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1-Page Summary of Grain Brain

Overview

Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs and Sugar—Your Brain’s Silent Killers is a book that uses the author’s personal experiences to explain how modern diets are causing brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, dementia and other neurodegenerative disorders. It argues that these conditions can be prevented by avoiding gluten, carbohydrates and sugars in our diet.

Grains and gluten are not healthy for human consumption. The medical community has typically overlooked this problem, prescribing medicines that aren’t effective at preventing brain damage due to gluten sensitivity. However, the medical community isn’t alone in overlooking this issue; most people don’t think grains and gluten are bad for them unless they cause stomach issues. But that’s a mistake because eating these foods can lead to headaches, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease as well as other problems without causing stomach distress.

Humans did not evolve eating grains and wheat. The products were introduced into the diet 10,000 years ago but in limited quantities. Today, we consume far more of these foods than ever before due to government encouragement through food pyramid diagrams that emphasized their importance as a significant portion of our daily diets. Cholesterol and fat have been demonized over the years even though they help us live longer.

The Grain Brain diet allows you to eat as much vegetables and fruit as you want. You can also have a small amount of carbs, but no more than 60 grams per day after the first month has passed. You should always include healthy fats and protein in your meals, along with water instead of other beverages. The diet is complemented by at least 30 minutes of exercise five days per week.

Key Takeaways

Losing the Ability to learn as we age is not inescapable

Grains are not good for the human body. Carbohydrates, even those that aren’t derived from grains, have a negative impact on our health. Gluten is very dangerous to humans and should be taken seriously by medical professionals. Our bodies evolved as hunter-gatherers; therefore, we can only process foods in a certain way because of how we were designed to eat.

The human brain needs fat and cholesterol to work properly.

Brain disease is often caused by inflammation. A diet that includes a lot of gluten and carbohydrates can cause this inflammation.

Diet does not solely determine brain health. Exercise and sleep are also critical to maintaining a healthy brain. By changing your habits in four phases, you will be able to make long-lasting changes: change your diet for one week, then exercise for the next week, then focus on improving your sleep patterns for another week, and finally integrate all of these new behaviors into your daily routine.

Key Takeaway 1: Mental decline with age is not inevitable.

Although DNA and genes play a role in the onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, they do not dictate a person’s health destiny. This is because the human brain was designed to work until death. As a result, it’s never too late for people to undo damage caused by years of poor dietary choices.

A study from the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago discovered that diet can impact mental decline. Researchers followed nearly 1,000 elderly people for five years and put them on a diet that combined elements of the Mediterranean Diet (e.g., vegetables) and the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) Diet (e.g., lean proteins). Ultimately, despite not living their entire lives on this MIND diet, participants’ risk for Alzheimer’s dropped and those who most closely adhered to it demonstrated cognitive performance equal to someone 7.5 years younger than themselves.