By Simon J. Evans, PhD

Many of us have a sweet tooth. It’s hardwired into our brains. Several thousand years ago, when we went long periods of time between meals, we needed to get all the calories we could whenever we had the chance. Sweet and fatty foods are high in calories, so our brains made them taste good to get us to eat them. It was a survival instinct back then that made for fit brains. It doesn’t work so well for us now.

Taste Isn’t Everything

We’ve known this for some time. We know that when you eat something sweet you light up pleasure centers, driven by dopamine, in your brain. New research shows it’s not just the sweet flavor that pleasures us. We will light up pleasure centers even if we can’t taste the sweet foods. The high sugar content of sweet foods cranks up our insulin. It turns out that the insulin spike is enough to activate our pleasure centers.

In a recent study, researchers knocked out the ability of mice to taste sweetness. They proved it by allowing mice to choose between plain water and water spiked with sucralose (a non-digestible sugar with no available calories). Normal mice will prefer the sucrolose water because it’s sweet, but these mice couldn’t tell the difference. Next, the researchers gave the un-sweetened mice a choice between plain water and sugar water, and they those the sugar water, even though they couldn’t taste the difference.

In the same studies, the researchers looked at the pleasure centers in the brains of the mice. Sucralose water (sweet but no calories) had no affect, but sucrose water (regular sugar) cranked up the dopamine in please circuits, whereas in regular mice, both sucrolose and sucrose activate pleasure. This showed that the high calorie content alone was enough to activate pleasure, even in the absence of taste.

Sweet Pleasures, or Not

So what does this mean for us sweet-toothed humans? First, since our pleasure circuitry is similar, it’s likely that the same thing happens in our brains (although this remains to be tested directly). Second, we’ve discussed in the past how high glycemic foods (simple carbohydrate, high sugar) spike your blood sugar and insulin levels. This is likely tickling your pleasure centers and reinforcing high glycemic eating. The problem is that this type of eating is gaining more and more data on increasing your risk for metabolic and cognitive diseases, like diabetes and dementia.

Like anything that stimulates your brain pleasure circuits, it becomes less intense over time. So the more you eat high glycemic foods, the less intensely your pleasure centers are likely to respond. This is also how drug addiction works, and is why people need more of a drug to get the same high over time. Not only that, but when you come off the drug your pleasure centers crash to really low activation and you feel horrible. Similarly, when you try to improve your diet to reduce low glycemic foods you are not getting that pleasure boost so you crave sugar.

Now, to be clear, drugs of abuse and high glycemic foods operate at completely different levels. In the words of Nigel from Spinal Tap, drugs turn your volume up to 11, while high glycemic foods probably crank it up to 3 or 4. But the principle is the same.

It’s Never Too Late to Change

The human brain is an amazingly adaptive thing. Even though it’s wired to enjoy sweet and fatty foods, we can modify and retrain those brain circuits to adapt to health in today’s environment. After all, our brains weren’t designed to be pleasured by sweet foods on a daily basis as is the case today.

Fortunately, you can reset your dopamine scale with a focus on low glycemic eating. It takes a week or two of strictly removing excess sugar from your diet, but you can reset the circuits and lose the bulk of your cravings for sweet foods. Furthermore, if you replace the pleasure activating foods with active healthy behaviors that you enjoy, like playing tennis or shooting hoops, you’ll have a much greater chance of success.

Reference: de Araujo, Neuron 57 (2008), 930–941.

Written by Simon J. Evans, PhD

Do you have a sweet tooth in the morning? Do you crave that bowl of high-sugar cereal or a donut with your coffee? We all know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and getting something for breakfast is likely better than getting nothing at all. However, a new study from a group in Australia tells us that if you must eat those sweet, high carbohydrate foods, you would do much better putting them off until lunch and grabbing some more protein in the morning.

A g’zillion different studies show us why it is so important to eat a morning meal. Breakfast eaters have an easier time controlling their weight, better energy throughout the day and higher performance on the job or at school. We also know that foods with a lower glycemic index (meaning they are less likely to spike your blood sugar because they have less simple carbohydrates) are better than high glycemic breakfasts for all this stuff.

A new study took this logic a step further and asked what would happen to your blood sugar if you spread out all your carbohydrates evenly throughout the day, or, conversely, loaded most of them up at breakfast, lunch or dinner. Researchers expected that the peak in blood sugar would be highest right after eating the high carbohydrate meal. In a sense, they were right, but with one big surprise.

A high carbohydrate breakfast meal caused a much bigger spike in blood sugar than a similar meal at lunch or dinner. It appears that our bodies can tolerate a dose of carbs much better in the afternoon or the evening, than we can in the morning. This study utilized type II diabetics to provide and exaggerated normal blood-sugar response, but presumably, this applies to everyone.

Why is this important and what does it have to do with the brain? Your body needs to control its blood sugar (glucose) in a tight window in order for all your systems to operate at their best. Importantly, your brain uses glucose exclusively as an energy source, whereas the rest of your body can tap into energy from fats and proteins. So giving your brain a steady supply of glucose is important for optimal brain function.

If you are constantly eating a big chunk of your daily carbs at breakfast (by scarfing down the donuts, pancakes, French toast or high sugar cereals), then you are probably spiking your blood sugar fairly high in the morning on a regular basis.

This has a couple of problems. First, in the short run, spiking your blood sugar causes your body to respond by releasing insulin to crash it back down. This will cause a drop in energy levels during the mid-morning hours, which is a time when many folks need to be on their toes at work, and kids need to be attentive in school. Second, in the long run, constantly spiking your blood sugar can eventually lead to insulin resistance and type II diabetes, which increases your odds for heart disease and cognitive problems as well.

Obviously it’s best to get rid of the high sugar foods from your diet completely, but let’s be reasonable. Most people, me included, enjoy a fresh-baked cinnamon roll every now and then and we aren’t willing to deprive ourselves of all of life’s pleasures.

So here’s the solution – just don’t eat this stuff for breakfast. It’s the worst possible time of day for these kinds of foods. Unfortunately, these are the common breakfast foods that we feed our kids on a regular basis and find littering the morning menu of our favorite restaurants.

Still, try to switch to higher protein meals in the morning, like eggs or a quick breakfast shake and you will likely notice an increase in energy throughout the morning and the rest of the day. If you just can’t go cold-turkey on the morning office donuts, grab one to stick in your desk and eat it with lunch instead (just keep it to a minimum).

Reference: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2008) 87:638-44

Written by Dr. Rob Borer

So you’ve done all the right things to enhance your brain’s function. You’ve modified your diet to optimize the raw materials needed by your brain. You’ve adopted healthy habits of mental and physical exercises to keep your brain in top shape.

But what have you done to ensure that the messages being generated in the brain are effectively transmitted throughout your body?

After all, your brain controls and regulates every function in your body from respiration and circulation to digestion and motion - to name just a few. In fact, every tissue and organ in your body is completely dependent on the messages coming down from your brain to know how to function on a moment-by-moment basis. And the demands change every moment you’re alive. Are you running or are you sitting? Did you just eat a meal or are you hungry? Are you hot or are you cold? Your body must adapt and modify to its environment continuously. And what is coordinating all this function in your body? None other than your brain!

Then should you be keeping your brain in tiptop shape? Absolutely! But could you be undermining all the good things you are doing for your brain by neglecting a critical area of the body that affects how these messages are transmitted? Very possibly!

To find the area of concern we need to first trace a nerve’s pathway. The vast majority of all nerve connections happen in the brain. From the brain, nerves travel down out of the skull and through the middle of your bony spine as part of the spinal cord. At some point the nerve branches away from the cord, passes between two bones and travels to the tissue or organ that it controls.

The most critical and vulnerable area of the nervous system is the junction between the spine and the skull as it passes through the first cervical vertebrae or atlas bone.

The atlas bone is particularly susceptible to misalignment due to its design and the task it is given to perform. The atlas bone has the fewest overlapping bony structures to help in maintaining it’s proper alignment compared to all other vertebrae in the human spine. Thus the atlas bone relies strictly on muscles and other soft tissue to maintain its alignment. Additionally, the weight of the head is equivalent to an average size bowling ball. The atlas is attempting to keep this very heavy object of yours balanced upright. This task becomes very difficult to achieve when the head is moved too rapidly, such as during a fall from a height, an auto accident, or a sporting or recreational accident. Research has shown that the muscles of the neck are incapable of controlling the weight of the head in these situations and misalignment will result. Chiropractors refer to these misalignments as subluxations.

When subluxation occurs in the spine, irritation and pressure on the nerves passing through or between the involved bones results. The irritated nerve is no longer able to pass information efficiently and effectively and improper function occurs and health problems result. Subluxations have been shown to cause a wide range of health problems such as:

• neck pain
• back pain
• numbness
• digestive problems
• immune problems
• migraine headaches.
• allergies & congestion

Subluxations at atlas are particularly concerning. When we consider that 90% of the nerves traveling down from the brain pass through atlas we understand that a subluxation at this level can affect virtually every nerve in the entire body and can play a large role in many of the health problems one may experience.

Additionally, when atlas is subluxated the entire body must contort and distort to keep you upright. To understand what happens to the spine when atlas subluxates, try holding a bowling ball with you hand upright in front of you with your forearm straight up and down. Then bend your wrist slightly so the bowling ball is leaning to one side without changing the position of your forearm (this will be simulating an atlas subluxation). Notice the affect it has on the position of your entire body as you try and keep from falling over (or dropping the bowling ball!). Roger Sperry, a 1980 Nobel Prize winning scientist in brain research, best captures the impact of the distortions on the body in the following statement:

“Better than 90% of the energy output of the brain is used in relating the physical body in its gravitational field. The more mechanically distorted a person is, the less energy available for thinking, metabolism and healing.”

So regardless of how many good things you are doing to keep your brain in shape you may be undermining all this beneficial effort due to a subluxation at atlas.

So what can you do to avoid subluxation from occurring at atlas? What can you do to keep your spine from getting on your nerves? There are some healthy habits you can adopt to keep your self out of trouble. First of all buy yourself a headset for both your home phone and your cell phone. Bending your head over as you try to cradle the phone between your head and shoulder has been shown to cause subluxation. Sleeping on your stomach should also be avoided. Having your head twisted as you sleep on your stomach is extremely bad for your spine and has been shown to cause subluxation as well. Lifting something from the ground using your legs with your back straight up and down is tried and true advice you’ve probably heard before, but bears repeating. You should also always avoid using your head to raise or turn your body. Additionally, you might begin an activity that strengthens and tones the intrinsic muscles that hold the spine in place. Activities like yoga and pilates are especially beneficial for achieving this.

Finally, if you have had some type of unfortunate accident and believe that you might have an atlas subluxation or are experiencing some of the symptoms of an atlas subluxation, you should be evaluated by an upper cervical specialist. Some of the most common symptoms of an atlas subluxation are:

• neck pain
• headaches
• restrictions in the normal motion of your neck
• popping or grinding sounds during neck motion
• migraines

There are several good resources for finding a good specialist near you. Two of the best ones are www.upcspine.com & www.uppercervical.org.

About the author: Dr. Rob Borer is an upper cervical specialist. He has been in private practice for the past 8 years with his wife Dr. Sherri Borer. Dr. Rob has delivered over 30,000 upper cervical atlas corrections and regularly speaks on the detrimental effects an atlas subluxation has on ones health. For more information about Drs. Rob & Sherri Borer they welcomes you to visit www.borerchiro.com.

Written by Simon J. Evans, PhD

This is a short post on the incredible efforts of a local elementary school principal in my hometown. Nancy Tetens is the principal at my 5^th grader’s school (Symon’s Elementary) who is putting herself on the national stage in order to be a good example for her students.

Ms. Tetens, admittedly struggles with her weight, and felt like she wanted to show her students that adults can step up and take responsibility to improve their health. For the past couple of years Ms. Tetens has been doing just that. She is actively involved in promoting healthy behavior in her school and, more importantly, practicing what she preaches.

Recently, Ms. Tetens joined a national contest called, Clean Start Challenge, sponsored by Lifetime (the TV channel). And guess what…she was chosen as a finalist. Now she is ‘competing’ as one of only ten contestants over the next three months, to transform her life. You can check out Ms. Tetens story and cast your vote for her by clicking here.

More important than winning the prize is the chance to show hundreds of students how to turn their health around. It’s no surprise that kids today are not as healthy as they were decades ago. In fact, child obesity rates have risen dramatically over the past 30 years. In the 1970s the percentage of overweight kids was only a couple of percent. Today, nearly 1 in 5 fit into that category. On top of that, the center for disease control expects about one third of today’s kids to become diabetic.

There are all kinds of reasons for this, mostly boiling down to poor nutrition and less (way less) physical activity. One issue that has received serious national attention is the disappearance of daily P.E. in our schools.

Forced by current political policy and budget crunches, schools have reduced physical education programs in favor of more classroom instruction in order to meet the imposed national standards (some call it ‘no child left without a big behind’). Ironically, the more we learn about how the brain works the more we realize these kids would do better in school if they received more PE, not less.

Study after study has shown that kids boost their math, science and language performance with regular physical activity. But it goes way beyond grades. Physically active kids also have greater self-esteem and lower incidence of mood problems. Given that about 2 million American kids are on anti-depressants or anti-psychotics, this alone should be a strong reason to reintroduce more PE.

This is why Ms. Tetens’ story is such an inspiration. She is swimming against the tide to promote good health in kids. And the kids are taking notice. They are getting behind her and cheering her on all the way. This effort has the real potential to change lives. I strongly encourage you to take 30 seconds right now to cast your vote for Nancy to help promote this movement.

Written by Paul R. Burghardt, PhD

Why is it such a pain to exercise?

There are likely several factors that make it difficult to maintain exercise programs. A substantial hurtle, in my opinion, is that it takes time. Obvious statement, I know. But, think about how much you have to do in a given day. We’re busier than ever! We’re doing more in our day-to-day lives because a lot of things have been made easier and more efficient as ‘technology’ has plowed forward. Since we can do so much more, dedicating a chunk of time away from our technological vices, to run around the neighborhood in shorts, may seem like a period of lost productivity. Or a time better spent relaxing.

I know what you’re thinking…‘Here we go, he’s leading us down some techno-phobic rant that will culminate in the demise of the world as we know it’…but, I’d like to pose that technological innovations are starting to provide us with some great options for multi-tasking physical activity into our daily grind. And always remember that maintaining or increasing physical activity levels (exercising is one option) is very productive.

If you work at a desk job, how much walking do you THINK you do in a day? Here’s an easy, and disturbing, little experiment you can run to find out. If you’re so inclined, go out and buy a pedometer…if you haven’t heard of them they are a little beeper-looking device that will count the number of steps you take when it is clipped to your belt; you can find several options for less than $10. Estimate how many steps you think you take during the course of a normal workday. Then, strap that little bugger on your hip and wear it around for a week. Record your steps at the end of each day (try doing it for a full workweek and calculating your average daily steps), and chances are you will be appalled by what you see.

This is an important people experiment for people to run on themselves. In most cases, I don’t think people know how little physical activity they are engaging in on a day-to-day basis…I know I was shocked when I tried it on myself.

Now that you know the awful truth, how do we go about increasing our physical activity levels?

One option is setting aside a dedicated chunk of time to exercise. It’s a good idea, and I work to make it a priority in my life. But this approach doesn’t work for everyone, and exercise is often one of the first things to be dropped when we start to get overwhelmed with our “to-do” lists.

The other tried and true option is to make things a little more difficult. For example, park out at the end of the parking lot, take the stairs not the elevator, shovel the snow instead of using the snow-blower, and so-on. This is good advice, but again, it will end up requiring more of your time, and if we’re in a time-crunch, we’re more likely to cheat.

So how do we get it in? Well….what if we incorporated it into something we have to do everyday. Something that is a necessity and that we can’t cheat on time.

Two recent products could provide the opportunity for people to increase their levels of physical activity while simultaneously accomplishing at least other daily task. One could be used during your commute and the other while you are at your “desk.”

You can incorporate some physical activity into your commute with little need for technological assistance. Walking, or riding a bike are options. Now, this may only be an option for people who live close enough and in an area amenable to walking or biking. But for those who live in these types of areas why wouldn’t they? One reason is that no one wants to get all sweaty before they walk into work for the day, right?

Well, the RevoPower bike tire may offer a solution to this problem. This bike tire has a motor and you can easily mount it onto your existing bike. It runs at speeds of approximately 20 mph (so it isn’t considered a motor vehicle) and can reportedly get up to 100 miles on a gallon of gas. That’s pretty cool. If you didn’t want to end up all sweaty you could rely on the motor during your commute into work, and pedal your way home at the end of the day. It may also be economically beneficial if you end up saving on gas and not needing to pay for parking.

Another option comes from a research group at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. What they have developed is a workstation designed around a treadmill, referred to as the Walk-and-Work desk. It’s not a treadmill you can run on, it only operates at low speeds… walking at a pace of 1 mph is pretty slow (typical walking pace is about 3 mph). The interesting thing is if you were able to walk during the course of a normal working day you would burn an extra 500-700 calories depending on your individual physiology. That’s 2500-3500 extra for a 5-day work week (equal to one pound of fat), with a potential loss of up to 52 pounds a year; assuming you don’t do anything else and your diet stays the same.

Not only do these provide advantages for weight management, but mental, and therefore job, performance may be enhanced. Now this would need to be tested to determine how much of a benefit would provided, but there’s a lot of science that already shows exercise increases awareness, attention, vigilance and cognitive function. Those factors alone would probably benefit a number of people around the 3pm lull when there’s no coffee left in the break room.

One of the obvious concerns is, of course safety. But if people are able to incorporate these products safely and maintain or improve performance, think of the multitasking capabilities. Plus, this could provide your physical activity without having to make a dedicated trip to the gym freeing up time for other activities.

I want to make it clear that we have no affiliation with RevoPower or the Walk-and-Work desk, nor do we endorse (or not endorse for that matter) these products. But they provide very interesting and in my, opinion, exciting pieces of technology that might help some people work more physical activity into their daily lifestyle. Hopefully, we’ll start to see more inventions that parallel this type of ingenuity.

While these options may not be for everyone, they are two examples of what’s coming around the corner.

How BrainFit is the man in the big red suit? Does old St. Nick adhere to the four cornerstones of brain fitness to take good care of his egg’s noggin? All in all he seems to do a fairly good job, but let’s take a closer look.

First off is Nutrition. I’d guess that the diet up in the north pole has to be similar to the Eskimos. Even though they eat a lot of fat from whale blubber, they get huge doses of omega-3s from all the fish. I’ve heard that Santa enjoys a lot of ice fishing during his downtime. So even though he goes on a once a year milk and cookies binge (or bourbon and cookies in some places), he probably does fairly well the rest of the year.

Second is Physical Activity. Cleaning out reindeer stalls and chasing elves around to make sure they get their jobs done must be physically exerting. Plus, just maintaining a huge workshop operation has to have a fair amount of physical activity on a day-to-day basis. So I’d have to give Santa a good score on the physical activity cornerstone as well.

Third is Mental Activity. This is where Santa really shines. Remembering all the kids’ names and associating all the different requests with everyone one of them is quite a feat and indicative of a strong memory. Not only that, but his sense of direction to remember where they all live shows incredible spatial abilities. Finally, some of the toy designs he comes up with these days are very creative. I have to give him top marks on this cornerstone.

Fourth is Sleep, Rest and Relaxation. Santa probably doesn’t do quite as well here. Even though he only pulls an all-nighter once a year, he strikes me as a type-A personality and is on the go all the time. I bet he’s up to the wee hours working hard most of the year. In fact, lack of sleep has a known correlation with obesity and I’ll bet this contributes to his portly mid-section.

Overall, however, Santa does fairly well in three out of the four cornerstones so let’s see how that translates into his EPIC performance (Emotional, Physical and Intellectual Cognition).

Emotionally, he seems to be in good shape. He’s always laughing (HO, HO, HO) and shows a lot of patience with all those kids constantly climbing on him. I’ve never heard anyone call Santa a jerk, so you have to figure that he does a good job managing his stress levels.

Physically, he could lose a little weight but still seems to function very well. It must be tough getting up and down all those chimneys but he gets it done. I don’t know how his blood pressure or immune function are doing but he’s probably OK.

Intellectually, he’s a star. As I discussed above, memory, creativity and problem solving skills are all sharp. Although he did seem to forget about that Lava Lamp that I requested for about 10 years in a row, but he finally came through.

So is Santa doing what is necessary to stay BrainFit? I’d have to say yes.