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Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs and Sugar – Your Brain’s Silent Killers by Dr. David Perlmutter

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Key Takeaways
  1. Gluten and modern grains are destroying your brain
  2. Recommendations - eat more veggies, brush your teeth, sweat and exercise regularly, rest a lot, don't smoke, laugh more, avoid all gluten, limit carbs to less than 60g per day where most of your calories are coming from high-quality fats and proteins (grass-fed, local, etc)
  3. Believes shift from high-fat, low-carb to low-fat, high-carb diet is causing many of our modern diseases such as chronic headaches, insomnia, anxiety, depression, epilepsy, schizophrenia and ADHD
  4. Much more intricate and intertwined relationship between what we eat and the health of our brain than recently thought
  5. Brain disorders often reflect poor nutrition and other lifestyle habits
  6. Inflammation a key indicator of disease throughout the body
  7. Often don't realize the negative effects gluten and carbs can have on the brain as there is no direct physical manifestation and often takes a long time to show up
  8. Two biggest myths today - low-fat, high-carb diet is good and cholesterol is bad
    • Cholesterol is one of the most important players to reduce brain disease, increase longevity and maintain brain health and function
    • Higher cholesterol levels linked with higher performance in verbal fluency, attention/concentration and abstract reasoning
  9. Interestingly, the human dietary requirement for carbs is virtually zero; we can survive on a minimal amount of carbs, which can be furnished by the liver as needed. But we can't go long without fat."
  10. Key Brain Supplements - DHA, resveratrol, turmeric, probiotics, coconut oil, alpha--lipoic acid, vitamin D
  11. Exercise spurs the generation of new brain cells as well as build new networks. Makes neurons more nimble and able to multitask
  12. Deep and consistent sleep extremely important
  13. Outlines a 4 week program in order to institute a gluten-free diet and other healthy habits
What I got out of it
  1. Not that I ate a lot of gluten before, but this has cemented it for me. Dr. Perlmutter advocates for <60g of carbs per day, no gluten, as many veggies as possible, majority of calories from high quality fats and protein and repeat. Certainly not always easy, but definitely simple