10% of the supplement.
  
• You can achieve even better attention performance if you combine the increased consumption of high-quality protein with elimination of all junk food and artificial ingredients from the diet. This is the “balanced high-protein diet” and it consists of fruits, vegetables, nuts, boiled meat and fish.
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The above-mentioned high-protein diets improve attention control and reduce distractibility but they can also have several undesirable side effects even in healthy people. (Readers can skip the detailed discussion of this topic and jump to the key points: press the skip button or
this link
.) Patients with kidney disease should be careful with high-protein diets and must consult with a doctor before attempting this lifestyle change.

Some studies have reported that high-protein diets (containing substantial amounts of cooked red meat) can have adverse effects. For example, they can lower mood and cause emotional tension, fatigue, and bad breath [
110
-
114
]. Most people tolerate well a
low-carb
high-protein diet, such as the Atkins diet, for extended periods of time. But this diet may have some negative effects on health during the initial period (the induction phase).