How Your Poop and Your Mind Connect

You are what you eat! The latest in medical science teaches us that there is a direct relationship between access to food and brain size and function. It turns out that several gut hormones that can enter the brain, or that are produced in the brain itself influence our cognitive ability. So much so that even small differences in our diet can have large effects on combating mental diseases and neurological weaknesses, while also influencing our reproductive success, and our overall emotions.
Larger brains in humanoids are associated with the development of cooking skills, access to food, energy savings, and upright walking and running; all of these features require coordination with cognitive strategies that are centered in successful feeding. These adaptations are also apparent in animals; the wildebeest annually travels hundreds of miles to find feeding grounds in the savannah, a behavior that requires fully operational and complex navigational, defensive, and cognitive conducts for survival. This means that our eating behaviors are integrated with centers of the brain that control cognition, learning, and memory via the hypothalamus, the hippocampus, and the amygdala.
In us humans, the dietary consumption of omega-3 fatty acids is one of the best-studied interactions between food and brain evolution. Over the past 100 years, the intake of saturated fatty acids, linoleic acids, and trans fatty acids has increased dramatically in Western civilizations, whereas the consumption of omega-3 fatty acids has decreased. This may partially explain the elevated incidence of major depression in the US. Better understanding these mechanisms will aid us in determining how best to manipulate diet in order to enhance cognitive abilities and counteracting the effects of aging.

With this in our minds, lets make the intentions to be mindful of our diet this week as it may just decrease our propensity of having ’shitty ideas’!