A few years ago I started to look at effects that certain supplements and foods specifically have on the brain. I have always been a researcher of the psyche, and as I've previously mentioned, have studied psychology and personal development with the intention of not only improving my own life, but also the lives of my clients and loved ones.
After three years I've come to understand a number of things about the brain, foods, intelligence, cravings/addictions and mood stabilization. These interests all fall under the heading, for me, of Brain Optimization.
As mentioned briefly in this post, we have what I call 'happy chemicals' that are manufactured in our bodies, and which seem to have profound effects on both the functioning of our brains and our level of contentedness in our lives. They affect our happiness! They really do. You may have heard of these before: serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine. They are all being constantly manufactured and then taken back up and expelled out of our bodies.
An example of something from the medical establishment that affects one of our happy chemicals are anti-depressants, which are most often called SSRI's: Selective Seratonin Re-Uptake Inhibitors. Sometimes people experience depression because they just don't create enough seratonin in their bodies. Most other people DO produce enough seratonin, but their bodies are 'taking it back up' and then treating it as a waste product and expelling it or reabsorbing it in such a way as to make it no longer available for use by the brain.
Phoenix Gilman, a researcher and writer of the book Diet Failure, The Naked Truth, exposes the crucial serotonin-insulin connection to successful, long-term weight loss. She explains what causes cravings, emotional eating, and food addictions, and more importantly, how to safely control them so we can have the lean, healthy, and sexy body we all desire.
As a major neurotransmitter, Gilman believes that serotonin also plays a critical role (directly or indirectly) in alleviating depression, insomnia, migraines, ADD/ADHD, type 2 diabetes, even high blood pressure, heart disease, and suicidal behavior. Gilman also talks about the 'low-fat-diet-myth' in our diet-conscious country. The body NEEDS healthy fats in order to fully function, and the brain especially needs these healthy fats. Her book talks more about these healthy fats and why we need them. When people continue to eat tons of sugar AND they cut out the healthy fats, they are creating a situation in which their moods are usually severely affected.
I personally have experimented with different supplements and have found great success with a few of them. One of those, which Gilman also recommends, is 5-HTP. You may have heard of Tryptophan in the past. It's the stuff that's in turkey that makes you sleep. Well the thing is, it makes you sleep because it actually causes you to relax, and you are simply confusing relaxation with sleepiness. Not surprising in our stressed-out culture.
5-HTP can be bought in health food stores. I have found that it doesn't really matter which brand I use, in the sense that I have tried brands that are supposedly 'higher quality' and right now I am using the least expensive one my market had, and I'm experiencing the same effects from it as I did with the higher- priced ones.
Tyrosine is another great supplement. Tyrosine is an amino acid that acts as a pre-curser to Dopamine. It helps to create more dopamine in your system. While seratonin is more of a relaxant and causes 'contentment', dopamine tends to be the chemical that gives you more energy and increases your sex drive. It appears to be more aligned with your body in terms of creating a stronger physical energy, as well as a sense of hopefulness in your mood.
These statements I'm making come partly from my research of other people's studies, and partly from my own experience taking the actual supplements.
Another GREAT BRAIN FOOD is L-Glutamine. I swear by this stuff. It does all kinds of good things, including causing my brain, personally, to be sharper. I experience a greater intelligence when I supplement with this. It's relatively inexpensive when you get it in powder form and you can just add it to juice or, like I do to my morning glass of water and my favorite green powder. I've tried a number of green powders (which are usually combinations of different 'greens' and grasses that have been dehydrated, then powdered and put in a bottle). I like the blue-green algaes as well, but I am a little lazy and don't want to have 20 bottles on my sink. I chose Health Force's Vitamineral because I feel like it has everything and I love the energizing and other healthful affects is has on my body.
And one last Brain Food, for now, that I want to mention. It's called MaxGXL. This supplement is so amazing that almost everyone who tries it for a week goes on to order it monthly. I just give them a week's supply of it and they are hooked! It's an all-natural patented composition that has L-Glutamine as it's main ingredient, combined synergistically with other small amounts of supplements which cause the cell wall of ANY cell to be penetrated by the Glutamine. Once the Glutamine (and other key ingredients) get into the cell, they cause the levels of Glutathione in every cell to increase. Glutathione is THE BODY'S MASTER ANTIOXIDANT. The body makes it on it's own. There's no juice or food you can eat to immediately increase the Glutathione levels in the body to this extent. Dr. Keller, the man who created the supplement, knew that the best anti-aging and health promoting chemical in the body was first and foremost Glutathione. Dr. Keller took 10 years to create this product. He actually created it to boost the immune systems of people whose immune systems were or are severely compromised (For AIDS, Cancer,and other auto-immune disorders).
Given that he created MaxGXL for this population, can you imagine how effective it can be for you and me?
I started taking it 6 weeks ago and my powers of concentration have increased more than 100%. I throw that number out there because I know, actually, that's it's even higher than that. I just think that '100%' sounds good. But really... I had quite severe symptoms of ADD, especially when it came to being able to focus on any task that had to be accomplished while sitting still. I had great difficulty doing paperwork or concentrating on any one task at hand for more than 10 minutes. So, like any good ADD'er, I just always had 10 tasks going. I'd move from one to the other and basically make rounds on those tasks, until they were finished (on a good day).
I have to report, because it's true, that my levels of concentration are now at the point where I actually feel like I am more focused, even, than the normal person. This has been a tremendous boon to my current life and state-of-mind, especially because I am working full-time and finishing up a graduate program in Psychology. I was not able, before taking MaxGXL, to sit down and write a whole paper in an hour or two, without getting distracted. Now I sit down and write an entire paper without distraction. and I have been in school for decades! I like school. But completing homework in focused amounts of time was never possible for me before. Now it is.
So there are some ideas for you to start with, in terms of supplementation to affect your moods, concentration levels, and state-of-mind (and heart!). These are just the beginning. There are also Energy Psychology and Energy Medicine techniques that work to both balance the two sides of the brain, as well as to affect the way that your entire brain handles and perceives your past memories and your current reality. As you can see from other articles on this blog, EFT, or Emotional Freedom Technique is my first choice out of all that I have tried.
I will be writing more about Brain Optimization as time goes on.
Many happy chemicals!
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