Cut back on the carbs and eat/drink dairy products… as long as they’re full-fat!

The latest buzz on the food and diet front  is all about eating fat and not eating grains (or modified grass as Dr William Davis puts it in his best-seller, Wheat Belly. Now, diet books move on to the brain! Dr. David Perlmutter has come along with a book called “Grain Brain” which also says that carbohydrates should definitely be cut from your diet, but that fat is fine… especially for the brain.
“We’re not talking about hydrogenated trans-fats, but foods like extra virgin olive oil, avocado, grass fed meat and wild fish,” he says. Put differently, this translates as: drop all the processed stuff, select all-natural options (particularly vegetables) while leaving sugar, bread and any grain based products on the side.
“Basically this is a diet that really focuses on eating a lot of above ground vegetables, kale, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower and relegates the meat to being the side dish,” says Dr. Perlmutter.
As a dietician and a well-respected neurologist, he is convinced that this way of eating is better for your brain. “People are really worried about brain issues. They’re worried about things like Alzheimer’s, depression, ADHD, etc., and the message of the book is that these issues are preventable.”

This extract taken from the journal Neuron:

Scientists at Oxford University recently discovered an area of the brain that contributes to make humans, well, human. The walnut-sized area, nestled within the frontal cortex, is called the lateral frontal pole. It’s responsible for planning and decision-making and, according to the new findings, has no equivalent in the monkey brain. Researchers thus believe this brain region might be responsible for humans’ upper hand in tasks that require strategic planning, decision-making and multitasking.
The researchers compared MRI images of humans’ and macaques’ ventro-lateral frontal cortex, a region of the brain that controls language and complex thought processes. Surprisingly, they found that the region was wired up in much the same way between the species. But the striking difference was the lateral frontal pole.

Oxford senior researcher Matthew Rushworth explained the significance:
“We tend to think that being able to plan into the future, be flexible in our approach and learn from others are things that are particularly impressive about humans. We’ve identified an area of the brain that appears to be uniquely human, and is likely to have something to do with these cognitive powers.”

Karl Zilles, a neuroscientist at the Institute for Neuroscience and Medicine in Germany, told The Guardian that the study also takes us a significant step forward in the study of psychiatric disease:
“I am quite sure that this will turn out to be of great importance in studying psychiatric disease. What we understand now is the connectivity within the brain. We know the cables and the connections. What we have to do now is combine all this with how information is processed in the different brain areas.”

You may well have read the news stories… Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to plot the brain wiring maps of 949 people aged 8 to 22 and demonstrated that “fundamentally different connectivity patterns in males and females” exist. But do they?
They stated that women’s brains had more connectivity across the two hemispheres while men’s brains had greater connectivity within each brain hemisphere. These findings, they said, helped to explain behavioural differences between the sexes, such as women being more intuitive thinkers and born ‘multi-taskers’ compared to men being good at sports and map-reading. “The connections that mean girls are made for multi-tasking,” said the Daily Mail. “… hard-wired difference between male and female brains could explain why men are ‘better at map reading’” said The Independent. 

But this new research paper did not actually look at behavioural differences between the sexes – things like intuitive thinking and multi-tasking. The researchers made assumptions about how wiring differences could relate to behavioural differences between the sexes.
 
And the thing is, although these differences are indeed statistically significant, there is a lot of overlap, meaning that your male brain could well be wired more like an average female brain; the reverse being obviously true as well. All this study really shows is that these ‘natural differences’ in the wiring of brains do exist and that they can be grouped together into various categories. A certain degree of hardwiring (nature) is in place before nurture exerts her influence.

Earlier research has shown some real differences; namely that male brains are slightly larger, that women have a higher ratio of grey to white matter and that the amygdala which is responsible for emotional processing are (there are two of them) larger in men… would you believe?

It is time to acknowledge the differences from one brain to another, but as a man reading this, there’s a high chance that your brain is cross-wired in what the researchers consider to be a female orientation. And vice-versa of course; and maybe that’s a very good thing.