ADHD, Brain Fog, Focus and Food. Eating for productive chemicals.
Iโve just read โThis is your brain on foodโ, written by a nutrition psychiatrist.
Have you noticed that on some mornings it just flows throughย you?
โI wasnโt high, I wasnโt wired. Just clear. I knew what I needed to do and how to doย it.โ
~ Eddie Morra, Limitless (2011)
And on some mornings, itโs like the power went out in your brain and you are in the dark, hopelessly searching for the keys to open the door that unlocks your brainโs full potential. Or at least some spark of motivation to get through stock-piled emails that needed aย cleanup?
โAlert and Calmโโโโin the words of well-known and often-quoted by biohackers and high-performance community Stanford Neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Hubermanโโโthis is the ideal state to get into flow, do deep work, consistently produce outstanding results.
How do we getย there?
When we do our yearly check-upโโโthatโs when we get the most intimate with our blood biochemistry. We get to see how these numbers, these blood chemicals change our life. Numbers like blood sugar, blood pressure affect everything from our energy levels, to our sex drive and hormones, to our sleep and mood every dayโโโour whole life depends onย them!
There are many more numbers that we can barely measure and understand. Numbers that change all the time, numbers that change us, our personalities and destinies, numbers that change how our life feels and goes everyย day.
Like the numbers, the measurements of different brain chemicalsโโโdopamine, norepinephrine (adrenaline), acetylcholine, serotonin, GABAโโโchemicals that either give us ADHD and brain fog, or Jedi-like focus.
Food is a bunch of chemicals too. Pounds of chemicals that we eat every day. Chemicals that change how we look, feel and what we decide to do with ourย life.
When I decide what to put on my plate, I always ask myself, โHow do I want to feel? Who do I want to be? What do I need to do? Now, this evening, tomorrow, a week fromย now?โ
Food is one of the most powerful tools of self-development and self-change! And yet very few of us know how to use it with purpose, with a goal inย mind.
Have you hear of nutritional psychiatry, the focus of a new book โThis is your brain on food. An Indispensable Guide to the Surprising Foods that Fight Depression, Anxiety, PTSD, OCD, ADHD, and Moreโ by Dr. Uma Naidoo? In the book Dr. Naidoo communicates to us, that using food as a tool to change our mental and emotional state definitely works, helping us to alleviate depression, ADHD, trauma, dementia, brain fog, at the same time improving our focus and attention span, increasing our motivation, drive, optimism, cultivating calm and alert mental state. The details are still foggyโโโwhy and how it works, the exact optimal-state recipes and protocols. We need more studies, we need moreย data.
Anyone who dramatically changed their diet would confirmโโโfood changed their life, their character, their destiny. Donโt believe any of it? Try a drastic change in your eating habits for a dayโโโyou wonโt recognize yourself! Imagine this effect applied to many days, and months, andย years?
ADHD, brain fog, focusโโโthese are all chemically-conditioned mental states, affected by many things, among which food as a primaryย factor.
Our mental and emotional state is in our hands, to be more precise, in our mouth, and itโs our responsibility to learn how to take control ofย it.
Letโs getย eating!
In the previous blog we talked about many building blocks of neurochemicals that the brain makes to focus, to be creative, to pay attention, to learn and remember, to get you motivated to take actions and to have enough grit to stick with it when things get hard. We talked about brainy proteins, essential โelectricalโ fats, creative choline, different carbs for fuel thatย lasts.
โWe live in an age where our attention is constantly under attack. Notifications dinging on our phones, the endless chatter of social media, and the barrage of information at work and in our personal lives make it difficult to stay focused. Having email on your phone also means that your work world has access to you 24/7. All of this can make for a frustrating day, even for people with perfectly healthyย brains.
The core features of ADHD include difficulty paying attention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity, but patients present in a variety of ways. For some, learning is a particular challenge, whereas for others, unstable mood, anxiety, and oppositional behavior are the primary symptoms.2 ADHD is an increasingly common conditionโโโone in twenty-five people have the diagnosis.โ
Today weโll talk about nutrition to help you manage ADHD and ADHD-like symptoms, clear up some fog in the brain, adding some shining-through clarity, and bulletproof our neural protection to keep neurons firing for days and years of productive work and meaningful life.
Today weโll talk about a few chemicals and foods to help you boost norepinephrine (adrenaline in the brain), the awake, alert and ready-for-action chemical, chemicals to support balanced, fog-free brain energy and workflow, chemicals to protect our fragile neurons from oxidative damage and inflammation, chemicals-to-avoid to improve absorption of essential nutrients for a productive, high-performing, focusedย brain.
Caffeine.
Not too much. Withoutย sugar.
Caffeine is a drug, a chemical that makes us more alert, awake and also more focused. It excites our neurons, stimulates the production of stress chemicals, adrenaline and cortisol. The combination of different mechanisms makes caffeine a focus amplifier, it tells our brainโโโโThis is important, there might be danger somewhere, pay attentionโ, and it also counteracts the effect of a sleepy chemical in our brain, adenosine.
Sounds good soย far?
It sure is. Unless you go overboard and instead of a shot of focus and alertness (and with it motivation, efficiency, vigilance) you get a double shot of anxiety, possibly a mild panic attack, with sprinkled ADHD to spice it upโโโunable to focus, get anything done and scared of some unknown predator. In science they call it a U-curveโโโtoo little is not good enough, too much and itโs bad forย you.
SECRET SAUCE:
Anxiety studies, and many observational studies on longevity seem to agree, that you we need to moderate our caffeine amount to get the benefits without downsides. Somewhere between 100โ400mg per day lies the perfect amount. Expresso/Nespresso shot is about 50โ80mg, Starbuckโs drinks can overshoot your daily caffeine allowance with one singleย venti.
โHow much caffeine can you drink before it becomes problematic? Most studies show that less than 100 mg of caffeine has little or no effect on anxiety. For between 100 mg and 400 mg/day, the results are mixed; nine studies showed no effect on anxiety, whereas twelve studies have shown significant increases in anxiety. Above 400 mg/day, the majority of studies show a significant increase in anxiety.โ
NOTE: If you care about your sleep quality, sleep experts like Dr. Matt Walker recommend to finish your caffeine at least 8โ10 hours before your bed time, even better 12 hours. Donโt forget that you can switch to decaf drinks, and that many energy drinks and bars, many food products, dark chocolate have caffeine inย them.
Why noย sugar?
Caffeine, stress hormones mixed with rapid rise of blood sugar is a sure recipe for anxiety and a hard crash shortly after into โI canโt get a thing done and need another Frappuccino ASAP!โ
Thicker Brainย Fog.
Sugar, gluten, MSG andย dairy.
If I decided to write about all the possible substances that can make our brain fog as thick as on an all-fights-cancelled dayโโโIโd need to write a whole book about it, and it still wouldnโt be enough, because everyoneโs gut and metabolism are slightly or a lot different.
Many people will fall asleep after any kind of dairy, when I, on the other hand, eat yogurt with walnuts before public speaking event to set my brain on fire and flow through it like a knife through meltedย butter.
Gluten?
That I can take for a drowsy afternoon or evening with a sprinkle of anxiety added to it, waking up feeling like something is off about me or myย life.
But thatโs not the case with me and sourdough.
From some data, it seems, that gluten might contribute to nutrient loss, certain amino acids needed for motivation andย focus.
โthe researchers found a significant decrease in patientsโ psychiatric symptoms compared to their baseline condition, coinciding with significantly decreased celiac disease activity and prolactin levels and with a significant increase in L-tyrosine, L-tryptophan, and other amino acids known to be precursors of brain chemicals such as serotonin. The authors concluded that it was possible that behavioral problems, such as those that occur with ADHD, may in part be due to certain important precursor amino acids not being available until people stopped eatingย gluten.โ
I usually wouldnโt eat glutenโโโIโm a fan of โmake a good-enough decision once and stick with itโ to prevent a waste of my mental energy on unimportant decisions andย tasks.
MSGs, oxidized industrial oils, colorings and flavorings, preservatives, hormones in low-quality animal foods, pesticides in vegetables, heavy metals in fishโฆ Thereโs no end to the list of substances in our foods, that potentially can be contributing to our brain productivity loss. Effects of some are more pronounced than others in someย people.
SECRET SAUCE:
Stick with whole foods of the best quality you can afford without novel ingredients that havenโt stood the test of time aka โyour grandma didnโt cook with itโ. Most takeout meals pay you back with a light brain damage. Getย cooking!
Sugar sugarโฆ Oh, my sweetness!
I definitely went through a tough break-up with thisย one.
There natural ones and fake ones, and added, and processed andย not.
Sugar, more specifically blood glucose, we need it to function optimally. Our brain is especially sensitive to blood glucose levels to do its best work. And here we have a U-curve again. Too littleโโโnot good enough, too muchโโโitโs bad for you. In fact, itโs brain damaging! Blood glucose spikes, continuous elevated blood sugarโโโit damages blood vessels, it damages nerve and brain cells, it makes us dumber and fatter, it contributes to anxiety, ADHD, brain fog, productivity loss, low libido, memory loss, dementia and all the known brain disorders.
The dose makes the poison! Your activity levels matter too, when it comes to how much sugar you can healthily handle.
And also letโs not forget about the delivery method. Does your sugar come from energy drinks? Frappuccino? Juices? Pancakes with maple syrup? Or sweet potatoes, blueberries and naturally fermented yogurt?
SECRET SAUCE:
Eat your sugars in whole foods, not products. How much? Refer back to my previous post. And you are probably eating too much, if you eat anything like 95% ofย people.
Bulletproof Brain.
Polyphenols, flavonoids and other antioxidants.
Brain is a very active fellow! All this electrical activityโโโneurons are firing, messaging each other, staying connectedโโโgetting the job done, keeping you running, thinking and accomplishing.
People with ADHD and ADHD-like symptoms seem to have a lot of unmanaged, excess electrical activity, that produces higher oxidative stress in theย brain.
โStudies have shown that people with ADHD are at a greater risk of oxidative stress in brain tissue. This can lead to damaged brain cells and altered neurotransmitter levels (like dopamine) and electrical-signal transmission, which can make ADHD worse. Since ADHD sufferers appear to lack some of the natural ability to fight off oxidative stress, it is particularly important for them to get as many antioxidants as possible through food in order to alleviate their symptoms and prevent brain cellย damage.โ
Think of antioxidants as grounding for electrical wiresโโโthey protect neurons from and reduce potential damage produced by brain electricity.
Polyphenols, flavonoids are different names for different plant antioxidants. All you need to know for practical purposes is quite simple. When it comes to food sources of antioxidants, the moreโโโtheย better!
SECRET SOURCE:
What are the richest sources? โBerries, cherries, eggplant, onions, kale, coffee, and green tea.โ And thereโs a whole bunch of foods not mentioned in the book for whichever reason, like dark chocolate, olives, walnuts, capers, being among the topย ones.
NOTE: Donโt forget to watch the amount of caffeine, sugar and fat in all these foods. Antioxidants donโt make all the possible U-curveโs side effects disappear! And they definitely donโt make calories disappear! We know that constant energy surplus is never a greatย idea.
Letโs sum it all up into a simple ADHD and Brain-Fog-Free recipe, shallย we?
Caffeine: take some, not too much, like a cup or two, preferably from natural sources like tea and coffee, early in the day. (At Starbuckโs ask for a single Espresso shot in your Americano VS regular double andย triple)
Experiment with removing dairy, gluten and non-grandma-approved ingredientsโโโsee what works the best forย you.
Top it up with a square or two of my favorite 100% dark chocolate (An acquired taste with the most benefits. My brained learned to loveย it!)
Try the recipe and share below your experience!
For more brain nutrition tips and science-based productivity nutrition and lifestyle strategies, please check out daily my Instagram feed @1000yearyoungโโโletโs build a smarter world together, one meal at aย time!
๐THANK YOU FOR READING! DO GREATย THINGS.
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Foundational neuroscience-backed routines for a ๐ง productive, happy brain in my โCancel Brain Fogโ course. (New and now free onย Udemy)