Effects of food in Brain (How the food and sugar can effect on you brain?)

 

 How the Food can effect on your Brain?

                                   Your Brain on Food .If you sucked all of the moisture out of your brain and broke it down to its constituent nutritional content, what would it look like?

Most of the weight of your dehydrated brain would come from fats, also known as lipids. In the remaining brain matter, you would find proteins and amino acids, traces of micronutrients, and glucose.

The brain is, of course, more than just the sum of its nutritional parts, but each component does have a distinct impact on functioning, development, mood, and energy.

So that post-lunch apathy, or late-night alertness you might be feeling, well, that could simply be the effects of food on your brain.

Role of Fat in Brain:-

                              Of the fats in your brain, the superstars are omegas 3 and 6. These essential fatty acids, which have been linked to preventing degenerative brain conditions, must come from our diets.

So eating omega-rich foods, like nuts, seeds, and fatty fish, is crucial to the creation and maintenance of cell membranes.

And while omegas are good fats for your brain, long-term consumption of other fats, like trans and saturated fats, may compromise brain health.

Role of protein and Amino acids in Brain:-

                              Meanwhile, proteins and amino acids, the building block nutrients of growth and development, manipulate how we feel and behave.

Amino acids contain the precursors to neurotransmitters, the chemical messengers that carry signals between neurons, affecting things like mood, sleep, attentiveness, and weight.

They're one of the reasons we might feel calm after eating a large plate of pasta, or more alert after a protein-rich meal.

The complex combinations of compounds in food can stimulate brain cells to release mood-altering norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin.

But getting to your brain cells is tricky, and amino acids have to compete for limited access.

Role of Micro nutrients in Brain:-

A diet with a range of foods helps maintain a balanced combination of brain messengers, and keeps your mood from getting skewed in one direction or the other.

Like the other organs in our bodies, our brains also benefit from a steady supply of micronutrients. Antioxidants in fruits and vegetables strengthen the brain to fight off free radicals that destroy brain cells, enabling your brain to work well for a longer period of time.

And without powerful micronutrients, like the vitamins B6, B12, and folic acid, our brains would be susceptible to brain disease and mental decline.

Trace amounts of the minerals iron, copper, zinc, and sodium are also fundamental to brain health and early cognitive development.

How Brain can Function with proper Diet?

In order for the brain to efficiently transform and synthesize these valuable nutrients, it needs fuel, and lots of it.

While the human brain only makes up about 2% of our body weight, it uses up to 20% of our energy resources. Most of this energy comes from carbohydrates that our body digests into glucose, or blood sugar.

The frontal lobes are so sensitive to drops in glucose, in fact, that a change in mental function is one of the primary signals of nutrient deficiency.

Assuming that we are getting glucose regularly, how does the specific type of carbohydrates we eat affect our brains?

Carbs come in three forms:

              starch,sugar, and fiber.

While on most nutrition labels, they are all lumped into one total carb count, the ratio of the sugar and fiber subgroups to the whole amount affect how the body and brain respond.

A high glycemic food, like white bread, causes a rapid release of glucose into the blood, and then comes the dip.

Blood sugar shoots down, and with it, our attention span and mood. On the other hand, oats, grains, and legumes have slower glucose release, enabling a steadier level of attentiveness. For sustained brain power, opting for a varied diet of nutrient-rich foods is critical.

How sugar effect the Brain?

                                 Picture warm, gooey cookies, crunchy candies, velvety cakes, waffle cones piled high with ice cream. Is your mouth watering? Are you craving dessert? Why?

What happens in the brain that makes sugary foods so hard to resist? Sugar is a general term used to describe a class of molecules called carbohydrates, and it's found in a wide variety of food and drink.

Just check the labels on sweet products you buy. Glucose, fructose, sucrose, maltose, lactose, dextrose, and starch are all forms of sugar.

So are high-fructose corn syrup, fruit juice, raw sugar, and honey. And sugar isn't just in candies and desserts, it's also added to tomato sauce,yogurt, dried fruit, flavored waters, or granola bars.

Since sugar is everywhere, it's important to understand how it affects the brain.

                                            What happens when sugar hits your tongue?And does eating a little bit of sugar make you crave more? You take a bite of cereal. The sugars it contains activate the sweet-taste receptors, part of the taste buds on the tongue.

These receptors send a signal up to the brain stem, and from there, it forks off into many areas of the forebrain, one of which is the cerebral cortex.

Different sections of the cerebral cortex process different tastes:

                                  bitter, salty, umami, and, in our case, sweet.

From here, the signal activates the brain's reward system. This reward system is a series of electrical and chemical pathways across several different regions of the brain.

It's a complicated network, but it helps answer a single, subconscious question: should I do that again?

That warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you taste Grandma's chocolate cake? That's your reward system saying, "Mmm, yes!" And it's not just activated by food.

Socializing, sexual behavior, and drugs are just a few examples of things and experiences that also activate the reward system. But over activating this reward system kick starts a series of unfortunate events:

          loss of control, craving, and increased tolerance to sugar.

Let's get back to our bite of cereal. It travels down into your stomach and eventually into your gut. And guess what? There are sugar receptors here, too. They are not taste buds, but they do send signals telling your brain that you're full or that your body should produce more insulin to deal with the extra sugar you're eating.

Function of Dopamine in Brain:-

                                           The major currency of our reward system is dopamine, an important chemical or neurotransmitter.

There are many dopamine receptors in the forebrain, but they're not evenly distributed. Certain areas contain dense clusters of receptors, and these dopamine hot spots are a part of our reward system.

Drugs like alcohol, nicotine, or heroin send dopamine into overdrive, leading some people to constantly seek that high, in other words, to be addicted.

Sugar also causes dopamine to be released, though not as violently as drugs. And sugar is rare among dopamine-inducing foods.

Broccoli, for example, has no effect, which probably explains why it's so hard to get kids to eat their veggies.

Effect of healthy foods:

                   let's say you're hungry and decide to eat a balanced meal. You do, and dopamine levels spike in the reward system hot spots. But if you eat that same dish many days in a row, dopamine levels will spike less and less, eventually leveling out.

That's because when it comes to food, the brain evolved to pay special attention to new or different tastes.Why?

Two reasons:

                   first, to detect food that's gone bad.

                    And second, because the more variety we have in our diet,the more likely we are to get all the nutrients we need.

To keep that variety up, we need to be able to recognize a new food, and more importantly, we need to want to keep eating new foods.

And that's why the dopamine levels off when a food becomes boring. Now, back to that meal.

What happens if in place of the healthy, balanced dish, you eat sugar-rich food instead?

                                              If you rarely eat sugar or don't eat much at a time, the effect is similar to that of the balanced meal. But if you eat too much, the dopamine response does not level out.

In other words, eating lots of sugar will continue to feel rewarding. In this way, sugar behaves a little bit like a drug. It's one reason people seem to be hooked on sugary foods.

So, think back to all those different kinds of sugar. Each one is unique, but every time any sugar is consumed,it kick starts a domino effect in the brain that sparks a rewarding feeling.

Too much, too often, and things can go into overdrive. So, yes, over consumption of sugar can have addictive effects on the brain, but a wedge of cake once in a while won't hurt you.

When it comes to what you bite, chew, and swallow, your choices have a direct and long-lasting effect on the most powerful organ in your body.