A recent article in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine reported on a study looking at whether the MIND diet can reverse Alzheimer’s disease. In this study, the diet didn’t seem to positively impact dementia. I pay attention to this type of study because my dear mother and her mother developed Alzheimer’s disease before the age of 60. The MIND diet combines two of the healthiest known diets—the Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet. The DASH diet was developed to prevent hypertension and heart disease. The diets are very similar in composition, and both are known for their general health benefits.
The Diet—Brain Connection
As a physician with a long-standing interest in the connection between diet and brain function, I believe they are asking the wrong question. I suspect that no particular diet will reverse Alzheimer’s disease once it is established. It’s like trying to stop a train by standing on the tracks! One thing is evident: you can make your brain function much worse by eating an ultra-processed foods diet loaded with sugar, highly refined carbohydrates, and omega-6 fatty acids. A recent article in the New York Times discussed this issue in detail. The medical and scientific communities have yet to figure out exactly why this is the case. I think I have the answer.
Depleting Your Brain Neurotransmitters
Consuming ultra-processed food leads to massive glucose spikes, resulting in excess amounts of monoamine neurotransmitters being released from nerve axons. These essential chemical messengers like dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine and others are supposed to be reabsorbed into the neuron to be used again. When too many of these chemicals are released, they overwhelm the reuptake system, so some of these excess neurotransmitters are taken up by the bloodstream and cleared by the kidneys. You end up peeing away your neurotransmitters! After every glucose spike, you get a massive drop in glucose below normal. Your primitive brain evolved to read low glucose as a possible emerging famine or “It’s time to eat,” pushing you into a fat storage mode where your body will store extra fat at almost any level of caloric intake. You end up with two significant problems:
- You develop significant excess body fat or obesity.
- You develop up to 22 brain dysfunction symptoms that overlap with traditional brain disorders.
Your healthcare provider will likely advise you to restrict calories to lose weight and give you Prozac or a similar medication to deal with your brain dysfunction symptoms. This will not result in the loss of excess body fat over time, and even though your brain dysfunction symptoms might improve a bit for a short period, eventually, they will return with a vengeance. These drugs magnify the effects of the low levels of these chemicals without increasing the amount of neurotransmitters. As the levels continue to drop over time, your symptoms will worsen.
A New Brain Paradigm
I believe the brain pathology triggered by consuming ultra-processed food fits the pattern of a distinct disease that I term Carbohydrate Associated Reversible Brain syndrome or CARB syndrome. I believe CARB syndrome is now the most common disease in modern societies, yet the medical and scientific communities completely missed it, resulting in our twin epidemics of obesity and so-called psychiatric disorders. A good example of this phenomenon is so-called “atypical depression”. Up until the past 50 years or so, there was only one type of depression: major depressive disorder (MDD). This condition was defined as having a low mood associated with loss of appetite and weight loss. If you didn’t lose weight, you could not be diagnosed with MDD. Over the past 50 years, we started to see a lot of folks who appeared to be depressed, but they had an increased appetite and weight gain. The folks at DSM didn’t quite know what to do about this contradiction, so they decided to classify the weight gain type of depression as “atypical depression.” I have news for you. Atypical depression is CARB syndrome, and it has absolutely nothing to do with MDD. If you treat it according to protocols for MDD, you will get worse over time rather than better. How do you know if you are heading down the CARB syndrome rabbit hole? It’s pretty simple; if you seem to be storing too much body fat and are developing some or many of the 22 symptoms of CARB syndrome, you’re heading for trouble!
Fix Your Brain, and Your Health Will Follow
To turn this ship around, you need to do the following:
- Consume a healthy, whole-food diet with minimal or no ultra-processed food. The MIND diet is a good choice.
- Try intermittent fasting, restricting food intake to an 8-10 hour window each day.
- Exercise regularly, including both aerobic exercise and strength training.
- Take a neurotransmitter precursor product like CARB-22 to maintain optimal levels of these essential chemicals. Start with one or two capsules twice daily on an empty stomach and titrate up to four capsules twice daily based on your symptoms.
- Consider using a GLP-1 receptor agonist drug like Ozempic or Mounjaro. These medications are very targeted at the brain pathology driving CARB syndrome. If you need to discontinue or taper the drug, taking CARB-22 will significantly diminish your chance of relapsing.
- To reduce inflammation in your body and brain, take a high-quality omega-3 supplement to get your AA/EPA ratio between 1 and 3. I take Omega-Rx2 from Barry Sears.
- Consider taking a general brain supplement. I take Cognitex Alpha GPC from Life Extension.
If you consistently follow my plan, your body composition, brain function, and overall health will dramatically improve over time, and what could be better than that?
Edited by Andy Steinfeldt