World expert think tank declares a mental health meltdown as rates of mental illness soar.
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We are facing a new pandemic.
Not the result of a return of Covid or bird flu but caused by something much closer to home that affects us every day. The food we eat. It is damaging our brain.
A report just published in the Lancet, found that neurological diseases, from autism to Alzheimer’s, are affecting 43% of the world’s population. The Federation of European Neuroscientists have declared a ‘brain health emergency’. The Times reports that two thirds of benefit claims are for mental health. Diagnoses of autism and ADHD are steadily increasing.
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What are we doing about it?
The good news is that a fightback is beginning. Yesterday, a virtual “Upgrade Your Brain” conference,organised by the charitable foodforthebrain.org, brought together leading neuroscientists – psychiatrists, nutritionists and neurologists from around the world – to brainstorm the cause and a solution. They identified the four ‘horsemen of the mental health apocalypse’ lurking in our diet.
Standard healthy eating advice rarely warns about them at all. They are:
A lack of brain fats, notably omega-3 from seafood but also vitamin D;
Increased intake of sugar and ultra-processed foods;
A lack of the many antioxidants and polyphenols (micronutrients) found in spices, vegetables and fruits, especially berries;
Lack of B vitamins, notably B12, producing homocysteine, a brain toxic amino acid.
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The toll exacted by the horsemen is vast. Mental illness is now costing considerably more than all cancer and heart disease combined. “The Children’s Society recently reported a tripling in NHS referrals for mental ill-health in the last three years.” says Professor Michael Crawford, at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Campus of Imperial College.
According to Professor Crawford, the damage begins in pregnancy. Lack of B12 and folate in the mother increases later behavioural problems in their children. Fewer than 5 percent of children get the basic recommendation of seafood rich in omega-3 and many eat none at all. “Special schools are bursting at the seams,” says Dr Rona Tutt, former president of the National Association of Head Teachers.
“High sugar and ultra-processed foods are having a devastating impact on mental health and play a major part in the increase in both ADHD, depression and dementia.” says Professor Robert Lustig from the University of California. Dr Georgia Ede, a psychiatrist from Harvard, reports low carb diets are reversing mental illness.
According to the NHS one in five adults in England are on anti-depressants and last year one million teenagers were prescribed them. This year prescriptions are expected to exceed 100 million. Independent researchers have been warning about their lack of effectiveness and damaging side-effects.
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It’s not just about food and nutrients…
But it is not just nutritional deficiencies that are threatening our brains. The way we live can contribute to the damage. “The combination of poor diet, lack of exercise, less intellectual and social stimulation, stress and insomnia creates a ‘perfect storm’ for the brain,” says neuroscientist Dr Tommy Wood at the University of Washington.
Dr Wood is leading research for us as we keep developing a defensive strategy to protect the brain with nutritional and lifestyle changes. It starts by finding out just how well your brain is doing via a FREE online Cognitive Function Test followed up by personalised advice on how to reduce your dementia risk.
The fourth horseman, high homocysteine (a consequence of a lack of B vitamins) is linked to all of the mental problems that are on the rise because it damages nerves and brain cells as well as arteries, the supply chain for the brain. If your homocysteine is high, which it is in half of those over 65, your memory is declining. Lowering it reduces brain shrinkage in those with pre-dementia by two thirds according to Oxford University research. GPs rarely test it.
Testing and lowering homocysteine is a key part of our prevention plan.
You can join our research and order a home test kit to measure blood levels of omega-3, homocysteine, HBA1c for sugar balance and vitamin D, lack of which is another contributor to dementia and depression. The charity aims to reach a million people in the largest ever ‘citizen science’ project and have tested 420,000 so far.
The idea that Alzheimer’s can be prevented is gaining support. The US National Institutes of Health have attributed 22% of the risk of Alzheimer’s to raised blood homocysteine and 22% to a lack of seafood and omega-3 fats.
A recent study using UK Biobank data concluded that up to 72% of dementia cases could be prevented if all risk factors were targeted. “Even this is probably under-estimating the power of prevention.” says Professor David Smith from the University of Oxford, one of the study authors. “The number of preventable cases could be higher if a person’s omega-3 and B vitamin status, measured by a blood test for homocysteine (not measured by the UK Biobank) were taken into account.” China’s leading prevention expert, Professor Jin-Tai Yu from Shanghai’s Fudan University, a co-author of this study, agrees. “Homocysteine-lowering treatment with vitamins, especially B12, is one of the most promising interventions for dementia prevention.”
“The same diet changes that reduce the risk for dementia also help everything from ADHD to depression,” says our founder Patrick Holford, author of Upgrade Your Brain, out today. He is visiting 30 cities in the UK and Ireland over the next month to kick start a nationwide ‘Upgrade Your Brain’ campaign. “We need to engage with millions of people, get nutrition education happening in school, and most of all get health authorities and governments around the world to take the mental health meltdown seriously and put brain health at the top of the health agenda.”
Professor Crawford says “Today’s diet bears no resemblance to the wild foods we ate during our species’ evolution to which our genome is adapted. As a consequence our brain size is shrinking. If we don’t prioritise brain health and nutrition, the continued escalation of mental ill health, starting in the 1950s, can only end in disaster.”
The group is launching Alzheimer’s Prevention Day on May 15th with a free 3-minute online Alzheimer’s Prevention Check to motivate people to make the eight brain-friendly diet and lifestyle changes (see below). “You are the architect of your own brain’s future health.” says neurologist Dr David Perlmutter, another member of the group.
Food for the Brain is a non-for-profit educational and research charity that offers a free Cognitive Function Test and assesses your Dementia Risk Index to be able to advise you on how to dementia-proof your diet and lifestyle.
By completing the Cognitive Function Test you are joining our grassroots research initiative to find out what really works for preventing cognitive decline. We share our ongoing research results with you to help you make brain-friendly choices. Please support our research by becoming a Friend of Food for the Brain.
To celebrate the launch of the Upgrade Your Brain Cookery Recipe App we want to give you a taste of all the brain-friendly recipes that are to come.
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At Food for the Brain, we know that the food you eat impacts your brain health so we want to help you eat the right things to reclaim and upgrade your brain. Also we want to make sure you are eating delicious things, too – our Nutritionist, head chef and recipe developer, Kim Close has been working hard to create delicious AND nutritious recipes!
The Upgrade Your Brain CookApp lets you choose your dietary preferences (e.g dairy-free, gluten-free, plant-based etc), then shows you the best recipes that are both delicious and nutritious. You can then choose recipes that are GL counted for weight loss or maintenance and score for brain fats, B vitamins and antioxidants.
Think of it as a recipe book in your pocket and as an added benefit, you will get NEW recipes each week so that you never get bored or feel uninspired.
Here is just a sample of what recipes you can expect:
Here are some main meal examples:
Grilled Salmon with Quinoa and Spinach Salad
Walnut-Crusted Chicken with Steamed Broccoli
Baked Cod with Tomato and Olive Tapenade
Lentil and Mushroom Stuffed Bell Peppers
Cauliflower Rice Stir-Fry with Shrimp and Mixed Vegetables
Baked Trout with Walnut and Herb Crust
Zucchini/Courgetti Noodles with Pesto and Cherry Tomatoes
Stuffed Aubergines with Ground Turkey and Pine Nuts
Spicy Salmon Burgers with Coleslaw and Sweet Potato Fries
Lemon and Herb Roasted Chicken with Asparagus
Plus many more
You can become one of our ‘angels’ but by pre ordering the app for just £30 a year so that you are the first to get access to it when it launches soon and you will get a FREE additional 3-months of membership as a thank you.
Turkey Chilli with Black Beans and Sweet Corn (serves 4)
Ingredients:
500g minced turkey
400g canned black beans, drained and rinsed
200g canned sweet corn, drained
1 large onion, diced
2 large handfuls of baby spinach, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
400g canned diced tomatoes
2 TBSP milled flaxseeds
1 tbsp chilli powder
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Fresh coriander, chopped, for garnish
200ml stock – veggie or chicken
Instructions:
Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic, and cook until softened.
Add the minced turkey to the pot and saute until browned, breaking it up with a wooden spoon as it cooks.
Stir in the chili powder and cumin and cook for another minute until fragrant.
Add the diced tomatoes, black beans, sweet corn, and water or chicken broth. Season with salt and pepper.
Bring to a simmer for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Stir in the milled flaxseed
Serve the chili garnished with fresh cilantro
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Zingy Chickpea Chaat Masala Salad (serves 6–8, feel free to halve)
Ingredients:
2 tins chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 medium ripe avocado, diced
1 medium cucumber, diced
2 medium-sized tomatoes, deseeded and diced
1 medium carrot, finely grated
1 red onion, finely chopped
A handful of fresh coriander/cilantro, chopped
Small handful of fresh mint, chopped
2 tablespoons flaxseed, ground
2 tablespoons chia seeds
60g walnuts, roughly chopped
Juice of 2 lemons
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon red chili powder (adjust to taste)
1/2 teaspoon black salt (or regular salt, to taste)
1 teaspoon chaat masala (you can also use garum masala)
4 tbsp pomegranate seeds for garnish
Instructions:
In a large bowl, combine the chickpeas, diced avocados, cucumber, tomatoes, carrot, red onion, cilantro, and mint.
Add the ground flaxseed, chia seeds, and chopped walnuts to the bowl. These ingredients are rich in omega-3 fatty acids and will add a nice crunch to your salad.
In a small bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, ground cumin, ground coriander, red chili powder, black salt, and chaat masala. Adjust the seasonings to your taste.
Pour the dressing over the salad and toss gently until everything is well coated with the dressing. The lemon juice not only adds flavour but also helps in keeping the avocados green.
Let the salad sit for about 10-15 minutes before serving, allowing the flavours to meld together.
Serve the salad in bowls, garnished with pomegranate seeds for a burst of colour and additional antioxidants.
Food for the Brain is a non-for-profit educational and research charity that offers a free Cognitive Function Test and assesses your Dementia Risk Index to be able to advise you on how to dementia-proof your diet and lifestyle.
By completing the Cognitive Function Test you are joining our grassroots research initiative to find out what really works for preventing cognitive decline. We share our ongoing research results with you to help you make brain-friendly choices. Please support our research by becoming a Friend of Food for the Brain.
At Food for the Brain, we take food seriously – from the soil to your Sunday lunch.
Quality matters, that is why we have two new developments to ensure your brain gets the right food on its plate. First, start with the soil…
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It begins with the soil…
This June we are delighted to invite Dan Kittredge, founder of the BioNutrient Institute, to teach you how to grow the most nutritious food for mind, body & spirit, in a hands-on two day workshop at Fforest Barn Retreat in the beautiful Black Mountains of Wales – 2.5 hours from London or Manchester.
Arrive on Tuesday 18th June for this two day workshop on 19th & 20th June. Whether you are an enthusiast, amateur or commercial gardener, grower or farmer, nobody knows more about what really makes plants optimise their nutrition than Dan Kittredge because he measures it.
This hands-on practical workshop provides an overview of six principles and practices of biological farming that increase the health of your soil and crops for greater yields, healthier produce and better marketability.
It all happens in that first six inches of soil, which we will learn how to turn into a hotbed of life. Thousands of growers have attended his courses since 2010.
The Upgrade Your Brain Cookery Recipe App is coming soon!
Nutritionist, chef and recipe developer, Kim Close and Fiona McDonald Joyce (nutritionist, cook and author) have been working away to create a delicious way to select the right recipes for your brain and body. Kim and Fiona firmly believe that food can, and should, always be delicious AND nutritious!
The Upgrade Your Brain CookApp lets you choose your dietary preferences (e.g dairy-free, gluten-free, plant-based etc), then shows you the best recipes that are both delicious and nutritious. You can then choose recipes that are GL counted for weight loss or maintenance and scored for brain fats, B vitamins and antioxidants.
There will be a wide selection of breakfasts, main meals, soups, salads, snacks and desserts.
New recipes will be added to the app weekly so you can continue to expand your repertoire. The recipes will include preparation and cooking tips, tricks and hacks.
Be the first to access this brand new app!
If you’d like to be one of the first to try our CookApp and the recipes, sign up now for just £30 a year.
Your year will run from the date it launches (June) – and we’ll give you 3 months free at the end of this date for helping us fund this vital CookApp to put Food for the Brain’s principles into action.
Please help us build this amazing, interactive, recipe library by signing up now. We need 200 ‘angels’ to do this, to fund and complete the development.
Thank you for reading!
Food for the Brain is a non-for-profit educational and research charity that offers a free Cognitive Function Test and assesses your Dementia Risk Index to be able to advise you on how to dementia-proof your diet and lifestyle.
By completing the Cognitive Function Test you are joining our grassroots research initiative to find out what really works for preventing cognitive decline. We share our ongoing research results with you to help you make brain-friendly choices. Please support our research by becoming a Friend of Food for the Brain.
Vitamin D: Your Brain’s Ally against Alzheimer’s and Dementia
Few people realise that vitamin D acts more like a brain fat than a vitamin – and your risk of cognitive decline can soar by up to 19 times if your levels are low. Often known as the sunshine vitamin, it is in fact a vital brain nutrient: helping neurons communicate, calming inflammation and defending against oxidative stress – all crucial for protecting memory, mood and long-term cognitive health. This highlights the important connection between vitamin D and dementia.
When vitamin D levels drop, the effects on the brain are striking.
Studies show that people with low vitamin D are far more likely to experience cognitive decline and dementia, while those with optimal levels have up to four times lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. In older adults, falling vitamin D often mirrors worsening memory – yet the simple act of supplementing can reduce risk by a third. (That is why we offer our DRIfT at-home blood tests so you can know your levels are optimal and protect your brain.)
Read on to discover why optimising your vitamin D intake – and measuring it alongside other key brain biomarkers – could be one of the most powerful steps you can take to future-proof your brain.
Vitamin D and Dementia
Low vitamin D levels are significantly linked to a higher risk of dementia and cognitive decline. [1,2,3] One notable study carried out in France highlights an astonishing finding: older women with vitamin D deficiency were approximately 19 times more likely to develop dementia within seven years compared to those without vitamin D deficiency. [4] This research backs up several previous studies, including one that tracked 1,658 elderly adults for over five and a half years [5], concluding:
“Vitamin D deficiency is associated with a substantially increased risk of all-cause dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.”
Vitamin D Study: Our New Research
With more than 50 million people around the world affected by dementia, a figure forecast to triple by 2050, [6]) research into prevention is something that Food for the Brain takes seriously. Our Research Team is currently undertaking an independent study, commissioned by Dr William Grant, led by Tommy Wood, Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, and supported by Simona Brucoli, data statistician. This research aims to contribute to the growing knowledge of the importance of Vitamin D in preserving brain health and staving off cognitive decline. More on this later in the year!
Understanding the Impact of Vitamin D on Overall Health
The impact of Vitamin D deficiency is a significant one, with links to not only dementia but also conditions such as osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, schizophrenia, psychosis, and autism [7], as well as behavioural problems in adolescents [8] and children with ADHD (9). Read more on how deficiency in Vitamin D impacts our overall health in our article here.
How to Sustain Optimal Vitamin D Levels
Of course, we can get vitamin D from our diet: oily fish, including salmon, mackerel, sardines, egg yolks, red meat, and liver, are all excellent sources. However, our bodies struggle to produce and maintain optimal vitamin D levels as we age, even with a good diet.
Our reliance on the sun, our natural provider of Vitamin D, is also compromised, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, as we begin to emerge from the long winter months and not, as yet, fully into the bright embrace of summer. It’s no wonder that our bodies are left vulnerable to notable decreases in vitamin D.
What Exactly is Vitamin D Deficiency?
Deficiency is defined as serum 25(OH)D concentrations of less than 50 nmol/L. Our vitamin D expert, Dr William Grant, says:
“All the evidence regarding cardio-metabolic diseases, cancer, diabetes, infectious diseases, and pregnancy outcomes shows that you need a blood level of vitamin D above 75 nmol/L to be healthy, and the same is proving true for the brain.”
This optimal level is impossible to achieve without supplementation in the winter. I recommend every adult and teenager supplements themselves with at least 1000 to 3000iu per day from October to March in line with a recent review by 35 vitamin D researchers. [10] The degree of obesity [11], darker skin colour [12] and living further North [13] increases need.
Supplementation: a Shield Against Risk?
According to recent research, turning to vitamin D supplements could reduce the risk of dementia. Researchers at the University of Calgary’s Hotchkiss Brain Institute in Canada and the University of Exeter in the UK explored the relationship between vitamin D supplementation and dementia in 12,388 participants with a mean age of 71. They were dementia-free when they signed up. Of the group, 37 percent (4,637) took vitamin D supplements. In the study, the team found that taking vitamin D was associated with living dementia-free for longer, and they also found 40 percent fewer dementia diagnoses in the group who took supplements. [10]
But How Do You Know if You’re Getting Enough Vitamin D?
The answer lies in taking a proactive step: testing your vitamin D levels.
Here at Food for the Brain, we don’t believe in guesswork. We champion the idea that we are all the architects of our own brain health and well-being. In the spirit of Citizen Scientists, we offer our accurate at-home blood tests so you can feel confident that you are protecting your mood, memory and future. Order your blood test here – available globally.
Awareness is the first step toward meaningful change. Discovering your vitamin D level is more than just informative; it’s a critical step toward optimising your cognitive and physical health.
Take Action: Protect and Future-Proof Your Brain
Share the knowledge.
Encourage your family and friends to check their brain health and vitamin D levels too – prevention starts with awareness.
Check your brain health for free.
Take our quick, scientifically validated Cognitive Function Test to see how your brain is performing right now. It’s free, is validated and gives you a personalised Dementia Risk Index and tailored advice.
Know your vitamin D and brain biomarker status.
Order our DRIfT 5-in-1 at-home blood test to measure the five key markers that matter most — Vitamin D, Homocysteine, HbA1c, Glutathione and Omega-3. Your results come with clear guidance on how to optimise each one.
Boost your vitamin D naturally.
Spend 15–20 minutes outdoors daily if you are in summer or live near the equator (without sunscreen on arms or legs, when the sun is high). Avoid peak sun times.
Eat oily fish twice a week – salmon, mackerel, sardines or trout.
Add egg yolks, mushrooms, and fortified dairy alternatives to your meals.
Supplement between 1,000–3,000 iu daily from October to March (and year-round if you have darker skin or live in northern latitudes). Find out more about supplementshere
Thank you for reading!
Food for the Brain is a non-for-profit educational and research charity that offers a free Cognitive Function Test and assesses your Dementia Risk Index to be able to advise you on how to dementia-proof your diet and lifestyle.
By completing the Cognitive Function Test you are joining our grassroots research initiative to find out what really works for preventing cognitive decline. We share our ongoing research results with you to help you make brain-friendly choices. Please support our research by becoming a Friend of Food for the Brain.
References
Jayedi A, Rashidy-Pour A, Shab-Bidar S. Vitamin D status and risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease: A dose-response meta-analysis. Nutr Neurosci. 2019 Nov;22(11):750-9. doi: 10.1080/1028415X.2018.1436639.
Chai B, Gao F, Wu R, Dong T, Gu C, Lin Q, et al. Vitamin D deficiency as a risk factor for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease: an updated meta-analysis. BMC Neurol. 2019 Nov 13;19(1):284. doi: 10.1186/s12883-019-1500-6.
Melo van Lent D, Egert S, Wolfsgruber S, Kleineidam L, Weinhold L, Wagner-Thelen H, et al. Low Serum Vitamin D Status Is Associated with Incident Alzheimer’s Dementia in the Oldest Old. Nutrients. 2023;15(1):61. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15010061
Annweiler C, Rolland Y, Schott AM, Blain H, Vellas B, Beauchet O. Serum vitamin D deficiency as a predictor of incident non-Alzheimer dementias: a 7-year longitudinal study. Dement Geriatr Cogn Disord. 2011;32(4):273-8. doi: 10.1159/000334944.
Littlejohns TJ, Henley WE, Lang IA, Annweiler C, Beauchet O, Chaves PH, et al. Vitamin D and the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Neurology. 2014 Sep 2;83(10):920-8. doi: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000000755.
Gauthier S, Rosa-Neto P, Morais JA, Webster C. World Alzheimer Report 2021: Journey Through the Diagnosis of Dementia. Alzheimer’s Disease International; 2021.
Anjum I, Jaffery SS, Fayyaz M, Samoo Z, Anjum S. The Role of Vitamin D in Brain Health: A Mini Literature Review. Cureus. 2018 Jul 10;10(7):e2960. doi: 10.7759/cureus.2960.
Robinson SL, Marín C, Oliveros H, Mora-Plazas M, Lozoff B, Villamor E. Vitamin D Deficiency in Middle Childhood Is Related to Behavior Problems in Adolescence. J Nutr. 2020;150(1):140-8. https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/nxz185.
Hemamy M, Pahlavani N, Amanollahi A, Islam SMS, McVicar J, Askari G, et al. The effect of vitamin D and magnesium supplementation on the mental health status of attention-deficit hyperactive children: a randomized controlled trial. BMC Pediatr. 2021 Apr 17;21(1):178. doi: 10.1186/s12887-021-02631-1.
Ghahremani M, Smith EE, Chen HY, Creese B, Goodarzi Z, Ismail Z. Vitamin D supplementation and incident dementia: Effects of sex, APOE, and baseline cognitive status. Alzheimers Dement (Amst). 2023 Mar 1;15(1):e12404. doi: 10.1002/dad2.12404. PMID: 36874594; PMCID: PMC9976297.
Ekwaru JP et al The importance of body weight for the dose response relationship of oral vitamin D supplementation and serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D in healthy volunteers. PLoS One. 2014 Nov 5;9(11):e111265. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0111265. PMID: 25372709; PMCID: PMC4220998.
Ames BN, Grant WB, Willett WC. Does the High Prevalence of Vitamin D Deficiency in African Americans Contribute to Health Disparities? Nutrients. 2021 Feb 3;13(2):499. doi: 10.3390/nu13020499. PMID: 33546262; PMCID: PMC7913332.
Engelsen O. The relationship between ultraviolet radiation exposure and vitamin D status. Nutrients. 2010 May;2(5):482-95. doi: 10.3390/nu2050482. Epub 2010 May 4. PMID: 22254036; PMCID: PMC3257661.
Tau is a structural protein that helps build the skeleton, much like pipes, through which nutrients and nerve signals are delivered to different parts of the brain. Our brains contain a balance of tau protein and phosphorylated-tau, abbreviated to p-tau. An abnormal accumulation of p-tau makes these tubular channels tangled and dysfunctional and triggers brain-cell death.1
Too much p-tau also messes up the mitochondria, the cells’ energy factories, potentially leading to brain fatigue. The more p-tau accumulates, the greater the risk of cognitive problems and Alzheimer’s dementia. Also, those with memory decline have been shown to have relatively more p-tau to tau protein.
The next target for dementia drugs is reducing p-tau. Consequently, drugs are being developed and tested that block the kinase enzyme and activate the phosphatase enzyme,2 which is exactly what the homocysteine-lowering B vitamins do. But so far, there are no human clinical trials reporting significant benefit.
The critical prevention question is what stops too much of the tau protein from turning into the potentially harmful p-tau in the first place and what helps restore p-tau to normal tau protein.
The answer is remarkably simple – a lack of B vitamins raises the blood levels of homocysteine, which activates an enzyme, Cdk5 kinase, which adds the bad ‘p’ to tau and blocks another enzyme, protein phosphatase A2, which removes the dangerous ‘p’.3,4 High homocysteine levels also damage the tiny blood vessels in the brain, leading to ‘mini strokes’ or transient ischemic attacks (TIAs), which further raise the levels of p-tau. Homocysteine not only raises the levels of the dangerous p-tau,5 but can also bind to tau,6 further generating the neurofibrillary tangles that then trigger brain-cell death.
So, the simplest way to stop the formation of p-tau, and neurofibrillary tangles, and keep your brain healthy, is to keep your plasma homocysteine level below 10mcmol/l. Half of those above 65 have a homocysteine level higher than this.
By now you’re surely wondering why, if these natural approaches are at least as good, if not better, than drug treatments, and without adverse effects, why this isn’t common knowledge and common practice, especially if the cost is a fraction of the drug treatments. For example, supplementing B vitamins and omega-3 fish oils might cost you £100 a year while anti-amyloid drugs are pitched at around £20,000 a year.
I’m convinced that it is exactly this last point that explains the anomaly. Naturally occurring nutrients cannot be patented; only a man-made invention, such as a drug, can be. Holding a patent means only the company making that product can sell it, and they can determine the price. The price of a drug will include a hefty margin for marketing the drug and creating all the hype to get you, the media and the medical profession to buy into it. Once the patent expires, the price plummets. The price of a leading branded statin dropped by 93 per cent, from close to £30 down to just over £2 a month,7 That’s a lot of margin for marketing. By then, the manufacturers are on to the next ‘new’ patented drug. Up to 2022 $45 billion8 has been spent so far developing the latest ineffective dementia drugs, but the real cost, including the most recent trials and marketing, could be double this. That’s a lot of money to recoup. The first stage is to develop a test that convinces you and your doctor that you ‘need’ the drug. That’s what these tests in the £10 million trial are all about. If you test high, instead of taking an ineffective drug why not do prevention? That’s what the free Cognitive Function Test at foodforthebrain.org is all about.
Extract, used with permission, from Patrick Holford’s Upgrade Your Brain (Thorsons 2024)
2. Xia, Y., Prokop, S. & Giasson, B.I. “Don’t Phos Over Tau”: recent developments in clinical biomarkers and therapies targeting tau phosphorylation in Alzheimer’s disease and other tauopathies. Mol Neurodegeneration16, 37 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13024-021-00460-5.
3. Smith AD, Refsum H. Homocysteine, B Vitamins, and Cognitive Impairment. Annu Rev Nutr. 2016 Jul 17;36:211-39. doi: 10.1146/annurev-nutr-071715-050947. PMID: 27431367.
4. LiJ-G,ChuJ,BarreroC,MeraliS,Pratico`D.2014.Homocysteine exacerbatesβ-amyloid, tau pathology, and cognitive deficit in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease with plaques and tangles. Ann. Neurol. 75:851–63.
5. Shirafuji N et al Homocysteine Increases Tau Phosphorylation, Truncation and Oligomerization. Int J Mol Sci. 2018 Mar 17;19(3):891. doi: 10.3390/ijms19030891. PMID: 29562600; PMCID: PMC5877752.
6. Bossenmeyer-Pourié C et al. N-homocysteinylation of tau and MAP1 is increased in autopsy specimens of Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia. J Pathol. 2019 Jul;248(3):291-303. doi: 10.1002/path.5254. Epub 2019 Mar 19. PMID: 307349
We often get asked if supplements are necessary, usually in relation to some expert or opinion leader saying they are a waste of money or have no evidence of effect.
Anyone actively discouraging supplementation of vitamin B, C, D or omega-3, or claiming there is no scientific evidence to support their use, are both scientifically inaccurate and, perhaps inadvertently, driving more people towards dementia and Alzheimer’s by increasing their risk of cognitive decline.
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Here is why
B vitamin supplements – Two in five people over 60 in the UK and more than half in the US have raised homocysteine levels and accelerated brain shrinkage as a result and need to supplement high dose B12 (500mcg) to reduce the rate of brain shrinkage. This may be due to poor absorption and is not achievable by diet alone. Find out more about this here.
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Omega-3 fish oil supplements – Those with higher omega-3 intake, both from food and supplements, have substantially reduced risk from UK BioBank data. Those with higher omega-3 index levels, which we test at Food for the Brain, have more brain mass, and even healthy, young people supplementing omega-3 have cognitive improvements. You can see the published scientific evidence for this here.
Vitamin D supplements– Those who have higher vitamin D levels or supplement vitamin D also have substantially reduced risk of cognitive decline. Find out more here but also we’ll be publishing a full report on vitamin D and dementia in the next two weeks.
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Vitamin C and E supplements – according to the most comprehensive review of studies relating to Alzheimer’s prevention ‘‘either a high vitamin E or C intake showed a trend of attenuating risk by about 26 per cent’, making these nutrients ‘grade 1’ top level prevention’. Inadequate vitamin C status in otherwise healthy young adults is related to a low level of mental vitality. In a randomised controlled trial vitamin C supplementation effectively increased work motivation and attentional focus and contributed to better performance on cognitive tasks requiring sustained attention. These brain-friendly effects of vitamin C relate to the supplementation of 1 gram or more a day. See the scientific aevidence for antioxidants here.
In addition to exploring the links to the evidence above, these articles further explain the role of B vitamins, Omega-3, Vitamin D, Vitamin C, E and other antioxidants.
At Food for the Brain, where prevention is better than cure, we report the science, based on the research, which tells us the opposite.
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Thank you for reading!
Food for the Brain is a non-for-profit educational and research charity that offers a free Cognitive Function Test and assesses your Dementia Risk Index to be able to advise you on how to dementia-proof your diet and lifestyle.
By completing the Cognitive Function Test you are joining our grassroots research initiative to find out what really works for preventing cognitive decline. We share our ongoing research results with you to help you make brain-friendly choices. Please support our research by becoming a Friend of Food for the Brain.
So if you want to learn the 8 steps to optimise your brain for better mood, memory, sleep and stress resilience and dementia proof your diet and lifestyle then here is a free sample of the book, written by our CEO & founder Patrick Holford.
The book is released on April 25th 2024.
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Upgrade Your Brain Book – FREE Sample (Book extract, to be released on 15th April 2024)
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Introduction
Do you often feel gelatinously exhausted? Enthusiastically negative? Do you spend your days feeling tired and wired? Your evenings with a drink in hand? Your nights restlessly searching for sleep? Do you wake up anxious and stressed and in need of a coffee to get going? Do you forget what you were doing, forget people’s names, forget where you put things?
In 2010, I did a survey of over 55,000 people who had completed my online ‘100% Health Check’ at patrickholford.com.
These are the results:
82 per cent become impatient quickly
81 per cent have low energy level
76 per cent have less energy than they used to
67 per cent feel they have too much to do
66 per cent become anxious or tense easily
63 per cent need more than eight hours sleep
63 per cent have PMS/PMT (women only)
55 per cent easily become angry
48 per cent suffer from depression
47 per cent have difficulty concentrating or easily become confused
39 per cent have poor memory or difficulty learning
39 per cent feel generally nervous or hyperactive
Does this sound like anyone you know?
Something depressing is happening to humanity, and possibly you. The very thing that makes us human, that is our brain and intelligence, is in rapid decline.
We are fundamentally different from chimpanzees, with a brain size of under 0.4kg, despite sharing 98.5 per cent of the same genes, precisely because of our intelligence, directly reflected in our larger brain size. This gradual increase in brain size, driven by a brain-friendly diet, not genes, over 6 million years, is the unique hallmark of Homo sapiens. But both brain size and intelligence are decreasing – in the case of IQ, by an estimated 7 per cent a generation! Our average brain size, which peaked at 1.6 to 1.7kg 30,000 years ago, is now averaging less than 1.35kg. That means we’ve literally lost 20 per cent of our brain in the last 30,000 years and the signs are that this brain degeneration is speeding up.
This parallels a worrying increase in mental illness across the world. Diagnoses of anxiety, depression, dementia, ADHD and autism are all increasing at an alarming rate. One in six children are classified as ‘neurodivergent’, with autism rates alone seeing a four- fold increase in 20 years, while one in four over 80 have mild cogni- tive impairment (MCI), sometimes called pre-dementia. Even more worrying is the evidence of brain shrinkage in adolescents and memory decline in those in their thirties. It is the greatest health threat we face, according to the World Health Organization.
Indeed, this is a global phenomenon that is accelerating at an alarming scale. Depression is the leading cause of disability, and in the UK alone, one in six adults were prescribed anti-depressants last year. Yesterday, again in the UK, more than nine double-decker buses worth – about 800 – people were diagnosed with dementia. What on Earth is going wrong and what can we do about it?
‘We are heading for an idiocracy,’ says Professor Michael Crawford, director of the Institute of Brain Chemistry, whose research at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital can predict which pregnant women are going to have pre-term babies with a higher risk of developmental problems. If nothing changes, by 2080 half of all children are likely to have a degree of neurodevelopmental impairment.
It is scary stuff, because our humanity is in decline, which can be seen manifesting in hate speech, extremism, mass shootings and suicides, which have become, globally, a greater killer than all wars and murders combined. Clearly, modern man, Homo sapiens, is neither wise nor happy. We are literally losing our higher brain intelligence – emotional control, sense of connection, sharp cognition, purpose and innate happiness. Yet intelligence is something we need more of, not less, as we face the challenges of over-population, climate change and pollution. We need to work together in an intelligent fashion, not stagger from war to war, depleting finite resources.
This is not just my opinion, but the opinion of a worldwide group of scientists, most eminent professors and experts in their field, whose interviews in this book are key to unravelling why our mental health is in decline, and what we can do to reverse this trend.
Fortunately, there are things we can do, individually and collectively, to reclaim our brains – to upgrade them.
Your brain upgrade may be experienced as a rapid improvement in your mood, as Gabrielle, a former depressive, found. ‘I’ve been trying to feel like this for 25 years – I’m over the moon!’ she said. Or a reduction in stress, as retail manager Andrew reported: ‘‘My energy is through the roof, I don’t feel stressed and I have no problem sleeping.’ Or regaining the ability to think straight, as Stephanie, a lawyer, related: ‘After a week, the brain fog and tiredness were significantly better.’ Or even the reversal of serious mental illness, as Liz, a former schizophrenic, found: ‘I’ve been fine.’ You’ll hear their stories, and what made the difference, in Parts 2 and 3. They are all ordinary people, like you or me, whose lives were made unbearable by changes in brain function, and put back together again by taking steps to regain brain health.
My interest in this field started back in the 1970s, when I became fascinated by the human condition. As a teenager, I read Jung and Freud and thought psychotherapy might be my career path. I went to university to study it and became fascinated by the brain, how it works and what goes wrong with it. I have been studying intelligence and mental illness ever since.
In the 1980s, I founded the Institute for Optimum Nutrition (ION) with Professor Derek Bryce-Smith, the UK chemist who campaigned to get lead out of petrol because it was lowering children’s IQ, and twice Nobel Prize winner Dr Linus Pauling as patrons. This has since trained several thousand nutritional therapists in what is now a degree-accredited profession.
In 1968, Dr Linus Pauling, together with Dr Abram Hoffer, wrote, in a seminal paper in Science journal, that ‘The provision for the individual person of the optimum concentrations of important normal constituents (nutrients) of the brain may be the preferred treatment for many mentally ill patients.’ He coined the phrase ‘orthomolecular psychiatry’. I call this approach ‘optimum nutrition’ and others call it ‘functional medicine’. Dr Pauling spent the last 38 years of his life researching vitamin C and its effects on mental health, addiction, viral infection, cancer and heart disease, and putting nutrition centre-stage in healthcare. If only he and others had been taken seriously, then we might not be facing this terrible cerebral tsunami. ‘Brain health conditions have become a global health emergency,’ said the Federation of European Neuro- science Societies last year.
Back in 1985, when I was supervising one of my first students, Gwillym Roberts, the headmaster of a secondary school, we wondered if giving an optimal intake of vitamins and minerals might improve IQ. We designed a study and enrolled a sceptic, Professor David Benton from the University of Swansea, to run the trial and also invited the BBC documentary series Horizon to film it. Thirty children in Gwillym Roberts’s school were given a multivitamin and mineral, thirty a dummy placebo pill and thirty nothing at all. The study found that non-verbal IQ increased by 7 per cent (roughly the average decline per generation, according to Scandinavian researchers; more on this in Chapter 3) in the children taking the multivitamin and mineral. As well as being the subject of a Horizon documentary, this study was published in the Lancet, and hit the headlines of national newspapers, firing up interest in nutrition and mental health. If we had known then what we know now, I am sure even these positive improvements could have been enhanced.
In the 1990s, I set up the Brain Bio Centre in London, at the Institute for Optimum Nutrition, to treat people suffering from a wide variety of mental health concerns.
Across these past 40 years, I’ve had the chance to study under the leading lights in mental health, from the late Dr Abram Hoffer, the Director of Psychiatric Research in Canada who successfully treated over 6,000 schizophrenic patients, to David Smith, Emeritus Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford, and Helga Refsum, Professor of Nutrition at the University of Oslo, whose impeccable studies of nutritional treatment have shown up to 73 per cent reduction in shrinkage of the Alzheimer’s areas of the brain in a year, compared to placebo, and effectively no further memory loss in people with pre-Alzheimer’s, which is leagues ahead of any anti-amyloid drug treatments.
You’ll meet many other world-class experts in other fields that impact the brain health, such as Dr Robert Lustig, Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology and a member of the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco, who has unravelled how junk and ultra-processed food, clever marketing and tech have got us hooked on their products by manipulating the brain’s antiquated ‘reward system’, with the insidious downside of a spiral into depression and anxiety and hopelessness; also, Associate Professor Tommy Wood at the University of Washington, who’s an expert on how to ‘exercise’ your brain for more power. I’ve interviewed many more, such as Associate Professor David Vazour, expert on the gut-microbiome–brain super- highway; Dr Simon Dyall and Professor Michael Crawford, experts on omega-3 and the importance of the right brain fats; Professor Jeremy Spencer, who knows the foods, high in polyphenols, that help the brain to work; also, Professor Stephen Cunnane, an expert on ‘ketotherapeutics’ – how ketones, made from fat, can be used for a brain energy boost. These, and other leading lights, are part of our Scientific Advisory Board at the charitable Food for the Brain Foundation, which I founded in 2006.
Each of these highly intelligent, focused, pioneering professors has a piece of why our brain function and mental health are in sharp decline, and a piece of the solution. This book is about putting those pieces together until it becomes obvious what you need to do to upgrade your brain and become part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Psychologists, often unaware of the driving force of nutrition in brain health, may tell you mental health issues are all down to psychological factors, and psychiatrists may extol the virtues of the latest anti-depressant drug or sleeping pill, while sociologists may say it’s all to do with the pressures that ensue from the digital and industrial age we live in, but clearly this global decline in mental health is not happening because of a breakdown in social connection or a lack of drugs, and although you will see how the combination of junk food, junk media and tech addiction are contributing to a general dumbing down, that’s not the whole story either.
In this book you will discover what has created the perfect storm that is hitting the brain right now:
In Part 1 you’ll discover why this brain drain is happening – and why you’re not being told the whole truth.
In Part 2 you’ll learn the eight steps you need to take to upgrade your brain and restore full brain function.
In Part 3 there are specific ‘action’ chapters that will help you improve your mood, end anxiety and insomnia, build stress resilience, break free from addiction, sharpen your mind and memory, and ultimately reconnect to your sense of meaning and purpose.
There’s also a chapter on how to maximise your child’s attention, focus, creativity, intelligence and potential. If you want to jump to these chapters and get started, please do, but do take the time to read the eight steps, as these apply to all, and because that will also motivate you to make the necessary changes to your diet and lifestyle.
Finally, in Part 4, I show you how to go from victim to change agent – to not only change yourself, but also help support the paradigm shift that has to happen, putting nutrition for the brain at the top of the health agenda and finding a healthy way to live in this fast-changing digital age.
With all we know now, it is not only possible to prevent cognitive decline, but to enhance brain function, intelligence, memory, concentration and mood. Take heart.
Wishing you the best of health and happiness, Patrick Holford
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Thank you for reading!
Food for the Brain is a non-for-profit educational and research charity that offers a free Cognitive Function Test and assesses your Dementia Risk Index to be able to advise you on how to dementia-proof your diet and lifestyle.
By completing the Cognitive Function Test you are joining our grassroots research initiative to find out what really works for preventing cognitive decline. We share our ongoing research results with you to help you make brain-friendly choices. Please support our research by becoming a Friend of Food for the Brain.
Easter is meant to follow on from Lent – 40 days of fasting. There lies the problem.
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‘We’ are the product of natural selection – survival of the fattest.
Those of us who can readily store carbs as fat through periods of famine have survived and become dominant. Now, there are no periods of famine, no ‘lent’ up, it’s just carbs all the way.
With one in six over 40 diabetic, the question is, are you heading in that direction?
Even raised glucose, but within the ‘normal’ range, in mid life increases Alzheimer’s risk by 14.5%.
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Why not find out?
We have a simple pinprick blood test to help you do just that. It measures the percentage of your red blood cells that are sugar-damaged or ‘glycosylated’. It’s called glycosylated haemoglobin, or HbA1c. This simple pinprick blood test is, in effect, measuring the total blood sugar spikes you experienced over the past three months (red blood cells, called haemoglobin, live for three months).
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What should you be aiming for?
Ideally, it should be 5% (31mmol/mol) or less. That’s healthy.
Above 5.4% (36) and in studies you can already pick up brain shrinkage and cognitive decline.
Above 6% (42) is considered pre-diabetic.
6.5% (48) or higher is considered diabetic.
For both brain and body health you certainly want it to be below 5.4%
(It’s measured slightly differently in the UK, in mmol/mol, which is the number shown in brackets.)
A recent study in Denmark of 20,000 people in their 60’s, published in the British Medical Journal [1], found that one in nine with an HbA1c of 6-6.1% developed diabetes in the next three years and one in five in the next five years. One in ten died.
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How to lower your score?
It is easy to lower, if you need to. But first, you need to know where you are starting from. Then you can retest three months later and find out if what you’ve done has worked.
But first, we suggest you measure your baseline HbA1c.
It’s more predictive of your blood sugar control than just your weight or waist circumference. In fact, it is the single most important measure of your glucose balance ‘resilience’ which is why it’s one of the four ‘essentials’ in our DRIfT test – the others being vitamin D, omega-3 and homocysteine (B vitamins).
We want to wish you a Healthy Easter by giving you £10 off your HBA1c test when you buy before Easter.
So that’s £39.95, not £49.95.
Also, if you book a repeat test in 3 months, which is how long it takes to ‘renew’ all your red blood cells, hopefully no longer sugar-coated, you’ll save a further 6%, bringing the cost down to £37.55, saving you £12.40 now and in 3 months time. That’s £24.80 in total. This offer ends on April 10th 2024.
Use the coupon code: easter at check out to save
(Discount applies to the HBa1c test only.)
Remember every test kit you order will not only help you upgrade your brain it will also help us in our vital research – you will become a part of our ‘Citizen Science’ team and be donating to our wider charitable work and research.
Thank you!
Thank you for reading!
Food for the Brain is a non-for-profit educational and research charity that offers a free Cognitive Function Test and assesses your Dementia Risk Index to be able to advise you on how to dementia-proof your diet and lifestyle.
By completing the Cognitive Function Test you are joining our grassroots research initiative to find out what really works for preventing cognitive decline. We share our ongoing research results with you to help you make brain-friendly choices. Please support our research by becoming a Friend of Food for the Brain.
In 2000 I wrote a book, The H Factor, with a byline ‘the biggest health breakthrough of the century’. It was the year 2000 so there wasn’t so much competition! However, it is now 2024 and this statement is even more true now than then.
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Your blood homocysteine level predicts your risk for over 100 diseases.
No other blood biomarker does this.
Not glucose, not cholesterol, not even a gene test.
“The commonest associations are with cardiovascular diseases and diseases of the central nervous system (eg. your brain and nerves), but a large number of developmental and age-related conditions are also associated.” Says Professor Helga Refsum who, more than any other, put homocysteine on the map.
Those conditions that affect the brain include age-related cognitive decline to Alzheimer’s; depression to anxiety; bipolar to schizophrenia; and migraines to macular degeneration. Macular degeneration affects the eyes, not the brain but the eyes are the outwards extension of the brain – literally the visual interface between the world and your brain. Hearing loss is another disease predicted by raised blood (plasma) homocysteine. Then there are strokes affecting the blood’s circulation in your brain. Children with autism have higher levels. It also predicts problems in pregnancy. (Read more about this here)
“Five diseases can at least in part be prevented by lowering total homocysteine: neural tube defects, impaired childhood cognition, macular degeneration, primary stroke, and cognitive impairment (which means dementia and Alzheimer’s) in the elderly,” conservatively conclude Professors Refsum and David Smith, our ‘homocysteine and B vitamin’ expert on our Scientific Advisory Board.
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The brain health imperative…
Two studies illustrate the predictive power of homocysteine; one showed that 2/3rd of heart attacks and strokes in older people could be predicted, not by cholesterol, but by homocysteine (1). The other is that you can predict a child’s school grades by knowing their homocysteine level, according to a study in a Swedish school, averaging a child’s school grades and comparing them to both homocysteine and B vitamin status (2).
But there are two other reasons why knowing your homocysteine level is a brain health imperative.
The first is that you can’t ‘see’ it or predict it just by knowing a person’s diet or lifestyle.
The second is that it is easily lowered with B vitamins.
More important than your APOE4 status
A lot of people want to know if they have the ApoE4 gene. Statistically, it increases your risk of developing Alzheimer’s by about 5 per cent. While you can mitigate its effects by improving your diet and lifestyle you can’t change the fact that you’ve got it.
The extent to which a raised homocysteine level (above 11mcmol/l) increases your risk of cognitive decline is illustrated by two studies. One shows that having a high level raises risk by 10 times (3). Another shows double the rate of brain shrinkage between those in the top quarter of homocysteine versus the bottom quarter (4). Different studies show different ‘predictive power’ but it is certainly more important than your ApoE4 status.
The other reason it is important to know your level is illustrated by the story of a mother and daughter who attended one of my lectures. Hearing about the strong link to strokes, which the mother had had, the daughter said “Mum, I really think you should have the test.” In fact they both did. The mother’s result was a healthy 6 mcmol/l while the daughter’s was extremely raised, above 20 mcmol/l. She had chronic fatigue. A month later, having taken a homocysteine-lowering supplement, her level was normal – and her chronic fatigue had gone.
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Homocysteine is not just about what you eat
So, you can’t just assume your level is OK.
In fact, about half of those over 65 (my age) have a raised homocysteine level. Why? This is not an easy answer because there are many ‘lifestyle’ associations – from smoking to stress. Vegans who don’t supplement vitamin B12 would also be at risk. Since vitamin B6, folate and B12 are key to lowering homocysteine one’s intake of these nutrients, eg. from foods such as greens, beans and fish, is also very relevant but…it isn’t just a dietary marker.
The big unknown is that some people, especially as they age, absorb vitamin B12 poorly. This requires stomach secretions. Some people inherit this deficit and are diagnosed with pernicious anaemia, others acquire it with age. Either way, the net result is only ‘clinically’ shown by measuring homocysteine.
Homocysteine is called a ‘functional’ test because it indicates whether or not a person can do ‘methylation’. Methylation is a vital second-by-second chemical balancing act that the body and brain use to micro-adjust everything from making insulin, serotonin, and adrenalin or turning gene expression up or down, to repairing DNA and detoxifying all sorts of things in the liver, from histamine to mercury. Knowing your B12, folate or B6 status isn’t as good as knowing if you are or aren’t a healthy ‘methylator’. Homocysteine is the gold standard test for this.
An analogy here is a single-pin prick glucose test will only show you if, in that moment, your blood sugar level is too high. However, HbA1c (glycosylated haemoglobin) shows you both whether your blood sugar levels are damaging cells and gives you an ‘average’ of 3 month’s worth of glucose levels. Thus, we also call HbA1c a ‘functional’ test.
Knowing your levels of these is so important which is why we have created DRIfT (Dementia Risk Index functional Test) so that you know exactly where you are at and how to reduce your risk of not just dementia but over 100 other diseases.
This is one of the most important brain health tests you can do (and thankfully due to new technology you can do it accurately and easily with a simple pinprick at-home test)
Buy the DRIfT 4 in 1 test to check your homocysteine, Vitamin D, HbA1c (sugar) and Omega-3 status and for the biggest savings.
Remember every test kit you order will not only help you upgrade your brain it will also help us in our vital research – you will become a part of our ‘Citizen Science’ team and be donating to our wider charitable work and research. Thank you!
Thank you for reading!
Food for the Brain is a non-for-profit educational and research charity that offers a free Cognitive Function Test and assesses your Dementia Risk Index to be able to advise you on how to dementia-proof your diet and lifestyle.
By completing the Cognitive Function Test you are joining our grassroots research initiative to find out what really works for preventing cognitive decline. We share our ongoing research results with you to help you make brain-friendly choices. Please support our research by becoming a Friend of Food for the Brain.
1 W. de Ruijter, et al., ‘Use of Framingham risk score and new biomarkers to predict cardiovascular mortality in older people: Population based observational cohort study’, British Medical Journal, 2009 Jan;338:a3083
2 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21746721/
3 10.3389/fnagi.2022.868777
4 Smith AD, Smith SM, de Jager CA, Whitbread P, Johnston C, Agacinski G, Oulhaj A, Bradley KM, Jacoby R, Refsum H. Homocysteine-lowering by B vitamins slows the rate of accelerated brain atrophy in mild cognitive impairment: a randomized controlled trial. PLoS One. 2010 Sep 8;5(9):e12244. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0012244. PMID: 20838622; PMCID: PMC2935890.
Parkinson’s affects 120,000 people in the UK, both young and old.
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Parkinson’s affects 120,000 people in the UK, both young and old.
A recent review from the NCBI in the US (1) on Parkinson’s disease begins with the following:
‘Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disease for which there is no treatment modifying the course of the disorder and no reliable biomarkers for early diagnosis. (2) In just 26 years, the number of PD patients around the world has more than doubled. (3) A relatively conservative prediction model shows that it is expected that there will be 12 million PD patients in the world by 2050.’
Thus, early detection and timely intervention of PD appear to be particularly important.
Thanks to the pioneering work of Dr Geoffrey Leader and Lucille Leader, a doctor and nutritionist living in London, we now know that the right nutritional intervention can effectively support the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
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Parkinson’s and Dopamine
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter (chemical messenger) found within the brain. It has a variety of influences on brain function including playing a role in regulation. (Fig 1) [4]
Figure 1
There is little doubt that dopamine deficiency is the major cause of the symptoms of Parkinson’s, and most drug therapy aims to improve the body’s ability to make dopamine from L-dopa. But, why do some people develop this impaired ability to make this key neurotransmitter?
There are many answers to this question.
In some cases the neurons that produce dopamine don’t work properly, sometimes because they lack the raw materials, or the enzymes that turn on the building blocks, amino acids. (Amino acids are commonly known as the building blocks of protein. There are 20 standard amino acids from which almost all proteins are made.) The neurons can die off or be damaged, for example by oxidants, or by environmental toxins such as pesticides and herbicides.
Interestingly, researchers at the University of Miami have found levels of these chemicals to be higher in the brains of Parkinson’s sufferers.[5] The incidence of Parkinson’s is notably higher in rural areas where a lot of crop spraying takes place, and some pesticide combinations have shown a clear geographical correlation with incidences of the disease.[6,7]
Deficiency of nutrients such as folate which is critical during pregnancy for the development of a baby’s brain and nerves and also essential for brain and nerve function, play a part, making these dopamine-producing brain cells more susceptible to damage.[8]
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The Homocysteine Connection
The balance of neurotransmitters, including dopamine, is controlled to a large extent by the process of methylation. (Methylation is what occurs when the body takes one substance and turns it into another, so that it can be detoxified and excreted from the liver.)
Most people with Parkinson’s have raised homocysteine levels. [9] Homocysteine is an amino acid found in the blood. Elevated levels of homocysteine have been associated with narrowing and hardening of the arteries and an increased level indicates disrupted methylation patterns. The latest review [10] states that “Homocysteine is linked with the occurrence and progression of Parkinson’s. This review briefly discussed the structure of Hcy, the metabolism of Hcy, and the mechanism of HHcy in PD. There are many disputes about the relationship between HHcy and PD which remain to be investigated. It also remains to be examined whether homocysteine is a causative agent or marker of damage.” Additionally,treatment with L-dopa medication tends to raise homocysteine levels.[11]
Either way, testing for homocysteine and supplementing homocysteine-lowering nutrients accordingly would be a recommendation. Buy your test kit here.
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Parkinsons & Nutrition
In addition to faulty methylation, sometimes there is a problem in how the body detoxifies, a job primarily done by the liver, leaving neurons unprotected.[12] Then there are other factors such as prolonged stress and the likelihood of genetic predispositions. Geoffrey and Lucille Leader figured that each of these pieces of the jigsaw puzzle could be made a lot better if sufferers followed a targeted optimum nutrition programme. They started to test patients with Parkinson’s disease and found that literally 100 percent of them had nutritional deficiencies based on tests that measure what is going on within cells. They also found that many were deficient in stomach acid and digestive enzymes. Digestive enzymes break down carbohydrates, fats and proteins into their smallest components, allowing them to be absorbed by the body. Examples of deficient digestive enzymes might look like poor digestion, and increased intestinal permeability, leading to faulty absorption of nutrients.
Intestinal permeability is easily tested by drinking a solution that shouldn’t pass through the gut wall, and then measuring urinary levels. Using such a test, people with Parkinson’s disease may often show an increase in gut permeability or evidence of malabsorption. While there is no conclusive evidence yet that Parkinson’s disease is caused by nutrient deficiencies, the Leaders have found that correcting these deficiencies often helps.
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Brain Toxins, Oxidants and the Liver
All this faulty digestion and absorption places extra stress on the liver, the detoxification capital of the body. Since the brain’s neurons can’t protect themselves from toxins, they depend on the liver. A simple example of this is alcohol – once you drink more than your liver can detoxify, you get drunk, which is what happens when brain cells are exposed to this toxin. In excess, you lose muscular control and movements, including speech, slow down.
Problems with liver detoxification are often a hallmark of Parkinson’s patients.
One of the liver’s best detox allies are the sulphur-containing amino acids, which have the ability to mop up undesirable toxins in a process called sulphation. Researchers have reported faulty sulphation in patients with Parkinson’s, which can be helped by supplementing cysteine, methionine and molybdenum. These can help rid the body of protein breakdown products, strengthen teeth and may help reduce the risk of tooth decay [13] .
Avoiding wine, coffee, certain cheeses and chocolate, all known inhibitors of sulphation [12] and eating foods rich in glucosinolates, such as broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower and kale, also help the liver to detoxify.
The greatest toxins of all are oxidants, or ‘free-radicals’. Giving antioxidants helps to prevent free radical damage to brain cells and slows the progression of the disease.
In a 7-year pilot study, 21 patients with early Parkinson’s were given 3,000mg of vitamin C and 3,200iu of vitamin E daily. The need for drug therapy was delayed up to two to three years compared to those who did not receive the antioxidants.[14]
Along with its negative effect on neurons, Parkinson’s also damages function in the mitochondria, which are the energy factories in our cells where energy conversion takes place. One of the most critical antioxidants for protecting mitochondria is coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10). The older you are, the more likely you are to be deficient.
These nutrients are some but by no means all of the allies that can support liver function, thereby preventing brain damage from toxins.. Dr Jeffrey Bland from Gig Harbor, Washington, an expert in liver detoxification, has also found tremendous improvement by supporting liver function with nutritional supplementation, increasing the effectiveness of drugs, reducing symptoms and boosting energy levels in those suffering from the early stages of Parkinson’s in studies.[15]
As detoxification may be compromised in Parkinson’s Disease, as is demonstrated by tests and clinical experience, personal clinical experience demonstrates that it is best to clean up the diet very gradually and recommend nutrients which support detoxification pathways.
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Personalised Nutrition Works Best
The Leaders have found the best approach involves a tailor-made nutritional programme of diet and supplements and have found that this may often reduce symptoms and make drugs more effective, thus optimising dosage.
They recommend appropriate supplements based on patients’ biochemical individuality, including vitamins, minerals, essential fats, amino acids, antioxidants, phospholipids and brain-friendly herbs, providing that there are no contraindications for the administration of any herbs or nutrients for daily use, or in preparation or recovery from surgery.
As with so many mental health problems, controlling blood sugar and checking and correcting food allergies or intolerances can make a big difference. The most common allergy-provoking foods are the gluten grains (especially wheat, but also rye, oats, barley and spelt) and dairy products. Managing stress is also important because we respond to stress by producing the stress hormones noradrenalin and adrenalin, which are made from dopamine. This is why the symptoms of Parkinson’s often get worse when the sufferer is stressed.
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Working with Medication: What to Eat
The right diet is very important in tackling every piece of the jigsaw of Parkinson’s. Movement problems can get worse when dense proteins are eaten too close to the times of taking L-dopa medication.[16] This is because L-dopa competes with the amino acids for absorption at the receptor sites in the intestine and at the blood-brain barrier, so less gets through.
To make best use of the L-dopa, protein-rich foods containing the other amino acids should not be eaten at the same time as taking L-dopa medication, according to the following guidelines:
L-dopa medication and diet – what to eat when*
L-dopa is affected by protein-containing foods which contain significant amounts of the amino acids: tyrosine, phenylalanine, valine, leucine, isoleucine, tryptophan, methionine and histidine. Foods which contain these amino acids include eggs, fish, meat, poultry, dairy produce (not butter), pulses, green peas, spinach, sago, soy, couscous, bulgar, coconut, avocado, asparagus and gluten-containing grains (oats, rye, wheat, barley, spelt).
Take L-dopa medication. Wait ONE HOUR or until the drug takes effect before eating any of the foods listed above.
After eating any of the foods listed above, wait TWO HOURS, if possible, before taking L-dopa medication again if it is needed.
*This dietary protocol has been developed and proven helpful by Dr Geoffrey and Lucille Leader and is reproduced with their kind permission. (Their book, Parkinson’s Disease Optimising ON-OFF Periods during L-dopa Therapy www.denorpress.com) provides all the monitoring forms for patients and medical professions in order to assess more precise timing and dosage of administration – diet and metabolic pathways also presented.
Some people are more susceptible to this dose-dependent side-effect than others, and few react at a dose of 10mg, which is commonly given for Parkinson’s.[15]
While being careful to avoid these foods around medication, it is important to get enough protein from foods at other times. Good whole proteins include fish and eggs. Many people choose to have their meal containing concentrated protein at night. This is because they do not need as much help with movement control at night as during the day when their L-dopa medication is necessary to see them through all their activities. Some people leave out L-dopa completely after the protein meal. Otherwise, it is best to follow the time protocol for taking L-dopa with a protein-rich meal, as above.
It is also important to have a well-balanced diet throughout the day including fruits and vegetables, gluten-free wholegrains and plenty of fluids. A common problem in Parkinson’s is constipation. Having a diet rich in fruits and vegetables and drinking plenty of water throughout the day makes a big difference, as can a few prunes, figs or dried apricots between meals with water. There are also special fibres, such as glucomannan, which help relieve constipation.
What to do:
Attend our ‘Optimising Parkinson’s’ Webinar – sign up here
See a nutritional therapist or doctor who can assess you for nutritional deficiencies, digestive problems and liver function.
Pursue a tailor-made nutritional strategy, including a specific diet regime that maximises the effects of any medication.
Avoid environmental toxins and eat organic when possible.
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