How to Optimize Your Brain Function
It started with my own brain
A few years ago, after a two-day evaluation at Massachusetts General Hospital, I was told I had mild cognitive impairment (MCI) — what most people call pre-dementia.
I did not accept that as a final verdict. I went back to what I had spent more than forty years observing in my own patients, applied it to myself, and reversed it.
That experience is why I write about this the way I do. I am not writing as a theorist. I am writing as a physician who watched his own brain improve when he removed what was harming it and supported what was left. I’m not just a self-made man; I have a self-optimized brain!
Over decades of careful observation of thousands of patients, I discovered a new disease process that I named CARB syndrome — Carbohydrate Associated Reversible Brain Syndrome. It’s based on the concept that ultra-processed foods, rich in sugar, refined starches, and omega-6 fatty acids from vegetable oils, can deplete the brain’s neurotransmitters and drive brain dysfunction and fat storage. I call those three the toxic triad, because together they define ultra-processed food.
I present CARB syndrome as a theory based on clinical observation. It needs controlled studies to support or refute it, and I welcome them. What I can say is that, in my practice, using this model enabled me to successfully manage thousands of complex patients, many of whom had failed traditional treatment protocols. They lost weight and optimized their brain function. What could be better than that?
Using the CARB syndrome model is the key to optimizing brain function. It is mostly subtraction, not addition.
Step one: remove what is draining the brain
You cannot optimize a brain when neurotransmitters are constantly being depleted and disrupted.
Start with the toxic triad: sugar, refined starches, and omega-6 fatty acids from vegetable oils. These are not occasional treats in the modern diet. They are the backbone of ultra-processed food, and they are everywhere.
When you remove them, something amazing happens. Cravings quiet down and hunger becomes normal hunger again, not the relentless, inextinguishable craving that is the hallmark of CARB syndrome. Energy steadies and concentration improves. And for the first time, a healthy eating plan becomes something you can actually follow, rather than something you white-knuckle for a week and abandon. Cravings drive the CARB syndrome bus, so suppressing these cravings is the key to effective treatment.
That is the order that matters. First, stop the drain. Then support the brain.
Step two: top off the neurotransmitters
The brain makes its neurotransmitters from amino acids and other nutrients. When the diet is dominated by ultra-processed food, that supply is not what it should be.
I take CARB-22 preventively, especially when I do not eat perfectly. It is a precursor formula — DL-phenylalanine, L-tyrosine, L-glutamine, 5-HTP, vitamin C, vitamin B6, and chromium — based on the neurotransmitter-precursor research of Richard and Judith Wurtman at MIT.
I sell CARB-22, and the identical formula is available elsewhere as Appe-Curb. I make no significant money from it. I mention it because it is targeted — it is aimed at the specific depletion I am describing — and that is different from the supplement market in general, which I will come back to below.
Step three: check your homocysteine
Everyone with CARB syndrome should have their homocysteine checked.
The ideal target is below 7 µmol/L. That is stricter than the usual laboratory “normal” range, and it is the target I use because homocysteine is toxic to the brain even when it is called normal. If yours is above 7, I recommend treating it with B vitamins plus trimethylglycine (TMG).
It’s important that you always combine L-methylfolate and vitamin B12 because folate alone can mask a B12 deficiency as nerve damage progresses.
Elevated homocysteine is not part of CARB syndrome itself, but both harm the brain, so it’s critical that you treat both.
Step four: get your omega-3 ratio right
I aim for an AA/EPA ratio between 1 and 3, and I supplement with high-quality omega-3 fatty acids to get there. My personal favorite is OmegaRx by Barry Sears of Zone Diet fame.
This is not about taking a fish oil capsule and feeling virtuous. It is about the balance between omega-6 and omega-3 fats in the membranes of your brain cells. The modern diet, loaded with vegetable oils, skews that balance hard toward omega-6, which drives chronic inflammation. Restoring it is part of restoring the brain’s working environment.
Step five: sleep and move every day
Sleep is not a luxury for the brain. It is when the brain consolidates memory and clears metabolic waste. Insomnia is one of the symptoms of CARB syndrome, and it improves as the syndrome itself improves — another reason to treat the cause first.
Movement is the same story. I walk on the treadmill or swim every day and do weight work twice weekly. Daily movement is not about athletic performance. It is about blood flow, energy, and mood — the basic conditions a brain needs to work well.
Step six: stay socially engaged, and keep learning
Isolation is bad for the brain. Meaningful socialization — real conversation, real connection, not just being in a room with other people — is part of brain health.
So is learning. Read, study, or take on something new. A brain that is asked to learn stays more flexible than a brain that is only asked to repeat what it already knows.
Step seven: build procedural memory
Some of the most useful things I ever learned became automatic, thus freeing up my mind for more meaningful work.
In junior high, I took a typing class. I will be honest about my motive: the girls were the only ones taking typing back then, and I wanted to be around them. The true lifelong value was learning touch typing. It has served me for decades, precisely because I no longer have to think about where to put my fingers when I type.
The same lesson came back years later in Greece. After decades away from a stick shift, I rented a beat-up, twenty-year-old stick-shift car one summer and drove it without thinking — better, I am happy to report, than my wife, who is thirteen years younger!
It is that old human story: sometimes when we chase something silly, we find something worthwhile. And the girls, to their credit, were driving the bus in that typing story.
Master a repetitive skill until it is automatic, and you free up limited working memory and mental energy for complex problem-solving. That is brain optimization in practical form.
Step eight: meditation, in a form you will stick with
My meditation practice is treadmill walking with music or a long swim, usually for 30 to 60 minutes.
There is no single right way to meditate, and I am not promoting a particular technique. What matters is practicing regularly to quiet racing thoughts and give your brain a daily period of focused calm. Choose a method you will follow consistently.
I also use emotional freedom technique — EFT tapping — as another tool for calming an overactive stress response. Like meditation, its value for me is practical: it helps settle the system, making clearer thinking possible.
A word about devices
If funds allow, there are devices people ask me about. One I have looked at and personally use is the Vielight Gamma, a photobiomodulation device. The research behind it is pilot-level — interesting, but early — and it is a general-wellness device, not an FDA-cleared treatment for any brain condition. It costs around $1,799.
I mention it in that spirit: as something to investigate for yourself, with your physician, if you are interested — not as a core part of this protocol. The core is subtraction, precursors, homocysteine, omega-3 balance, sleep, movement, social connection, learning, and procedural memory. Devices, if they have any place at all, come after that foundation is in place.
A word about brain supplements
The brain-supplement market is the Wild West. Most products are unproven, and many are “fairy dusted” — proprietary blends with per-ingredient doses far below studied levels, enough to print on the label, not enough to work.
My rule is simple: first prevent or reverse CARB syndrome. Then, if supplements are your thing, consider adding them — with your physician’s approval, and after doing your own research.
The supplements I take myself, and endorse despite that Wild West market, are IgniCognition, Cognitex Elite (the plain version, not the pregnenolone version), and Ultra Memory & Recall from Life Extension. As I mentioned earlier, I take CARB-22 daily as a preventive measure. I also recommend reading Head First by my friend David Tomen, a book strictly about brain supplements that I consult often. I have found the AI program Muse extremely helpful in evaluating supplements by sorting real evidence from marketing claims.
When indicated, use low-dose medications that are approved by your physician. Supplements are not a substitute for medical care, and they are not a substitute for removing the toxic triad.
The point of all of this
I am a “normal” human being — not a perfect one. I want protocols that help keep normal human beings like me healthy. The rare perfect ones likely don’t need my help!
Optimizing your brain is not about chasing the newest device or the newest supplement. It is about removing what drains it, topping off what it needs, and then giving it the sleep, movement, connection, learning, and calm it was built for.
Do that, and you are not just hoping for a better brain–you are building one.