Unformatted text preview: "An innovative approach to our most fragile organ."
M RH M KT O Z . M I) The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Curbs,
and Sugar Your Brain's Silent Killers BRAIN
D A V I D P E R L M U T T E R , MD
A u t h o r of The Better Ifrain Hook
WITH KRISTIN LOBERG GRAIN
BRAIN
The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs,
and Sugar— Your Brain's Silent Killers DAVID PERLMUTTER, MD
WITH KRISTIN LOBERG LITTLE, BROWN A N D C O M P A N Y
NEW YORK BOSTON LONDON I DAVID PEfiLHUTTgR. MO
¥»•*• Itllltll lOIIIC Begin Reading
Table of Contents
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Copyright Page
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[email protected] Thank you for your support of the
author's rights. To my father, who at age ninety-six begins each day by
getting dressed to see his patients—despite having retired
more than a quarter century ago. Your brain...
weighs three pounds and has one hundred
thousand miles of blood vessels,
contains more connections than there are stars
in the Milky Way.
is the fattest organ in your body,
could be suffering this very minute without
your having a clue. Introduction
Against the Grain Maintaining order rather than correcting disorder
is the ultimate principle of wisdom. To cure disease
after it has appeared is like digging a well when
one feels thirsty, or forging weapons after the war
has already begun.
—NEI JlNG, 2ND CENTURY BC
IF YOU COULD ASK YOUR GRANDPARENTS or sreatgrandparents what people died from when they were
growing up, you'd likely hear the words "old age." Or you
might learn the story of someone who got a nasty germ and
passed away prematurely from tuberculosis, cholera, or
dysentery. What you won't hear are things like diabetes,
cancer, heart disease, and dementia. Since the midtwentieth century, we've had to attribute someone's
immediate cause of death to a single
w disease rather than
use the term "old age" on a death certificate. Today, those
single
w diseases tend to be the kind that 20
w on and on in a
chronic, degenerating state and involve multiple complications and symptoms that accumulate over time.
Which is why eighty- and ninety-year-olds don't usually
die from a specific ailment. Like an old house in ongoing
disrepair, the materials weather and rust, the plumbing and
electrical falter, and the walls begin to crack from tiny
fissures you cannot see. Throughout the home's natural
decline, you do the needed maintenance wherever
necessary. But it will never be like new unless you tear the
structure down and start over again. Each attempt at
patching and fixing buys you more time, but eventually the
areas in desperate need of a total remodel or complete
replacement are everywhere. And, as with all things in life,
the human body simply wears out. An enfeebling illness
sets in and slowly progresses at an excruciating pace until
the body finally goes kaput.
This is especially true when it comes to brain disorders,
includingw the most dreaded of them all: Alzheimer's
disease. It's a modern medical bogeyman that's never far
from the headlines. If there is one health worry that seems
to eclipse all others as people get older, it's falling prey to
Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia that leaves
you unable to think, reason, and remember. Research
shows how deep this angst runs. In 2011, a study
conducted by Harris Interactive for the MetLife
Foundation showed that 31 percent of people fear dementia more than death or cancer.- And this fear doesn't
just affect older people.
There are plenty of perpetual myths about the basket of
brain-degenerating
w
w maladies that includes Alzheimer's: It's
in the genes, it's inevitable with age, and it's a given if
you live into your eighties and beyond.
Not so fast.
I'm here to tell you that the fate of your brain is not in
your genes. It's not inevitable. And if you're someone who
suffers from another type of brain disorder, such as
chronic headaches, depression, epilepsy, or extreme
moodiness, the culprit may not be encoded in your DNA.
It's in the food you eat.
Yes, you read that right: Brain dysfunction starts in
your daily bread, and I'm going to prove it. I'll state it
again
because I realize it sounds absurd: Modern Ograins are
w
silently destroying your brain. By "modern," I'm not just
referring to the refined white flours, pastas, and rice that
have already been demonized by the anti-obesity folks; I'm
referring to all the grains that so many of us have embraced
as beingw healthful—whole wheat,' whole wgrain, multigrain.
w
'
seven-grain, live grain, stone-ground, and so on. Basically,
I am calling what is arguably our most beloved dietary
staple a terrorist group that bullies our most precious
organ,
w ' the brain. I will demonstrate how fruit and other
J carbohydrates could be health hazards with far-reaching
consequences that not only will wreak physical havoc on
your brain, but also will accelerate your body's aging
process from the inside out. This isn't science fiction; it's
now documented fact.
It is my objective in writing Grain Brain to provide
information that is sound and based on evolutionary,
modern scientific and physiological perspectives. This
book goes outside the box of the layman's accepted dogma
—and away from vested corporate interests. It proposes a
new way of understanding the root cause of brain disease
and offers a promising message of hope: Brain disease can
be largely prevented through the choices you make in life.
So if you haven't figured it out by now, I'll be crystal
clear: This is not just another diet book or generic how-to
guide to all things preventive health. This is a gamechanaer.
w
Eveiy day we hear about something new in our various
wars against chronic disease, particularly with regard to
illnesses that are predominantly avoidable through lifestyle
habits. You'd have to be livina under a rock not to know
that we are getting fatter and fatter ever)- year despite all
the information sold to us about how to stay slim and trim.
You'd also be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn't
know about our soaring rates of type 2 diabetes. Or the
r fact that heart disease is our number one killer, trailed
closely by cancer.
Eat your vegetables. Brush your teeth. Sweat once in a
while. Get plenty of rest. Don't smoke. Laugh more. There
are certain tenets to health that are pretty commonsensical
and that we all know we should practice routinely. But
somehow, when it comes to preserving our brain's health
and mental faculties, we tend to think it's not really up to
us—that somehow it's our destiny to develop brain
disorders during our prime and grow senile in our elder
years, or that we'll escape such a fate through the luck of
good genes or medical breakthroughs. Certainly, we would
probably do well to stay mentally engaged after retirement,
complete crossword puzzles, keep reading, and go to
museums. And it's not like there's a blatantly obvious,
direct correlation between brain dysfunctions and specific
lifestyle choices as there is between, say, smoking two
packs of cigarettes a day and getting lung cancer, or
waoraina
O w on French fries and becomina
w obese. Like I said.'
we have a habit of categorizing brain ailments separately
from the other afflictions we attribute to bad habits. I'm
going to change this perception by showing you the
relationship between how you live and your risk of
developing an array of brain-related problems, some that
can strike when you're a toddler and others that get diagnosed at the other end of your life span. I believe that
the shift in our diet that has occurred over the past century
—from high-fat, low-carb to today's low-fat, high-carb
diet, fundamentally consisting of grains and other
damaging carbohydrates—is the origin of many of our
modern scourges
w linked to the brain,' includingw chronic
headaches, insomnia, anxiety, depression, epilepsy,
movement disorders, schizophrenia, attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and those senior moments
that quite likely herald serious cognitive decline and fullblown, irreversible, unbeatable, and incurable brain
disease. I'll reveal to you the profound effect that grains
could be having on your brain right now without your
even sensingw it.
The idea that our brains are sensitive to what we eat has
been quietly circulating in our most prestigious medical
literature recently. This information begs to be known by
the public, which is increasingly duped by an industry that
sells foods commonly thought of as "nutritious." It also
has led doctors and scientists like me to question what we
consider to be "healthy." Are carbohydrates and processed
polyunsaturated vegetable oils such as canola, corn,
cottonseed, peanut, safflower, soybean, and sunflower to
blame for our spiraling rates of cardiovascular disease,
obesity, and dementia? Is a high-saturated fat and high- cholesterol diet actually good for the heart and brain? Can
we really change our DNA with food despite the genes
we've inherited? It's fairly well known now that a small
percentage of the population's digestive systems are
sensitive to gluten, the protein found in wheat, barley, and
rye; but is it possible for virtually everyone's brain to have
a negative reaction to this ingredient?
Questions like these really began to bother me a fewyears ago as damning research started to emerge while my
patients got sicker. As a practicing neurologist who cares
day in and day out for individuals searching for answers to
debilitatingw brain conditions, as well as families struggling
OO
w
to cope with the loss of a loved one's mental faculties, I'm
compelled to get to the bottom of this. Perhaps it's
because I'm not just a board-certified neurologist but also
a fellow of the American College of Nutrition—the only
doctor in the country with both of these credentials. I'm
also a foundingw member and fellow of the American Board
of Integrative and Holistic Medicine. This enables me to
have a unique perspective on the relationship between
what we eat and how our brains function. This is not well
understood by most people, including doctors who were
educated years before this new science was established. It's
time we paid attention. It's time someone like me came
out from behind the microscope and the door to the
J clinical exam room and frankly, blew the whistle. After
all, the statistics are astounding.w
For starters, diabetes and brain disease are this
country's costliest and most pernicious diseases, yet they
are largely preventable and are uniquely tied together:
Having diabetes doubles your risk for Alzheimer's disease.
In fact, if there's one thing this book clearly demonstrates,
it's that many of our illnesses that involve the brain share
common denominators. Diabetes and dementia may not
seem related at all, but I'm going to show you just howclose every one of our potential brain dysfunctions is to
conditions that we rarely attribute to the brain. I'm also
going to draw surprising connections between vastly
different brain disorders, such as Parkinson's and a
propensity to engage in violent behavior, that point to root
causes of an array of afflictions that involve the brain.
While it's well established that processed foods and
refined carbohydrates have contributed to our challenges
with obesity and so-called food allergies, no one has
explained the relationship between grains and other
ingredients
and brain health and.' in the broader outlook.'
w
DNA. It's pretty straightforward: Our genes determine not
just how we process food but, more important, how we
respond to the foods we eat. There is little doubt that one
of the largest
and most wide-reachingw events in the
w
? J ultimate decline of brain health in modern society has been
the introduction of wheat srain into the human diet. While
it's true that our Neolithic ancestors consumed minuscule
amounts of this wsrain. what we now call wheat bears little
resemblance to the wild einkorn variety that our forebears
consumed on rare occasions. With modern hybridization
and gene-modifying technology, the 133 pounds of wheat
that the average American consumes each year shares
almost no genetic, structural, or chemical likeness to what
hunter-gatherers might have stumbled upon. And therein
lies the problem: We are increasingly challenging our
physiology with ingredients for which we are not
genetically prepared.
For the record, this is not a book about celiac disease (a
rare autoimmune disorder that involves gluten but only
affects a small number of people). If you're already
thinking that this book isn't for you because (1) you
haven't been diagnosed with any condition or disorder, or
(2) you're not sensitive to gluten as far as you know, I
implore you to read on. This is about all of us. Gluten is
what I call a "silent waerm." It can inflict lastingw damaae
w
without your knowing it.
Beyond calories, fat, protein, and micronutrients, we
now understand that food is a powerful epigenetic
modulator—meaningw it can chanae
w our DNA for better or
J worse. Indeed, beyond simply serving as a source of
calories, protein, and fat, food actually regulates the
expression of many of our genes. And we have only just
begun to understand the damaging consequences of wheat
consumption from this perspective.
Most of us believe that we can live our lives however
we choose, and then when medical problems arise, we can
turn to our doctors for a quick fix in the form of the latest
and greatest pill. This convenient scenario fosters an
illness-centered approach on the part of physicians as they
play their role as the purveyors of pills. But this approach
is tragically flawed on two counts. First, it is focused on
illness, not wellness. Second, the treatments themselves are
often fraught with dangerous consequences. As an
example, a recent report in the prestigious Archives of
Internal Medicine revealed that postmenopausal women
who were put on statin drugs to lower their cholesterol
had a nearly 48 percent increased risk of developing
diabetes compared to those who weren't given the drug.^
This one example becomes even more critical when you
consider that becoming diabetic doubles your risk for
Alzheimer's disease.
These days, we are seeing an ever-increasing public
awareness of the effects of lifestyle choices on health as
well as disease risk. We often hear of the "heart smart" diet or recommendations to increase dietary fiber as a strategy
to reduce colon cancer risk. But why is precious little
information made available about how we can keep our
brains healthy and stave off brain diseases? Is it because
the brain is tied to the ethereal concept of the mind, and
this erroneously distances it from our ability to control it?
Or is it that pharmaceutical companies are invested in
discouraging the idea that lifestyle choices have a
profound influence on brain health? Fair warning: I'm not
going to have kind things to say about our pharmaceutical
industry. I know far too many stories of people abused by
it than helped by it. You'll be reading some of these stories
in the pages ahead.
This book is about those lifestyle changes you can make
today to keep your brain healthy, vibrant, and sharp, while
dramatically reducing your risk for debilitating brain
disease in the future. I have dedicated more than thirty-five
years to the study of brain diseases. My workday centers on
creating integrative programs designed to enhance brain
function in those afflicted with devastatingw disease. On a
daily basis I meet with families and other loved ones
whose lives have been turned upside down by illness. It's
heart-wrenchinaw for me as well. Each morninaw before I
start my day, I visit with my ninety-six-year-old father. A
former brilliant neurosurgeon trained at the prestigious Lahey Clinic, he now resides in an assisted-living facility
located across the parking lot from my office. While he
may or may not remember my name, he almost never
foraets
to tell me to make sure I make rounds on each of
w
his patients. He retired more than twenty-five years ago.
The information that I will reveal to you is not just
breathtaking; it's undeniably conclusive. You'll be shifting
how you eat immediately. And you'll be looking at
yourself in a whole new light. Right about now, you might
be asking, Is the damage already done? Have you
doomed your brain from all those years of having your
cake and eating it too? Don't panic. More than anything, I
intend this book to be empowering, equipping you with a
remote control to your future brain. It's all about what you
do from this day forward.
Drawing on decades of clinical and laboratory studies
(including my own), as well as extraordinary results I've
seen over the past thirty-odd years in my practices, I'll tell
you what we know and how we can take advantage of this
knowledge. I'll also offer a comprehensive action plan to
transform your cognitive health and add more vibrant years
to your life. And the benefits don't stop at brain health. I
can promise that this program can help any of the
foliowins:
w ADHD
anxiety and chronic stress
chronic headaches and misraines
w
depression
diabetes
epilepsy
focus and concentration problems
inflammatory conditions and diseases, including
arthritis
insomnia
intestinal problems, including celiac disease, gluten
sensitivity, and irritable bowel
memory problems and mild cognitive impairment,
frequently a precursor to Alzheimer's disease
mood disorders
overweight and obesity
Tourette's syndrome
and much more
Even if you don't suffer from any of the above conditions, this book can help you preserve your wellbeinaw and mental acuities. It is for both the old and the
young, including women who plan to become or are
pregnant. As I write this introduction, yet another study has
emerged
showingw that babies born to women who are
w
sensitive to gluten live with an increased risk of
developing schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders
later in life.- That's a huae,
w ' chillina
w finding
w that all
expectant moms need to know.
I've seen dramatic turnarounds in health, such as the
twenty-three-year-old man whose crippling tremors
vanished after a few easy changes to his diet, and the
countless case studies of epileptic patients whose seizures
ended the day they replaced grains with more fats and
protein. Or the thirty-something woman who experienced
an extraordinary transformation in her health after
suffering from a litany of medical challenges. Before
coming to see me, she not only experienced crushing
migraines, depression, and heartbreaking infertility, but
also had a rare condition called dystonia that contorted her
muscles into strange positions and nearly incapacitated her.
Thanks to a few simple dietary tweaks, she allowed her
body and brain to recover back to perfect health... and a
perfect pregnancy. These stories speak for themselves and
are emblematic of millions of other stories of people who live with unnecessary life-depleting conditions. I see a lot
of patients who have "tried everything" and who have had
every neurological exam or scan available to them in the
hope of finding a cure for their condition. With a fewsimple prescriptions that don't involve drugs, surgery, or
even talk therapy, the vast majority of them heal and find a
path back to health. You'll find all of these prescriptions in
this book.
A brief note about the book's organization:
I've divided
w
the material into three parts, starting with a comprehensive
questionnaire designed to show you how your daily habits
might
health of
w be affecting
w the function and long-term
O
your brain.
Part 1, "The Whole Grain Truth," takes you on a tour
of your brain's friends and enemies, the latter of which
render you vulnerable ...
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