The starving brain

We are currently experiencing a tsunami of confusion, forgetfulness, amnesia and memory impairment. America alone records some 28,800 new cases of dementia—the umbrella term for cognitive impairment including Alzheimer’s disease—every single day.

That adds up to 6.9 million US citizens currently suffering from dementia, which in turn represents one in nine Americans, or 10.9 percent of the entire population. Estimates predict that some 42 percent of people over age 55 will go on to develop the disease.

The UK is fast catching up. Some 982,000 people—one in 14 over age 65—currently live with dementia in the UK, and one in three are expected to develop the condition in their lifetime. Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia recently overtook heart disease as the country’s leading cause of death.

Despite the unimaginable profits to be made, Big Pharma just hasn’t been able to crack this particular nut.

The major drugs they’ve used for dementia, chiefly cholinesterase inhibitors, stop the body from breaking down acetylcholine, a chemical messenger that enables nerve cells to communicate. Thus far, these drugs (donepezil, rivastigmine or galantamine) offer a modest benefit, improving symptoms for just six to 12 months.

The NMDA receptor antagonists (such as memantine), prescribed for advanced stages, improve dressing and walking and lower agitation but also work very short term.

The latest “breakthroughs,” called anti-amyloid monoclonal antibodies (such as lecanemab and donanemab) help to clear amyloid plaques in early-stage Alzheimer’s. They claim 27 to 35 percent success in slowing cognitive decline but come with major side effects, like brain bleeds—again, no cure.

What nobody is asking is the most basic of questions: Why do we have this giant wave of dementia cases around the world?

The answer is simple: Our modern lifestyle practices are starving our brains.

In our feature Is Your Brain Starving?, we reveal that one of the most important and neglected foodstuffs for the brain is fiber.

Fiber is one of the whole components of food from plants that is generally not digested by our digestive enzymes. While we’ve long known that having enough fiber is essential to healthy digestion and elimination, most doctors don’t recognize the essential role that fiber plays in brain health.

First, fiber helps to regulate the absorption of sugar and maintain steady insulin levels by slowing sugar absorption in the bloodstream. This regulatory role also prevents insulin levels from spiking and so helps to prevent inflammation and dysfunctional mitochondrial activity in the cells, both of which can harm cognitive function.

Dr David Perlmutter, a neurologist and best-selling author of Grain Brain (Little, Brown Spark, 2013), calls fiber “one of the most important players in brain health.”

The reason, he says, has to do with microglial cells, the resident immune-system cells of the brain and spinal cord. Comprising some 5–10 percent of the central nervous system, these little cells are ingenious multitaskers: Sentinels keeping an eye out for germs or damage; housekeepers ingesting or sweeping away dead, damaged or harmful cells; gardeners trimming away excess brain connections, ensuring healthy brain wiring; and healers repairing damaged tissue.

In Perlmutter’s view, microglia are “among the brain’s greatest defenders.”

The big problem is when they go wrong. If they become chronically hyperactivated, they can drive inflammation, degeneration and general brain dysfunction.

Besides dementia, hyperactivation of these little cells appears to be behind Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and a host of other neurodegenerative diseases.

The main reason that microglial cells go awry? Not enough fiber and gut microdiversity from fiber-rich foods like fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts and legumes, and not enough good fats.

So now we come to the nub of the epidemic in brain decline. Modern Western diets are filled with processed foods, which are high in sugar and low in healthy fiber. Fat has wrongly been fingered as the culprit in heart disease, and most people over 55 are prescribed statins and a low-fat diet in the mistaken belief that cholesterol causes heart disease.

And with the popularity of Paleo and keto diets, which cut out all grains and sometimes legumes, unless they ensure they are getting a wide variety of plant and animal foods, people risk limiting certain food groups that create greater biodiversity in the gut.

All this adds up to a case of brain starvation. Preventing and healing dementia may be simply a matter of eliminating sugar and getting enough good fats and fiber, two foodstuffs that are being cut from the average diet by false claims about fats and heart disease, the universal use of statins, and poor gut diversity. Lab studies even show that increasing fiber intake can reverse microglial dysfunction and potentially prevent and even reverse the brain damage it causes.

The bottom line is just this: Feed your gut, and you feed your head.

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