Enhancing cognitive faculties and slowing down the aging process
Do you often feel tired? Do you have sudden mood swings for no reason? Do you find yourself losing your train of thought? Chances are that you, too, have found yourself in at least one of these three situations.
What if I told you that this all depends on the kind of energy, in this case, low and poor quality, that your mitochondria produce, and that you can then take action to improve these aspects and much more?
Mitochondria
Mitochondria control all the basic systems of our body: they produce the energy needed for all cells to live by extracting it from the food we consume and the oxygen we breathe.
Quality of food and quality of the air we breathe are therefore essential prerequisites for putting the mitochondria in a position to work for us at their best. This is why food choices are so important!
We are not just introducing calories, we are introducing much more: health and disease information.
For better performance, all we need to do is increase mitochondrial function. Against physiological cellular aging, we must therefore avoid mitochondrial dysfunction.
How?
By providing our mitochondria right now with the best possible energy. Nutrition is one of the simplest means at our disposal to intervene right away and with surprising results already after only one month, and that depends solely on our control.
So, let’s see together what we can do concretely.
Avoid sugar
If we take in too much sugar, the mitochondria can no longer produce energy from fat and instead start creating it from glucose.
That’s when the brain, instead of using fat as fuel, stores it in fat cells (and the brain is the absolute most energy-consuming organ, then we have the heart and eyes), and the weight gain is real.
It is, alas, not just a matter of weight: the number, efficiency, and strength of mitochondria also determine our health or disease; and our cognitive performance. Understanding the dynamics that lead our mitochondria to produce “clean” energy is a long-term investment that also benefits against aging. That’s because the mitochondria themselves create all the energy our bodies need to function, control our cells’ communication, and decide what lives, dies, and when. The toxins accumulated in our bodies through the immoderate and uncontrolled intake of sugar are among the biggest culprits of hunger attacks. That’s why if we start taking care of our liver and kidneys, we will be able to give our metabolism a big hand as well. Indeed, it is the liver and kidneys that are the natural pathways for the disposal of toxins. Moreover, we lower our blood sugar levels and can forget about hunger pangs by detoxifying. As you can see, we are truly wonderful, multiple interlocking machines: everything is interconnected, and maintaining balance inevitably and pleasantly leads us to stay healthy!
When our brains struggle to focus, it is impossible to perform at our best.
That’s why it is our duty to take care of our mitochondria: to offer them more and better energy!
When the brain has low energy, it stimulates the release of cortisol (the stress hormone) and adrenaline (the attack-and-flight hormone and neurotransmitter) as emergency fuels.
Adrenaline sends a signal to the pancreas to release insulin that metabolizes glucose. The insulin spike generates even more stress and further cortisol release. This is how we start the process of insulin resistance, which is that situation where the body becomes insensitive to insulin. When we become insulin-insensitive, our cells have difficulty converting glucose into energy, which then accumulates in the blood. Useful tests to investigate our blood sugar levels are the glucose and glycated hemoglobin tests, the last one being a 3-month snapshot of the amount of glucose in the blood.
Ideally, we should have stable blood glucose levels. We can also investigate these values with special urine strips, and thus monitor blood glucose values throughout the day, especially after meals. This is a useful self-monitoring tool because it allows us to intervene directly and promptly.
How?
By changing our eating habits. It should be clear by now that low energy can be traced back to poor blood sugar regulation. And not becoming insulin-resistant is the prerequisite for achieving and maintaining good physical fitness. Poor memory, hunger pangs, chronic fatigue, mood swings, and difficulty concentrating are clear signs that our brain has poor energy levels. And it is appropriate and unavoidable to start taking action.
Eliminating sugars, even the hidden ones, is the first step to having and maintaining an active and performing brain!
Increases intake of good fats
Green light to good fats, that have been demonized and blamed for directly causing cholesterol increases for too many decades.
Nothing could be further from the truth! Fats such as ghee butter and grass-fed meat, colonnata lard, mangalitsa or pataìnnegra, and avocado are our best allies for fueling our mitochondria to produce clean, quality energy.
Incorporating them daily into our eating habits is the best thing we can do.
This helps us bring the body into ketosis, a term that scares more than a few nutritionists, but wrongly so.
Sometimes inducing our body into a state of mild physiological ketosis is a real boon: ketosis is the state in which the body burns fat at its best in order to produce energy.
So, starting on a dietary path that leads to changing habits and predisposing the good functioning of the mitochondria is the best choice we can make also and especially as “prevention”.
An advice
Reinforce the habit of making important decisions, all of them, at the beginning of the day, before entering a state of decision fatigue.
The brain has a whole lot of energy allocated to “decision-making”.
Moreover, being able to make good decisions depends largely on how high the energy level is.
Now that you have learned how to put your brain in a position to draw on quality energy, it’s only up to you to decide what to do!
I have already made my choice and can say that I am really happy with it.
