Here you will find posts related to the most groundbreaking science that is available to us as it pertains to gluten intolerance and brain health. We all have the gift of brain plasticity, meaning that if we apply the conclusions of these studies to our daily lives we can actually grow new brain cells!
Some posts to get you started:
The Process of Neuroplasticity
Increasing Gluten Sensitivity?
Over the past several months I have been writing and broadcasting about the potential role of vitamin D as it relates to COVID-19. Understanding the multiple roles that vitamin D plays in regulating immunity really supports the level of interest that we are seeing in the scientific community at a time when so many ideas are being vetted.
By and large, effectiveness of any intervention is looked at in terms of either prevention of a problem or its actual treatment. And while there is a fairly robust body of literature accumulating that clearly shows higher risk for the disease as well as worse outcome associated with low levels of vitamin D, actually using vitamin D as a treatment for existing disease hasn’t really been extensively studied. Continue reading
Over the past several decades efforts have been made to try to convince us that, as it pertains to sugar, fructose is our best choice. One of the reasons often cited for this messaging was the misguided notion that somehow choosing fructose would help reduce risk for diabetes because “fructose doesn’t elevate insulin.” More on that idea later, so for now let’s focus on the relationship between fructose consumption and risk for type 2 diabetes. Continue reading
Over the past decade we have been vigorously promoting the concept of Alzheimer’s prevention. Alzheimer’s disease is devastating, not just for the patient, but for families and loved ones as well. And let me be candid: watching my father succumb to Alzheimer’s was the most emotionally challenging experience of my life. Not only that, it also served to strengthen my resolve to do whatever I can to continue to raise awareness of the science that supports the notion that our lifestyle choices do indeed play an important role in determining our risk for this disease – a disease for which there is no meaningful treatment whatsoever. Continue reading
Lately, in an apparent attempt to push back from the negativity surrounding high fructose corn syrup, there seems to be an increase in the number of articles published touting the advantages of fructose as a “safer sugar.” The main point that is so often emphasized is that unlike glucose, fructose does not seem to increase insulin. Increasing insulin, which is how our bodies cope with increased glucose levels, may, when it’s constantly challenged, lead to a state in which we tend to lose our sensitivity to insulin. This means that with time, on a diet that constantly raises our glucose levels, insulin becomes less effective. Losing insulin sensitivity or becoming “insulin resistant” is not only associated with elevated blood sugar and subsequent diabetes, but also a fairly extensive list of chronic degenerative conditions that we want to do our best to avoid like coronary artery disease and Alzheimer’s. Continue reading
A central theme of our outreach messaging over the past decade centers on the role of our everyday lifestyle decisions in influencing the health destiny of our brains. As many of you know, we recently produced a docuseries Alzheimer’s – The Science of Prevention that reveals how our most well-respected scientific journals are making it very clear that each of us is truly the architect of our cognitive health destiny. We reveal exactly what we need to be doing day to day to meaningfully increase our chances of a life without Alzheimer’s disease.
And to bring everyone right up to date on the science, I’d like to discuss a study just published in the prestigious journal Neurology. Continue reading
I have to shake my head when I still see “egg white omelet” on the breakfast menu at restaurants. Gone are the days when I would ask the waiter or manager why this was offered. Over time I realized that it wasn’t their fault. They were simply parroting the standard dogma that eggs were bad for your heart – especially the yolks with their high levels of “artery-clogging cholesterol” and all.
For decades, we were instructed that dietary fat was virtually kryptonite. And of all the dietary fats we might consume, cholesterol was by far the biggest threat. Continue reading
One very popular variation of outright fasting is what is called time-restricted feeding (TRF). In both humans and laboratory animals, TRF refers the consumption of food only during a specific period of time each 24 hours. We know that this is certainly in contrast to the common way that people eat, meaning at least three meals a day with lots of snacks before, between, and after meals.
As it turns out, there appears to be quite a few health advantages to restricting the period of time that we eat during the day. Research has revealed, for example, how TRF positively affects a variety of cardiometabolic risk factors including blood sugar, and even the expression of our genes. Continue reading
There’s so much information that we are exposed to day in and day out focused on what we should be eating. But lately there seems to be an important shift in the conversation to trying to understand when we should eat. Truthfully, we had always thought that to be healthy we should be following the “three meals a day” rule, with special emphasis on breakfast since it was thought to be “the most important meal of the day.” But, gratefully, well-respected researchers are now challenging these ideas. Continue reading
By Dr. Austin Perlmutter
In the wake of the global spread of the 2019 coronavirus (COVID-19), many of us have started to think more carefully about our health. How can we reduce our risk of infection and of infecting others? How can we improve our immune function? What might the virus do to our lungs, heart and blood vessels? But while these questions are very important, it’s also critical to consider how a pandemic affects our brains and how to guard them against this damage. Specifically, we need to be considering strategies to protect our mental and cognitive health.
We’ve long known that mental health suffers in periods of high stress. So it’s no surprise that the current pandemic has been linked to a spike in feelings of anxiety and depression. A troubling May 2020 survey reported that over 34% of Americans are now experiencing these symptoms. This comes at a time when the world is already experiencing an epidemic of mental illness. Continue reading
By: The Dr. Perlmutter Team
Blood sugar elevation has become a central focus in medicine these days because of its well-established relationship to so many chronic conditions including Alzheimer’s, diabetes, obesity, and Parkinson’s. Now, new research reveals that there may well be a relationship to cancer risk as well.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins and Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea were interested in exploring possible relationships between blood sugar levels and risk for developing cancer. They studied a sample of over 1 million Koreans between the ages of 30 and 95 who had either a positive cancer diagnosis or had died of cancer. Their findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, are quite remarkable and certainly instructive. Continue reading
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