Summary & Study Guide - Brain Food: The Surprising Science of Eating for Cognitive Power

By Lee Tang

How to Improve Memory, Prevent Cognitive Decline,
Avoid Alzheimer’s Disease and
Other Forms of Dementia

This book is a summary of “Brain Food: The Surprising Science of Eating for Cognitive Power,” by Lisa Mosconi, PhD.

Forty-six million people are living with dementia worldwide today, and this number will skyrocket to 132 million by the year 2050. The most common cause of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease. No medication or supplement can delay or stop the progression of the disease because treating a patient once clinical symptoms have emerged is too late.

Recent medical research offers us hope. Based on research from multiple specialties, Dr. Lisa Mosconi shows that lifestyle interventions such as dietary choices, weight modification, and physical activity could prevent Alzheimer’s, minimize cognitive decline, improve memory, and maximize brain power. As the most active organ of the body, the brain has nutritional needs ten times higher than other organs. Most people’s brains are underperforming because they are undernourished. In Brain Food, Dr. Mosconi explains how food affects our cognitive health and offers a complete food plan for optimal brain nourishment.

Eating for your brain not only helps you prevent cognitive decline, but also helps you increase brain vitality, improve memory, cognition, and work performance.

This guide includes:
* Book Summary—The summary helps you understand the key ideas and recommendations.
* Online Videos—on-demand replay of public lectures, and seminars on the topics covered in the chapter.
Value-added from this guide:
* Save time
* Understand key concepts
* Expand your knowledge

• Language: English
• Publisher: LMT Press
• Release date: Sep 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781988970158

Lee Tang

Lee Tang is a retired executive of a major global insurance company. Prior to his retirement, he has worked as an actuary, a risk officer and a chief financial officer for several major insurance organizations in the United States, Canada, and Taiwan. To learn more about Lee and his work, visit his website and blog at https://lmtpress.wordpress.com. You can reach him by email at [e-mail].

Book preview

How to Improve Memory, Prevent Cognitive Decline, and Avoid Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Forms of Dementia

This book is a summary of Brain Food: The Surprising Science of Eating for Cognitive Power, by Lisa Mosconi, PhD.

Forty-six million people are living with dementia worldwide today, and this number will skyrocket to 132 million by the year 2050. The most common cause of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease. No medication or supplement can delay or stop the progression of the disease because treating a patient once clinical symptoms have emerged is too late.

Recent medical research offers us hope. Based on research from multiple specialties, Dr. Lisa Mosconi shows that lifestyle interventions such as dietary choices, weight modification, and physical activity could prevent Alzheimer’s, minimize cognitive decline, improve memory, and maximize brain power.

As the most active organ of the body, the brain has nutritional needs ten times higher than other organs. Most people’s brains are underperforming because they are undernourished. In Brain Food, Dr. Mosconi explains how food affects our cognitive health and offers a complete food plan for optimal brain nourishment.

Eating for your brain not only helps you prevent cognitive decline, but also helps you increase brain vitality, improve memory, cognition, and work performance.

This guide includes:

Book Summary—helps you understand the key concepts.

Online Videos—cover the concepts in more depth.

Value-added from this guide:

Save time

Understand key concepts

Expand your knowledge

Important Note About This Guide

This guide is a summary and not a critique/review of the book. The summary may not be organized chapter-wise but summarizes the book’s main ideas, viewpoints, and arguments. It is NOT meant to be a replacement, but a supplement to help you understand the book’s key ideas and recommendations.

Title: Summary & Study Guide - Brain Food

Subtitle: The Surprising Science of Eating for Cognitive Power

Author: Lee Tang

Publisher: LMT Press (lmtpress.wordpress.com)

Copyright © 2018 by Lee Tang

All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

First Edition: September 2018

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 9781988970158 (ebook)

ISBN 9781725858442 (paperback)

ISBN 9781987063875 (paperback)

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher and author make no representations or warranties regarding the accuracy or completeness of these contents and disclaim all warranties such as warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. The website addresses in the book were correct at the time going to print. However, the publisher and author are not responsible for the content of third-party websites, which are subject to change.

To my wife, Lillian, who is the source of energy and love for everything I do, and to Andrew and Amanda: watching you grow up has been a privilege.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Step 1: Understanding Neuro-Nutrition

1. The Looming Brain Health Crisis

2. Introducing the Human Brain

3. The Water of Life

4. The Skinny on Brain Fat

5. The Benefits of Protein

6. Carbs, Sugars, and More Sweet Things

7. Making Sense of Vitamins and Minerals

8. Food Is Information

9. The World’s Best Brain Diets

10. It’s Not All About Food

Step 2: Eating for Cognitive Power

11. A Holistic Approach to Brain Health

12. Be Mindful of Quality Over Quantity

13. Dietary Guidelines for Optimal Cognitive Fitness

Step 3: Toward the Optimal Brain Diet

14. The Three Levels of Neuro-Nutrition Care

15. Beginner Level

16. Intermediate Level

17. Advanced Level

Index

About the Author

Step 1

Understanding

Neuro-Nutrition

Chapter 1

The Looming Brain Health Crisis

Thanks to advances in medicine and better living standards, our life expectancy has been rising over the last two centuries. But the increase in lifespan may not be additional years of high-quality health. As we age, our body deteriorates, causing many age-related conditions such as hearing loss, blindness, arthritis, respiratory problems, and cancer. The greater concern is that our brain also deteriorates, causing us to lose our memory and cognitive functions, resulting in dementia.

Forty-six million people are living with dementia worldwide today, and this number will skyrocket to 132 million by the year 2050. The most common cause of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease. Other forms of dementia include vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia, and those related to Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease. As people live longer, their chance of getting these disorders is increasing.

Unlike the rest of our body where cells are constantly replaced, most neurons in our brain stay with us for a lifetime, rendering them susceptible to damage. Many factors can damage our brain while we are still young, but we remain oblivious to it. No medication or supplement can delay or stop dementia’s progression because treating a patient once clinical symptoms have emerged is too late.

Recent medical research offers us hope. By using brain imaging techniques, scientists can see how Alzheimer’s develops and progresses in the brain 20-40 years before clinical symptoms emerge. To prevent Alzheimer’s, we must identify patients whose brains are silently fighting off the disease and start preventative treatments.

Nature or Nurture?

Genetic factors can increase your risk of dementia, but they don’t determine whether it happens. Most genes are pleomorphic, meaning environmental factors, such as lifestyle choices, change how they express their genetic features. We can delay or even prevent the disease by reducing the environmental factors that put us at risk. Recent research shows that addressing just a few of the risk factors for heart disease and diabetes could prevent over a third of Alzheimer’s cases worldwide.

The Brain-Food Connection

For decades, the medical community has recommended dietary therapies for many conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. But many scientists are still reluctant to believe food choices might increase the risk of developing brain disease.

To show that diet is important to mental health, Dr. Lisa Mosconi compared the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of dementia-free people eating two diets: a Mediterranean-style diet and a Western-style diet (fast foods, processed meats, dairy, refined sweets, and sodas). She found people eating a typical Western diet had more brain shrinkage, an indicator of neuronal loss and an increased risk of future dementia. People who followed a Mediterranean diet had better brain health than those on less healthy diets, regardless of whether they carry genetic risk factors for dementia.

There is evidence that adopting a brain-healthy diet is key to maintaining optimal cognitive capacities and delaying or preventing debilitating diseases like Alzheimer’s. Eating well and leading a healthy lifestyle can also reduce the risk and severity of other illnesses that also affect the brain, such as heart disease, diabetes, and other metabolic disorders.

Online Videos

Tackling a Looming Dementia Epidemic

A Mediterranean Diet Could Give You a Big, Youthful Brain - Newsy

Chapter 2

Introducing the Human Brain

Our body protects the brain by swaddling it in sheets of