Sack of sugarKeeping your brain fueled in today’s high-carb culture can be tricky. If you’re following conventional guidelines and eating plenty of grains, you’re probably eating more carbohydrates than is healthy for your brain.

Supplying brain energy is a delicate balancing act. Give it too little fuel, and you feel lightheaded, spacey, and irritable. Give it too much, and you feel lethargic and drowsy. To maintain a steady flow of energy to your brain you need to eat brain-friendly foods, avoid overeating or undereating, and watch the carbs—the bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, corn, grains, beans, sweets, and sodas.

Since your body rapidly breaks down carbohydrates to simple sugars, eating a diet that’s carb-rich, especially one that contains little protein, fat, and fiber, sends your blood sugar soaring. In response, your pancreas goes into overdrive pumping out insulin to ferry that excess sugar from your bloodstream into your cells and converting the excess into fat. The more often you eat meals and snacks in which these foods predominate, the greater your risk of developing insulin resistance, a situation in which the cells becomes resistant to insulin. As a result, insulin can’t usher glucose into cells, depriving them of energy, and there is too much glucose in your bloodstream.

Too Much of a Good Thing

One of the many disastrous effects of insulin resistance is that the excess sugar and insulin in your blood throws your neurotransmitters off balance. (Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers produced by nerve cells that allow them to communicate with one another.)

Take the “happy and joyful” neurotransmitter serotonin, for example. Carb-rich foods stimulate serotonin production—why starchy foods are known as comfort foods. Keep up the high-carb life, however, and the constant over-activity in the serotonin pathways eventually depletes your serotonin supply. Insulin resistance and it’s evil twin hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) also interfere with serotonin activity and can contribute to symptoms of depression.

Another neurotransmitter that is thrown off balance by insulin resistance is dopamine, the “pleasure and reward” neurotransmitter. This is the neurotransmitter that motivates you but also gives you that pleasurable boost when you engage in something addictive. High-carb foods can become addictive by stimulating the same pleasure centers in the brain drugs do. Also, when you eat too many carbs, serotonin production edges out dopamine. As a result, you may feel symptoms of low dopamine activity: hopeless, worthless, unmotivated, and short-tempered.

Eating for a Balanced Brain

Forget eating what you please in this culture, where unhealthy temptations surround us. If you have insulin resistance or are in danger of developing it, the worst things you can do are to overeat and/or eat a lot of carbohydrates. Here are seven steps to set you on the road to a healthy, balanced supply of energy to your brain:

  1. Eat high-quality protein and fat for breakfast. You’ve just been fasting for eight to 12 hours and if you don’t eat your adrenal fight-or-flight hormones will kick in to keep blood sugar up. But they also stress out your brain. A healthy, robust breakfast sets the stage for an even supply of calming energy.
  2. Find your carb tolerance and stick to it. If you feel sleepy or crave sugar after you eat, you’ve had too many. If you feel sleepy or crave sugar after a low-carb meal, try eating smaller meals more often.
  3. Do not go too long without eating. Many people find eating a small amount every two to three hours helps stabilize their blood sugar. Skipping breakfast and going too long between meals can send blood sugar plummeting and engage the stress response. As your blood sugar becomes more stable you can extend time between eating.
  4. When you do eat high-carb foods—grains; legumes; starchy vegetables like potatoes and peas; and sweets—have some fiber, fat, or protein foods, too, to slow the release of glucose into the bloodstream.
  5. Avoid all fruit juices and carrot juice. Some can be more sugary than soda.
  6. Take nutrients that help cells regain insulin sensitivity: These include chromium, the mineral vanadium, alpha lipoic acid, mixed tocopherols (vitamin E), magnesium, biotin, zinc, inositol, and gymnema sylvestre.
  7. Choose foods that are brain-friendly. This means a whole foods diet that is vegetable-based, high in omega 3s, and with sufficient protein and fat. Avoid inflammatory foods. You may want to try the autoimmune or leaky gut diet to find out which foods are inflammatory for you.

12 Comments

  • Micheline Whissel July 24, 2015 at 3:44 am

    My question is after reading this type of litterature lately is “Why was I not told any of this before now????¨

    80% of dopamine is formed in the colon!?

    Really!! Instead of having to take a whole bunch of meds, why was I not offered a detox program like the Candida diet before!

  • Louis September 3, 2016 at 11:13 pm

    Have been on the autoimmune protocol and find the hypoglycemia still plaguing me.
    Have been seeing a functional medicine doctor for a year now. Lately we added stress B formula and increased complex carbs at lunch and supper. I still have to wake up at 230 am to eat and then the following sleep is terrible. My diet is impeccable. What else can I do?

    • Susan (admin) September 6, 2016 at 11:13 pm

      Louis – Unwinding blood sugar imbalance issues (and associated sleep issues etc.) can take some time, but it’s possible with proper diet and lifestyle habits. Dr. K’s brain book is a great resource for unwinding blood sugar issues – the protocols and lifestyle recommendations get directly at blood sugar.

      Eating habits, not only diet, are key for blood sugar stability. Try not to eat any sweets before lunch (and then, only fruit in moderation), no caffeine (really), and make sure to eat every 2-3 hours so you never get low blood sugar. Include some protein and healthy fat (such as coconut, olive, or avocado oil) at every meal – even snacks. For those with blood sugar instability, a small bedtime snack high in protein (NOT sugars!) is recommended. This helps keep the blood glucose stable long enough to get a good night’s sleep. When blood sugar gets low, the body produces cortisol, which helps to wake you, and then it’s hard to sleep well or at all.

      These are just a few suggestions, but may help with your insomnia.

  • Jane March 15, 2017 at 4:58 am

    What do you have on parkinson’s

    • Susan (admin) March 26, 2017 at 6:12 pm

      Jane; Your question isn’t very specific, so I’m not sure exactly where you are aiming, but I assume you want to know how blood sugar balance affects risk for Parkinson’s. If you delve into Dr. Kharrazian’s book “Why Isn’t My Brain Working”, it goes into some depth on how blood sugar balance affects brain function via inflammation, and how newer research is showing that may have an effect on Parkinson’s risk. I don’t have a handy list of research references for you. If you get the kindle version of the book, you can search by keyword – Parkinson’s is mentioned many times.

  • Eduardo Siqueira Filho August 22, 2017 at 8:21 pm

    How can I use what I just read in this amazing article to help me beat chronical depression syntoms of high stress, irritability, sadness, hopelessness and unmotivation unmotivation? Tried several antidepressants but nothing really worked. Shall I go after some natural supplement or a diet?

    • Susan (admin) August 24, 2017 at 1:45 am

      Eduardo;

      The “Eating for a Balanced Brain” recommendations at the end of the article can be very useful for depression. It can take some adjustment to make the changes, but it’s worth it in my opinion. Also check out the link at the end to the leaky gut diet; it’s not only for the gut, but for many inflammatory conditions. You might be interested in reading Dr. Kharrazian’s book on brain health – in it he goes into much more depth on how blood sugar balance affects brain function, inflammation (which is now being considered as a major player in depression and anxiety), plus other factors and recommendations.

  • Joleen December 2, 2017 at 12:49 pm

    Do you have any suggestions for juvenile myoclonic epilepsy with grand mal seizures? My daughter is 19 and has had them for almost 3 years.

    • Susan (admin) December 3, 2017 at 5:52 pm

      Joleen;

      Sorry, but Dr. Kharrazian can’t give medical recommendations via the blog or email. If you don’t already have a practitioner you are happy with, I’d suggest contacting one of the practitioners on Dr. Kharrazian’s referral page: http://thyroidbook.com/practitioner-locator/.

      You might also try the IAFNR practitioner finder: https://iafnr.org/member-referral-directory/.

      Good luck, and don’t give up; you will find a practitioner to see in person.

  • Connie July 16, 2019 at 10:01 pm

    What can I substitute for protein on the healthy brain and leaky gut diet if I’m vegan?

    • Susan (admin) September 20, 2019 at 9:35 pm

      Hi Connie;

      The dietary protocol that Dr. Kharrazian recommends doesn’t cater to vegan dietary habits. However, there are patients who try to make it work, and you might find guidance online: just do a web search for “vegan AIP”. I can’t attest to the effectiveness of this variation, as it would not provide a lot of the factors that the AIP is known to provide. Good luck with it.

  • Charlie October 15, 2020 at 3:19 am

    Everyone on here struggling with depression or anxiety should think about trying clinical ketamine treatments. Make sure your doctor doesn’t put benzos in the solution. I struggled with non responsive anxiety and depression, and have the mthfr Gene mutation, and this is the only thing that offered me any relief. I also struggled with blood sugar and cravings but likely caused by neurotransmitter imbalance. Ketamine really helped me.

6 Trackbacks

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  • […] A need for wheat, carbs, sugar, can lead to feelings of addiction and depression.  According to an article in the Huffington Post, “Consuming sugar stimulates the release of the mood-boosting neurotransmitter serotonin. Constantly over-activating these serotonin pathways can deplete our limited supplies of the neurotransmitter, which can contribute to symptoms of depression, according to Dr. Datis Kharrazian, functional medicine expert and author of Why Isn’t My Brain…” […]

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  • […] Sugar-rich and carb-laden foods can also mess with the neurotransmitters that help keep our moods stable. Consuming sugar stimulates the release of the mood-boosting neurotransmitter serotonin. Constantly over-activating these serotonin pathways can deplete our limited supplies of the neurotransmitter, which can contribute to symptoms of depression, according to Dr. Datis Kharrazian, functional medicine expert and author of Why Isn’t My Brain…. […]

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