Feed Your Subconscious Mind, Improve Your Life – Or How To Feed the Wolf and Play with the Puppy
By William L. Wilson, M.D.
Our conscious brain is our awareness brain. It’s our thoughts, our plans and our stories. It’s our thinking, logical brain where we laboriously work through problems step by step. But it’s not our most active brain—that would be our subconscious brain. Our subconscious brain works 24/7 processing information, solving problems and providing us with the “gut” instinct that drives many of our decisions. It performs these important tasks in the background without us being consciously aware of the process.
Why you need to feed your subconscious brain
Much of the data coming in from our sensory organs—sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, gets shuttled into our subconscious brain where it is analyzed, categorized and processed. Our subconscious brain then lets a limited amount of this information back into our consciousness mind when the information is critical to the task at hand. Your subconscious mind doesn’t even need to sleep. That old phrase “I’ll sleep on it” reflects that fact that your subconscious mind is solving problems even as your conscious mind is in never-never land, deep in sleep.
This web site is dedicated to understanding the relationship between food and brain function. You have already learned that excessive fructose mainly from sugar and HFCS is the driving force behind insulin resistance and central obesity. When you have insulin resistance and consume high glycemic carbohydrates, especially from grains, your brain is subjected to magnified glucose spikes. Over time these magnified glucose spikes can trigger a condition called Sugar-Brain where you start to crave sweet and starchy food, setting up a vicious cycle.
Over time Sugar-Brain can transition to a serious disease called Carbohydrate Associated Reversible Brain syndrome or CARB syndrome. People with CARB syndrome can develop up to 22 brain dysfunction symptoms that interfere with your ability to function. Because the brain plays a role in auto-regulating fat stores, people with Sugar-Brain and CARB syndrome start to store excessive body fat even when they don’t overeat.
The bottom line is when you eat junk, your brain takes a big hit. It simply doesn’t work as intended. Your conscious brain doesn’t work so well and your subconscious brain is also adversely affected by dietary indiscretions. People with Sugar-Brain or CARB syndrome start to loss their intuition and gut feelings. They tend to make wrong-headed impulsive decisions that aren’t guided by subconscious wisdom. Because their subconscious brain no longer properly filters sensory information, their brain is flooded with useless information. They suffer from sensory overload where they withdraw from stimulating environments. They move away from noise, strong visual input and touch—they withdraw into their own world, the virtual definition of someone with autism.
Think of the wolf as your subconscious
If you want to avoid this nightmare scenario, then pay attention to what you are eating. Eliminate sugar, HFCS and grain-based high glycemic carbohydrates from your diet. Eat whole foods and stay away from processed foods. If it has a label, don’t eat it.
A simple example from my own life might show you the advantage of having a functioning subconscious brain. My Greek in-laws are visiting us and they don’t speak English and I don’t speak a lot of Greek. As my wife points out, our Jack Russell terrier, Athena ,understands more Greek than I do (it’s true).
Let the puppies play
Yet I have spent loads of time with my in-laws over the years and we always manage to communicate without any problems. Some of it is sign language; some of it is body language. Most of it is my subconscious mind understanding a heck of a lot more Greek than my conscious mind understands. I can listen to a conversation in Greek and not consciously understand any of the individual words, yet somehow I know the general gist of the conversation. I simply let go and let my subconscious do the work.
People with Sugar-Brain and CARB syndrome lose this ability and it’s a big loss. They are truly handicapped in a complex world in way they don’t understand. In the world of analyzing data, your conscious mind is a puppy and your subconscious mind is a wolf. If you want to function optimally in this world, learn to feed the wolf.