The Real Impact of Nutrition on Your Brain and Mood

Is your diet affecting more than your waistline? In this episode, we explore how what you eat shapes your brain health, mood, and overall mental performance. Discover why the Standard American Diet (ironically called the SAD diet) is making us feel worse despite filling us up, and how eating the right foods can improve focus, fight depression, and support brain function.

We also dive into the benefits of omega-3s, B vitamins, and other essential nutrients, while breaking down the hidden dangers of processed foods. Whether you’re curious about boosting your mental sharpness or simply want to feel better every day, this conversation is packed with practical nutrition insights.

Chapters

• 0:00 How the SAD Diet Impacts Mood
• 1:16 Linking Nutrition to Mental Health
• 3:28 The Brain’s Energy Needs and Food Quality
• 5:50 Essential Nutrients: Fish Oil and B Vitamins
• 8:25 Processed Foods and Hidden Health Risks
• 11:02 The Role of Sugar, Inflammation, and Insulin
• 13:24 Practical Nutrition Changes That Work

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You know, there's, there's a, there's a shorthand which is the best foods that you should buy are on the perimeter of the grocery store. If you're going up and down the aisles, you're probably buying things that are processed. The standard American diet, the abbreviation for which is the Sad diet, will make you sad. We are eating calorically dense food food with tons of calories that is nutritionally not dense. So we're getting food that is this delicious, gives us, makes us feel full, but it doesn't really provide the nutrition that we need to to rebuild our our body.

Speaker 2: 0:48

We we're talking about nutrition and how it impacts just about everything we do. Our mental state, our workloads, all kinds of different factors of our life. I know you have done quite a bit of research on nutrition. Tell us a little bit about how you first started to get interested in that and why, and what you kind of found about about what we're eating these days.

Speaker 1: 1:16

Yeah, it started out it must have been about 10 or 15 years ago. I went to a continuing education and I have to go to continuing education. Every year. And I went to this program, and it was the relationship between nutrition and mental illness and the the, the instructor was a guy named Nick Hall who was a professor, in Florida. No relation to me. And he went through every mental illness and all the nutritional interventions. And I was I thought, wow, you know, this is this is really cool. Now, in my part of the business, which is peak performance, helping people with their mindset and to perform better, it's even more important. And so, you know, I, I got a a shelf full of books on nutrition and, and mental performance and it's, it's, unfortunately, it's so easy for people to take pills, but there's so many other interventions they can do, and people are getting some pretty dramatic results from changing what they're putting into their system. So, my interest is largely related to how nutrition affects the brain. And, the brain occupies between 2 and 5% of our body's mass, depending on how much you weigh, but consumes between 20 and 25% of the energy from our food. And so you're really disproportionately eating for your brain because your brain is burning so much fuel, and the quality of the fuel you put in your system will predict the quality of your thinking. And we can talk about certain details, but the that's the quick summary is your brain is burning so much fuel, not just calories, but all the nutrition is going to repair and to build your brain that, that if you don't give your body those base elements, you won't be able to think clearly. And we can go into more detail, but I, I don't I don't want to start galloping down the path. I'll just answer your questions.

Speaker 2: 3:41

Focusing in on the brain a little bit. What are some of the best brain foods that you could eat and what are we not getting enough of that you see in our society?

Speaker 1: 3:50

So back to that first presentation by, the professor Nick Hall. He he'd say, okay, schizophrenia. And you go through all these nutritional interventions and it and he'd say, and fish oil and then attention deficit disorder, which is a completely different thing. And you go through the list of interventions and fish oil, and then you go through anxiety disorders, go through the list of interventions and fish oil, every single one of them. At the end of the day, he goes, I know you're sick of hearing me say it, but fish oil and the reason, you know, you're looking for high quality omega three fish oil. The reason is that the the brain is basically made up of two different kinds of cells. One are called neurons, which we know a lot about. It's actually three kinds of cells. But I'm only going to talk about two of them. The other is called myelin. And it's the it's kind of if you think of the neuron as the wire, my myelin is the insulation around the wire.

Speaker 2: 4:58

Okay.

Speaker 1: 4:59

So your brain needs and and myelin and much of your brain is made of oil fat and so to have a healthy functioning brain you have to have healthy insulation on the wires. That's it's completely overly simplistic, but it helps people understand. So if you don't want your wires to cross, you got to make sure you've got good, good insulation and so high quality fish oil. So that would be the first thing. The second thing is that your brain really needs be complex vitamins. And and we don't need to go through all the different kinds, but, take, take a B vitamin, it will improve your mood. It will help you think more clearly. It will help your memory, all of those things. Because a b so fish oil and B vitamins, that would be probably the first thing I would. So this would be the first things I would say.

Speaker 2: 6:01

Our nutrition in the United States particularly has really come a long way. As far as processing and, making things more convenient, what do you see as some of the actually, like, truly healthy things out there? And what, what should be avoided at all costs?

Speaker 1: 6:25

Processed foods. There you go. You know, there's there's a, there's a shorthand which is the best foods that you should buy are on the perimeter of the grocery store, that if you're going up and down the aisles, you're probably buying things that are processed. But if you buy things on the periphery, on the edge, you're probably going to do better. That's that, in my mind, is probably too simplistic, but but it's a good it's a good shorthand. The standard American diet, the abbreviation for which is the sad diet, will make you sad. We are we are eating calorically dense food food with tons of calories that is nutritionally not dense. So we're getting food that is tastes delicious. And, gives us makes us feel full, but it doesn't really provide the nutrition that we need to to rebuild our, our body. You know, I'm, I'm of an age where I remember when people used to eat plenty and didn't get fat. Oh, okay. So so in my high school, we had two fat kids in a class of 177, and I look at the pictures of them now, and relative to people now, they're not fat. The diets have changed that. There are ways of of preparing food that were common. Then that don't happen anymore. The the introduction of seed oils to almost everything. It there used to be a lot more, lard used to fry food, which people think is horrific and was going to kill you and give you, high cholesterol, which is really probably not that bad. Cholesterol is actually the building block of estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. All the hormones use cholesterol as a building block. And so high cholesterol may be a measure not of, it. If you get too much rolling around that doesn't get converted into the right hormones, then yeah, it can roll around your arteries, but it may be that it's not being converted into the right thing. That's not it. Your body's making enough of the precursor for the hormones, but it isn't turning it into the hormones that you need. We've got our diets cranked up so high in sugar that our insulin pumps are going all the time. People are pre diabetic, diabetic at these crazy young ages because we're dumping so much sugar in our system. Well, the brain doesn't like the insulin system to be turned on all the time. And so you've got your insulin system cranked up to 11. Well it can't go any higher when you get more sugar. So you, you have what's called insulin insensitivity that you're you're not fine tuning the level of insulin. So that's the first one. The second is inflammation. And that people are having inflammatory responses either to, things in the air or some of that can happen, but it's largely their body is responding, to inflammation to the things we're eating. And there are some clear culprits in, in our diets for things that are likely to cause inflammation. There are lots of people who are now sensitive to grains, all sorts of grains. Is that because of genetically modified, genetically modified grains? If you if you read a number of authors like Perlmutter. Yes. If you read bread and yes, a lot of these authors are arguing that we've changed corn. We've changed wheat to make it all Roundup ready and Roundup is a brand of of, of, weedkiller. It was an everything killer. Yeah. Yeah. If you create strains of genetically modified corn and wheat so that you can spray it, kill everything, then they don't, then they don't have to worry about weeds because they can kill everything but the the wheat or the corn. The other thing is, it's also been used as a desiccant, which helps dry out the grain faster. So once it's harvested, now they're putting roundup on already harvested grain to dry it out. So anyway, there's inflammation in there.

Speaker 2: 11:40

Yeah. And this seems to be a, almost a fight, in some scientific circles and the broader community, it almost seems like certain things that used to be normal are now almost demonized.

Speaker 1: 11:55

We'd like to believe the science was completely, as pure as the driven snow. But researchers are affected by biases. By industries that support their work. And if you have an industry that is well funded and has a strong lobbying committee, they will they will push their agenda and, I think there are good scientists who recognize this, but it isn't good scientists who publicize it, but the people who read their reports and publicize them to everyone else, they don't really understand what they're publicizing. So they so they oversimplify things. And I I'm guilty of it as well. You know, my I think my, my job is to popularize the, the, the work of, of scientists. And I want to do it in a, in a legitimate way. But but I think but I think people hear it and they, they read a headline and they don't understand what it means, and suddenly they change their whole life without really studying the matter.

Speaker 2: 13:11

I wonder if you have ever advised your client on what they should be eating for their own performance. And whether or not they've taken that into account, what kind of changes you've seen as a result?

Speaker 1: 13:24

Yeah, some of them have, yeah. I encourage them to start reading on nutrition. There's a lot of good resources out there. Some have changed their diet pretty substantially and reported really positive results cognitively. The physical results of their as well. I again, if you eat the standard American diet, you will look like the standard American. And unfortunately it's not just American diet now. It's it's the Western European diet and it's the South American diet. And, you know, every place that is largely Western is eating this way, you know, highly processed foods. And people feel miserable. So. So, yeah, I encourage people to give it a try. I tell them I'm not preaching the gospel here on this topic. I'm talking about do an experiment and see how you feel. And for some people, you know, I have a friend he knows. He knows he would feel better if he ate differently. He says, but I love jelly donuts. It's like, how can you do your thing? You know, if you want to eat you, it's your life. You you know, I'm I'm not your mom. I'm not going to tell you how to how to behave.

Speaker 2: 14:43

Is there anything more in particular on you person that you would like to add?

Speaker 1: 14:48

I think I would encourage people to do a lot of reading about nutrition. And if if you see somebody who's, you know, If you see somebody with, with lots of Facebook ads, you know, that may be a first place to start, but that was probably not be where you want to end your research. There are lots of good, popular press books that talk about it. I think the serious authors will talk about how important it is, but they're not going to try to scare the hell out of you. They really are going to say, listen, this this could help you as opposed to you're going to, you know, you know, your hair's going to catch on fire if you don't eat this way. But but I think it really is about experimenting and trying to change in the ways that you think you you want to what what are the outcomes you want? You're putting things into your system, and your body has all these chemical factories that take pieces of the food to make your body grow and be healthy. And if you don't have those basic amino acid streams, the basic chemistry there, then your body won't have enough of the right chemistry to make all the factories go, and you're going to feel awful if you're troubled by problems in your thinking, troubled by problems in your emotion, troubled by health concerns, you know, many of these can be addressed productively through food. Food is fuel, but food in the eastern, you know, in the eastern way of thinking, food is medicine. And so look at the at the kind of things that you want to be putting in your, in your system.