Power Up Your Brain (18 page)

Being involved in stimulating mental activities—such as problem solving, exploring novel environments, and, perhaps most important, meditating regularly—enhances BDNF production and creates a brain that is not only more resistant to deterioration but one that enables you to push the limits of day-to-day functionality. In this context, it is important to view meditation not as a passive activity but as an active, brain-stimulating exercise. Even among Alzheimer’s patients, the rate of disease progression is dramatically slowed in those who engage in spiritual practices, which, again, is likely a consequence of increased BDNF.
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Meditation helps us visit the complex environment of the inner mind as well as the universal energy field. And, not surprisingly, this might well be the most powerful stimulant for BDNF production. Meditation-induced production of BDNF should be looked upon as the fertile ground into which seeds of spiritualityinduced enlightenment are planted and flourish.

Curcumin:
Curcumin, the main active ingredient in the spice turmeric, is currently the subject of intense scientific inquiry, especially as it relates to the brain. But curcumin isn’t new to the medical research. In fact, practitioners of traditional Chinese and Indian (Ayurvedic) medicine have used it for thousands of years. Curcumin is known to possess a variety of biochemical properties that include antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antifungal, and antibacterial activities.

But it is curcumin’s ability to increase BDNF that has attracted the interest of neuroscientists around the world. Interestingly, in evaluating villages in India, where turmeric is used in abundance in curried recipes, epidemiological studies have found that Alzheimer’s disease is only about 25 percent as common as in the United States. There is little doubt that the positive effects of enhanced BDNF production on brain neurons is at least part of the reason why those consuming curcumin are so resistant to this brain disorder.

Curcumin activates the Nrf2 pathway, a recently discovered “genetic switch” that works by turning on the genes to produce a vast array of antioxidants that protect mitochondria. We will discuss this more in depth in the next chapter. This ultimately protects the source of divine feminine energy that permeates our physiology and fosters well-being. But credit for this knowledge is best given to the ancients who describe in the Vedic texts turmeric’s key role in cultivating relationships with the feminine form of divinity.

In contrast, Western civilization is only now recognizing that the feminine life force, in the form of life-sustaining mitochondria, are the conduits through which the healing, nurturing, loving energies of the biosphere flow. Interestingly, only recently have we begun to suspect that these seemingly simple intracellular particles may actually be thought of as cellular manifestations of qualities that were once ascribed to the Greek goddess Aphrodite, the Hindu goddess Shakti, the Buddhist goddess Kuan Yin, and Christianity’s Mother Mary. With this knowledge, we become intimately connected with our history and rekindle our respect for the gift of feminine energy.

Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA):
Perhaps no other brain nutrient is receiving as much attention lately as DHA. Scientists have been aggressively studying this critical brain fat for the past several decades for at least three reasons.

First, more than two-thirds of the dry weight of the human brain is fat, and one quarter of that fat is DHA. From a structural point of view, DHA is an important building block for the membranes that surround brain cells. These membranes include the areas where one brain cell connects to another, the synapses. This means that DHA is involved in the transmission of information from one neuron to the next and thus is fundamental for efficient brain function.

Second, DHA is one of nature’s important regulators of inflammation. Inflammation is responsible for a large number of brain maladies, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and multiple sclerosis. DHA naturally reduces the activity of the COX-2 enzyme, which turns on the production of damaging chemical mediators of inflammation. This inhibits the enzyme and helps put out the fire in our brains.

The third and perhaps most compelling reason for studying DHA is its role in modulating gene expression for the production of BDNF. Thus DHA helps orchestrate the production, synaptic connection, and viability of brain cells while enhancing functionality.

In a recently completed double-blind interventional trial called the Memory Improvement with DHA Study (MIDAS), some members of a group of 485 healthy individuals with an average age 70 and mild memory problems were given a supplement that contained DHA made from marine algae and some were given a placebo. After six months, not only did blood DHA levels double in the group who received the DHA but the effects on brain function, compared with those who received the placebo, were outstanding. The lead project researcher, Karin Yurko-Mauro, commented, “In our study, healthy people with memory complaints who took algal DHA capsules for six months had almost double the reduction in errors on a test that measures learning and memory performance versus those who took a placebo. . . . The benefit is roughly equivalent to having the learning and memory skills of someone three years younger.”
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Humans are able to synthesize DHA from a common dietary omega-3 fat, alpha-linolenic acid. But so little DHA is produced by this chemical pathway that many researchers in human nutrition now consider DHA to be an
essential
fatty acid, meaning that health maintenance requires a
dietary
source of this key nutrient. Data also show that most Americans typically consume an average of only 60 to 80 milligrams of DHA daily, less than 25 percent of what researchers consider to be an adequate intake of 200 to 300 milligrams each day.

BDNF and Brain Protection

BDNF is important not only in neurogenesis and neuroplasticity but also in protecting delicate neurons from being damaged by a variety of insults, including trauma, transient reduction in blood supply, and, perhaps most important, environmental toxins. Indeed, in laboratory studies, rats and even primates with higher levels of BDNF are far more resistant to brain-damaging toxins than animals with low or normal levels.

One important neurotoxin often used in laboratory animal experiments, especially those designed to evaluate the protective effectiveness of BDNF, goes by the abbreviation MPTP (which stands for its chemical designation). This neurotoxin has the relatively unique ability to specifically damage a part of the brain in humans, as well as in several animals, that is associated with Parkinson’s disease. Therefore, MPTP is often used to measure the possible benefits of pharmaceutical preparations to defend the brain against neurotoxins. But, unlike many other investigations that are developed in laboratories, the MPTP street story is far more intriguing.

In the early 1980s, seven individuals ingested a street drug they thought was similar to heroin. Instead, due to an error in the illicit production of the heroin-like drug, the substance they took was contaminated with MPTP. Shortly thereafter, they were diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

While this was devastating to these people, it opened the door for researchers to develop a powerful experimental model for the disease as described by neurologist J. William Langston in his book,
The Case of the Frozen Addicts: Working at the Edge of the Mysteries
of the Human Brain
(1997), which later became the subject of two NOVA productions by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

Langston found that treating squirrel monkeys with MPTP caused almost immediate development of Parkinson’s, with damage to the animals’ brains occurring exactly in the same area as in humans with the disease. Subsequent experiments with other animals generated the same results. Langston and others ultimately concluded that MPTP destroyed neurons by destroying their specific source of energy production, the mitochondria. Thus, MPTP proved to be a mitochondrial toxin specific for the area of the brain associated with Parkinson’s.

Once it was discovered that MPTP selectively damaged mitochondrial function and produced Parkinson’s, researchers focused their efforts to learn how they could block the damaging effects of this neurotoxin and, presumably, by extension, reduce the damaging effects of pesticides in general. Various drugs were developed, including Deprenyl, that, at least in animals, held promise of providing some protection for mitochondrial function against toxins like MPTP.

While human trials showed only modest benefit, the most dramatic neuronal protection against MPTP was not found in some extrinsic laboratory-produced, patentable drug, but with BDNF, a substance already within our physiology, encoded in our own DNA, a gift not purveyed on a prescription pad but from nature.

Study after study has since confirmed that BDNF provides almost complete protection of brain cells not only from MPTP but from a variety of other mitochondrial neurotoxins. And in many of the reports, the methods by which BDNF is increased also come naturally: increased physical exercise and calorie reduction.

Thus, turning on BDNF production, through natural means and lifestyle decisions, provides our brains with powerful protection against the ubiquitous onslaught of mitochondrial toxins, such as commonly used pesticides, to which we are exposed on a daily basis. Obviously, choosing to eat organic foods is helpful, but we cannot totally eliminate our exposure to these dangerous and, yes, brain-damaging chemicals.

CHAPTER 9

THREE CONDITIONS
YOU DON’T WANT
TO HAVE

Oxidation, inflammation, and toxicity are not pretty-sounding words. Even if you don’t know their exact meaning in relation to human physiology, you get the idea that they have something to do with producing a state of less than optimal health. Well, that’s true; they are conditions that you don’t want in your body—at least not to the level of being out of control and harmful.

Oxidation is basically the chemical combination of another substance with oxygen in a process that typically causes some pretty dramatic changes in the oxidized substance. As an example, rusting of iron left out in the elements is oxidation at work. And what happens when metal rusts? Essentially, it becomes damaged to the extent that it loses its integrity, speeding its deterioration.

Inflammation is one of the first responses of the immune system to infection or irritation. You’ve probably experienced this condition, too, perhaps as a sprained ankle. It looks like swelling and redness; it feels like heat and pain. Inflammation is your body’s way of healing because, physiologically, it’s caused by an increase in blood flow with an influx of white blood cells and other beneficial chemical substances rushing to the rescue of the inflamed area. Inflammation can also be associated with chronic arthritis, asthma, and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and multiple sclerosis. Medically, inflammation can be treated with topical creams and reduced through ingestion of nonsteroidal, anti-inflammatory medications (NSAIDs).

Toxicity is the state of being poisonous. Poisons, or toxins, are found in nature, including food, and in manufactured commodities such as household cleaners, solvents, and chemical compounds. We are even exposed to toxins produced within our own bodies. These endotoxins are dealt with by the multitude of detoxification systems that are concentrated in the liver but are found throughout the body as well.

Toxins, as you might expect, can cause disease when introduced into body tissue, yet, interestingly, organisms, including humans, produce toxins. In fact, some creatures depend on toxins for survival. Poisonous snakes, for example, use their venom to kill or immobilize prey, and some plants produce cyanide as a protection from being eaten. Because an organism, including you, produces toxins as products or by-products of ordinary metabolism, your body must break down or excrete them before they build up to a dangerous level.

Oxidation, inflammation, and toxicity—metaphorically speaking—also occur within society. Our thinking and memory can become “rusty” and we lose our ability to think originally. The angry, heated, pained old brain becomes emotionally inflamed; it festers and swells and generates rage. Potentially, the old brain’s noxious beliefs and toxic emotional responses may cause it to strike out with violence that society finds unattractive, if not unacceptable.

Fortunately, there is a physical remedy for this metaphorical situation: antioxidants, inflammation reducers, and detoxifiers that help our bodies heal and facilitate our psyche’s advancement from a state of primordial reactivity to evolutionary, and enlightened, reasoning.

ANTIOXIDANTS

Turn on the television, open a magazine, or listen to the radio, and you will no doubt be exposed to an advertisement extolling the virtues of some newly discovered exotic fruit juice that has the highest antioxidant content on the face of the earth. You may wonder: Why all the hype? What is the benefit of an antioxidant?

Antioxidants are any of various chemical substances, including beta-carotene, vitamin C, and vitamin E, that inhibits oxidation. In effect, antioxidants protect cells by neutralizing damage caused by reactive oxygen species (ROS), or free radicals. As mentioned before, free radicals are a by-product of the normal process of mitochondrial energy production. Under normal or healthy circumstances, antioxidants maintain a balance between the rate at which free radicals are produced and the rate at which they are eliminated.