When I ask my senior friends what they do to keep their brains healthy, they talk about mental games such as crosswords, sudoku, word games, and some computer programs for cognitive fitness. That’s nice. But the most effective strategy for preventing dementia as we age is eating the right foods and taking care of digestive health.
A brain-healthy diet and good digestion are on par with exercise for preventing aging because they both prevent heart disease AND cognitive decay. So while we agree that seniors should eat the right foods for brain health, we often ignore how well our gut processes the food we eat.
The Gut and Brain Health
How is your digestive tract? By the time you’ve lived more than 65 years, you’ve had a gazillion meals, digested stuff that’s good for you, bad for you, ingested a lot of toxins and drunk our share of alcohol. We’ve ingested medications, and who-knows-what drugs, just for the fun of it.
Is it any wonder we seniors experience gas, bloating, cramps, constipation, diarrhea, and reflux? Even when we clean up our diet, we probably don’t have a steller gut to process food and send the nutrients on their designated way. Not to worry, probiotics and prebiotics can help.
Gut health is important because almost all people who suffer from brain decay and eventual dementia will first suffer some form of gut-related issues. The gut plays a major role in how well your brain functions.
Probiotics that Aid in Brain Health
The digestive tract is home to millions of microbes, some good, some not. These bugs live in your tract to help with digestion and produce short-chain fatty acids that aid in appetite suppression. Your gut microbes also make neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine. The brain uses those to improve communications between neurons, in particular, neurotransmitters promote sleep and enhance mood.
A poor diet leads to inflammatory reactions which endanger the health of the gut lining, leading to leaky gut. Just as toxins and inflammatory proteins can escape the intestinal lining and seep into the bloodstream, this can also happen to the blood-brain barrier. This is the way neurons are exposed to degenerative chemicals, through a leaky blood-brain barrier.
After a certain age, no matter how “clean” our diet, most of us could use help with our digestive health. There is plenty of available pre- and probiotic supplements on the market. Besides eating sauerkraut and other fermented foods, these supplements can help with gut health.
According to Dr. Perlmutter, author of Brain Maker, here are five essential bacteria to improve gut health. Look for probiotic supplements that contain colonies of the following:
- Lactobacillus plantarium
- Lactobacillus acidophilus
- Lactobacillus brevis
- Bifidobacterium lactis
- Bifidobacterium longum
Why Healing the Gut Is Key to Brain Health
One of the most common causes of chronic inflammation is “leaky gut” the seeping of bacteria, fragments of bacteria, other microbes, and incompletely digested food molecules through the intestinal lining.
This lining separates the contents of the digestive tract from the bloodstream. It’s made of one layer of epithelial cells with tight junctions in-between. When particles escape through it and into the bloodstream, it incites an inflammatory response.
Another cause of this leakage is metabolic syndrome, a combination of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high glucose, and inflammation associated with a diet high in sugars and other simple carbohydrates.
A third cause may be poor dentition such as periodontitis or gingivitis. This inflammation triggers the release of inflammatory proteins (cytokines) which can then increase the permeability of the blood-brain barrier. These cells are powerful defensive agents of the body, but the toxins they release (including reactive oxygen species) are injurious to the organism’s own tissues.
Healing the Gut
There are several ways to heal the gut and bring our microbiomes back to normal. Eliminate the causes of inflammation such as high sugar and high carbohydrates, and stop eating processed foods. You can also use bone broth (which you can make or buy). Supplements for digestive health include slippery elm, DGL (a licorice derivative available in health food stores), and ProButyrate or powdered collagen or L-glutamine.
After your gut has healed for a few weeks, probiotics from fermented foods such as kimchi, sauerkraut, or in capsules, and prebiotic foods such as jicama, raw leeks, garlic, banana, or in capsules will help get your gut microbiome back to optimal.
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