Become Smarter Today - Eat the Right Foods

How You can become smarter by eating right
This is the longest section of the three parts on a single topic as it includes almost every single one of the other foods that hasn’t been mentioned yet. Our brain uses approximately 20% of all the energy our body uses at any given day. The amount of energy it consumes is tremendous, especially since it only takes up 2% of our total body mass. From this fact alone, you can see how much the food we eat can affect the brain.

The brain is picky about what it takes in, as it only uses certain nutrients. Brain cells, the primary component our brains are made out of, require what we call neurotransmitters to carry messages around. Proteins, vitamins and minerals are the building blocks needed to create new neurotransmitters. However, some can be consumed almost directly, and I will be talking about that just a little later in the post.

Eating enough of these foods will boost your ability to think faster, better and even raise your intelligence (IQ).

If you know what to eat, and what to not eat, your mental capabilities will skyrocket.

The 3 key neurotransmitters in our brain are Acetylcholine, Dopamine & Serotonin – each of which is responsible for certain functions.

Acetylcholine

Here is a list of foods that help boost Acetylcholine, the neurotransmitter responsible for memory, concentration and focus:

• Egg Yolks
• Peanuts
• Meat – Chicken, Beef, Pork, Mutton
• Fish
• Liver
• Dairy Products – Milk and Cheese
• Vegetables – Broccoli, Cabbage and Cauliflower have higher amounts

Remember those clearly… and now for the next one neurotransmitter:

Dopamine

Dopamine is responsible for learning, a very important feature that helps boost intelligent memory, the memory that contributes to your overall intelligence. A list of foods that boost this particular neurotransmitter:

• All proteins – Meat, Milk products, Fish, Nuts, Beans, Soy products, etc.

Basically, anything that contains protein and it’s really quite hard to find a meal where we Do Not eat meat – so you probably won’t have to worry about this too much!

Serotonin

Serotonin is also responsible for learning and memory. Carbohydrates are the primary foods that contain the building blocks for this neurotransmitter. Some foods to increase your serotonin levels are:

• Pasta
• Potatoes
• Starchy Vegetables – Corn, Pumpkin, Peas, Yam, Sweet Potatoes
• Breads
• Cereals

Also to add, Serotonin is the key to a good sleep and it is responsible for making you sleepy, a very important factor for heightened intelligence and brain power – a topic for another day! Now back onto the subject…

The three main components

As you might have noticed, meat was present in two of the lists above and the reason is simple – they have complete proteins. Complete proteins contain essential quantities of all 8 essential amino acids that are needed for the body to create these neurotransmitters. Other foods such as vegetables, grains, seeds and nuts contain incomplete proteins and only have some of the 8 essential amino acids, but they contain the vitamins, which I will talk about soon enough.

If you find times where there’s hardly any meat on the dining table or if you are vegetarian, there is no need to worry. Combinations of foods with incomplete proteins will allow you to obtain ALL of the essential ones you can find in meats; the most popular combination being rice and beans.

You probably find it hard to remember what to eat with all these facts bombarding you, but only do it with the meals you can decide and plan. Simply, just remember that your meals should have at least one meat dish containing meat (chicken, beef, pork or mutton), at least one with carbohydrates (rice, bread, potatoes) and at least one with green, leafy vegetables. If any single one of them is missing, try to buy or find a dish that contains the missing one.

Alternatively, you could print this page out and put it in your kitchen as a reminder and checklist you can use whenever you go shopping for groceries.

DNA computers to fight diseases

Israeli scientists have developed tiny devices able to detect signs of cancer, and release drugs to treat the disease.

The work is still test-tube-based but it could lead to "nano-clinics" which remain in the body, sensing illnesses and then treating them automatically.
The devices are so small that roughly a trillion of them can fit into a microlitre (a millionth of a litre).
The research is led by Ehud Shapiro from the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot and is published in the journal Nature.
"The devices are made of biological molecules - DNA; synthetic DNA molecules which we produced to our design, and a naturally occurring enzyme which cuts DNA," Professor Shapiro told BBC News.
One algorithm which the team tested is intended to diagnose prostate cancer.
It says that if levels of two messenger RNA molecules (PPAP2B and GSTP1) are lower than usual, and levels of two others (PIM1 and HPN) are elevated, there must be prostate cancer cells in the vicinity.
If this analytical/computational segment "decides" that cancer is present, it tells the second segment to release the third segment, which is an anti-cancer drug - in this case, consisting of so-called anti-sense DNA.
This has the effect of suppressing gene activity involved in the cancer.
"We demonstrated one particular 'computer' for diagnosing prostate cancer and another 'computer' for diagnosing small-cell lung cancer," Professor Shapiro said.
"We mixed them together in solution with various disease conditions, and the right computer diagnosed the right disease in all conditions."

Smart medicine

So far these devices have only been trialled in test-tube solutions, and several decades of further work are needed before research could begin in humans.
But one day nano-scale devices like these could be used inside our bodies to protect against or treat cancers and other diseases.
"The best way to think about it is as a smart drug," suggested Professor Shapiro.
"Today, we bombard the body with drugs that go everywhere and operate everywhere and at any time.
"And what we designed is a smart drug that has some conditions encoded for its release; and it will be released and activated only at the right time and at the right location when a disease is diagnosed."
Dr Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK, said: "This work gives us some insight into the rapid progress being made in this field and the blurring of the divisions between the computer and natural sciences.
"They have moved the concept of the physician in the body - or more specifically here, an entire cancer team in the body - one whole step closer to reality.
"Inevitably, there's a huge amount of work to be done before molecular computers like this can be used to treat people.
"In the meantime, the global research effort to identify the perfect targets for treatment in different cancers will ensure that the biomolecular computers of the future have the best possible programmes."

By Richard Black
BBC science correspondent

Just who should get a boost in brainpower?

James McGaugh, director of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California-Irvine, bristles at the notion of people with normal brains taking medication to boost their brainpower. After all, he says, no one regards the slowing down of the body with age as a medical condition.

"Does Michael Jordan have age-related physical impairment?" McGaugh asks. Just as Jordan may not be as agile on the basketball court as he used to be, McGaugh says, there's strong evidence that memory processing slows with age. Any middle-aged person who has grasped for a word or a name can vouch for that. But "it's only critical if you want to appear on Jeopardy," McGaugh says.

Things get even more complicated if one considers the possibility of enhancing memory and learning in young people, McGaugh and others say.

For example, he says, if doctors took such a drug throughout their training, would they be required to continue taking it as a condition of their license to practice medicine? And what about children? McGaugh asks. "Are you going to put the pill in their lunchbox when they go off to school?" And, he asks, what if you can't afford to?

Nature Reviews Neuroscience published an article in May about the ethics of enhancing mental performance. The authors, a panel of neuroscientists and ethicists, suggest that "when we improve our productivity by taking a pill, we might also be undermining the value and dignity of hard work, medicalizing human effort" and labeling a normal attention span abnormal.

But memory researcher Mark Bear, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscientist, says it's unlikely that brain-boosting drugs will have much effect on young, healthy individuals whose brains have not yet begun to slow down.

"I think it's pretty clear in animal studies that treatments that will enhance memory in aged rats often will fail in young rats," says Bear, co-founder of Sention, a Providence, company that is testing two experimental drugs for Alzheimer's and other memory-robbing ailments in volunteers.

To Bear, taking a drug to counteract aging's effect on the brain isn't much different from wearing bifocals to compensate for aging's effect on vision.

Or maybe "smart drugs" are more analogous to Botox than to bifocals, another example of "the baby-boom generation wanting to maintain a youthful quality of life right into old age," says Bear, who, at 46, falls smack-dab in the middle of the boomer generation. "We really are not accepting age gracefully."

By Rita Rubin, USA TODAY