(Food quality and seasonal eating)
For maximum benefit, we should eat vegetables and fruits that are in season, free of pesticides, and locally grown. The fruits and vegetables that most grocery stores sell as fresh are picked days or weeks before they’re ripe, with the idea that they’ll ripen in transit.
To keep it simple, you can eat the whole plant as much as you like. However, the plant extract, the active ingredient, has a dose-dependent effect. This means that a little bit will help you, but a large amount will shut down the beneficial effects.
Coconut oil and MCT oil are jet fuel for the brain. These medium-chain triglycerides pass through the intestinal wall without causing an insulin spike and go into the mitochondria inside cells. Take two tablespoons daily—one tablespoon in the morning and one tablespoon midafternoon, together with MCT oil in the same proportion. You can also add coconut oil to soup and tea. I like to eat it straight from the jar, like ice cream! The dosage is 4 tablespoons (¼ cup) daily, preferably in the morning. Ubiquinol is a more efficient version of coenzyme Q10, which is essential for energy production by our mitochondria. When mice who were fed ubiquinol during their lives reached the equivalent of 90 years of human age, they were still “going skiing” compared with a control group of mice that were riddled with cancers and heart disease. The dosage is 200 mg daily.
It takes two to three days to burn through the residual sugars in your bloodstream and switch to using fat for fuel. These ketones were turning on higher brain functions I had been trying to reach by sitting cross-legged on a meditation pillow.
That day I realized that what we call spiritual experiences are not only the result of our meditation practice, but of our brain chemistry. We need both. Today I bring a jar of coconut oil whenever I go on a retreat and give it to all of our participants in our Grow a New Body programs to help them get over the hump of the first couple of days it takes to switch into ketosis.
Consuming healthy fats like avocados, coconut oil, and olive oil fuels the brain and the heart (and all our mitochondria) with ketone bodies, which are many times more efficient a fuel than sugars.
(Brain chemistry, stress hormones, and the hippocampus)
The hippocampus cannot tell time, so it often confuses something happening today with something similar that happened 20 years ago. That new person we just met may trigger memories of a former lover from years back, and that’s where the conversation ends. And the hippocampus is linked not just to past events but also to old behaviors, worn-out thoughts, and used-up feelings. When it’s damaged, we keep recalling the same painful situations, the same painful emotions, over and over again. We aren’t as open to new experiences and learning.
You heal the hippocampus by increasing your level of serotonin (made by the flora in your gut) and switching on the production of stem cells in the brain.
am convinced that much of what we call intuition is really a gut instinct that is available to us all once we repair our gut and upgrade the colony of good bacteria that make up more than 90 percent of who we are.
All these roles—victim, persecutor, rescuer—keep us feeling scared, defensive, envious, and competitive.
I can’t count how many times I have heard someone say, “If it weren’t for caffeine, I wouldn’t get anything done!” Nature designed the brain to deal with only one lion roaring at us at a time, not the entire jungle turning against us. Now, however, our brain is too overtaxed to sort through all the data, much less look at it with fresh eyes and decide what is or is not a crisis, and what, if anything, needs to be done about it.
Addicted to Adrenaline The hippocampus is rich in cortisol receptors; and when stress floods the system with cortisol those stress hormones damage the hippocampus, which can shrink by nearly 50 percent in size. But by nourishing the brain with omega-3 fatty acids, you can repair the hippocampus and reset the HPA axis. In as little as six weeks of supplementing with 2 grams (2,000 mg) daily of DHA, you can begin to see beauty where you saw only ugliness and sense opportunity where you perceived only danger. The hippocampus repairs quickly, and when you stop feeding your brain adrenaline and caffeine, you start to transform the negative effects of stress. When the HPA axis is quiet, the alchemical laboratory in the pineal gland begins to produce bliss molecules that flood the brain, creating states of joy and communion. The brain cannot manufacture the chemicals for fear and stress and produce the molecules for bliss and joy at the same time. It’s either one or the other.
He focused only on the orgasm, missing the shared pleasures of foreplay. His drive to be the first to the finish line, which served him so well in his work as an investment banker, made him a loser in bed. He was unable to slow down and appreciate the intimacy.
(Preparing for the program: eliminations and substitutions)
How to Prepare for the Grow a New Body Program If you are a consummate meat eater and are attached to your morning croissant and pasta dinners, you will need to change your eating habits to a primarily plant-based diet before you start the program. You will also need to go off sugar, dairy, and gluten.
What to Include Raw vegetables; salads with avocados, olives Nuts (almonds, macadamia nuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, etc., but no peanuts) Nut butters (almond, cashew) Healthy oils (coconut, olive oil, cold-pressed nut oils) Spices and herbs, include ginger, turmeric, cilantro Onions and garlic Herbal teas (non-caffeinated)
If you’ll be eating out, order grilled or steamed vegetables.
What to Avoid Dairy (milk, cheese, yogurt, butter, ghee) Red meat Gluten (barley, rye, oats, spelt, wheat, and other foods that contain gluten) Corn, soy, peanuts Vegetables in the deadly nightshade family (tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, potatoes) Sugars (table sugar, honey, maple syrup, corn syrup) Products containing or made with yeast (wine, vinegar, breads)
On waking: Drink a 12-ounce glass of pure water, with half a lemon squeezed into it. This will help to set your body’s pH, or body acidity/alkaline balance, to be a little more alkaline. An alkaline gut is a perfect environment for your gut flora to thrive and an uncomfortable environment for bad bugs and viruses. The typical Western diet is overabundant in acid-producing foods, resulting among other things in loss of bone density. You can have green tea or a black tea, and you can use homemade almond milk in it if you like. You will find the recipe for almond milk in Chapter 17.
10 A.M. Vegetable broth. This broth is rich in the micronutrients that your body needs to repair. Include one tablespoon of MCT oil and coconut oil for ready fuel and to maintain nutritional ketosis.
Green Smoothie 2 Servings ½ cup spinach ½ cup kale 1 cucumber, peeled ½ or 1 lemon, peeled and chopped, to taste 1-inch piece fresh ginger 1 handful mint leaves 1/2 green apple, cored 2 cups filtered water 1 tablespoon MCT oil 1 tablespoon coconut oil 1 small ripe avocado, without pit or skin Blend the spinach, kale, cucumber, lemon, ginger, mint, apple, and water in a blender. Add the avocado and oils at the end, and then stir. This is a very potent mix. If it is too strong, add a bit more cucumber.
Be sure to use greens as your base, adding veggies and fats (and proteins) on top. VEGETABLES Artichoke hearts Scallions Broccoli Snap peas Cucumbers Sprouts (You can make your own bean sprouts at home.) Herbs—oregano, cilantro, basil, and dill to taste Steamed asparagus Mushrooms (cooked) Sun-dried tomatoes Radishes Zucchini
you do IV chelation, be sure you work with a knowledgeable physician. I work with Petra Kscheschinski, a mitochondrial medicine practitioner near Freiburg, Germany.