Your Brain on Food

Mark Smith • October 13, 2025

Your Brain on Food

Health News Update: Your Brain on Food                                                 10.13.25

Hello everyone: The type of food we consume will absolutely significantly positively or negatively impact our ability to think, remember, learn, behave, enjoy…in other words, everything that our brain does relies on the quality of food we eat. For most of us, poor food results in a downward change that is gradual, for others who may not be in top shape…they may notice right away that their mood or fog increases with poor food choices. This is especially true if the foods create inflammation. Today in our country, dementia is the 5th leading cause of death. Let that thought sink in for a moment. And now let that realization guide your food choices.

 

Diets that are nutrient dense, lower in calories, unprocessed, and predominantly whole-foods that are mostly plant based is a real and significant way to protect your cognitive health and your future life. This type of food plan is shown to enhance brain function, protect memory and cognitive abilities…while poor food choices (like processed and ultra-processed foods) can lead to cognitive impairment and decline. Like all of our cells, the brain requires nutrients to keep it working well. Additionally, it is important to realize that inflammation anywhere in the body will also bathe the brain in that same inflammatory chemistry and lead to the destruction of your brain health.

 

“Like an expensive car, your brain functions best when it gets only premium fuel. Eating high-quality foods that contain lots of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants nourishes the brain and protects it from oxidative stress — the "waste" (free radicals) produced when the body uses oxygen, which can damage cells. Unfortunately, just like an expensive car, your brain can be damaged if you ingest anything other than premium fuel. If substances from "low-premium" fuel (such as what you get from processed or refined foods) get to the brain, it has little ability to get rid of them. Diets high in refined sugars, for example, are harmful to the brain. In addition to worsening your body's regulation of insulin, they also promote inflammation and oxidative stress. Multiple studies have found a correlation between a diet high in refined sugars and impaired brain function — and even a worsening of symptoms of mood disorders, such as depression?”

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/nutritional-psychiatry-your-brain-on-food-201511168626 food and brain function

 

“Diet, exercise and other aspects of our daily interaction with the environment have the potential to alter our brain health and mental function. We now know that particular nutrients influence cognition by acting on molecular systems or cellular processes that are vital for maintaining cognitive function. This raises the exciting possibility that dietary manipulations are a viable strategy for enhancing cognitive abilities and protecting the brain from damage, promoting repair and counteracting the effects of aging.” 

 

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2805706/ brain foods essential for cognition

 

 

Bottom Line: By constructing a diet high in fiber, polyphenols and other phytonutrients, we give our brain and body what it needs to control and properly manage inflammation. Your future totally depends on what you are doing NOW. What is your future health and cognitive ability worth to you? By making sure that your food choices reflect your values and support your stewardship of your precious Temple, you can create an optimal future and a better present. Good news: patients frequently report that after going 80% into an optimal food plan not only that they feel better but now will notice that when they ‘stray’ into some regrettable choices that they simply do not feel well at all…that they get foggy or down…and these ‘bad’ feelings are so strong and noticeable that eating well becomes a priority. This type of transformation is available to you if you need it…most of us can benefit as well as the planet.

 

By Mark Smith April 13, 2026
Health News Update: When to Eat Really Matters 4.13.26 Hello everyone: You have probably heard of the old saying recommending eating breakfast like a king or queen, lunch like a prince/princess, and dinner like a pauper. It turns out that new studies are revealing that meal timing is critical for long term health. “At the study’s conclusion, researchers found that participants following early and mid-day time-restricted eating experienced better outcomes, including a lowering of body weight , waist circumference , body mass index (BMI) , fat mass , systolic blood pressure , and fasting glucose ( blood sugar ) levels, when compared to participants who ate late in the day. “These findings highlight that aligning food intake earlier in the day, when metabolic processes such as insulin sensitivity are more favorable, may amplify the benefits of time-restricted eating,” Chen explained. “The results suggest that not all time-restricted eating patterns are equal. Eating earlier appears to confer broader metabolic advantages compared with delaying food intake to later hours,” he added. Additionally, scientists discovered that late-day eating, when combined with a longer eating window, was the least effective dietary pattern for the most metabolic benefits. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/time-restricted-eating-early-window-best-metabolism?utm_source=ReadNext#Time-restricted-eating-Time-of-day-and-eating-window-size When you eat really matters Bottom Line: Your biology always works best when it is running in time with your natural circadian rhythms. One of the things that can alter your circadian clocks and lead to problems is when we eat and how much, plus the quality of the food. Making sure you align your food intake with your body clock is an important aspect of health and is considered a modifiable risk factor. In other words, it is best to eat in concordance with your own biological rhythms. Will this work for everyone? Probably not, but some form of intermittent fasting will work which means experiment with this concept to find the best clock management that works for you. For example, breakfast like a prince or princess, lunch like a king or queen, dinner like a pauper. The important keys are to have some kind of breakfast and have dinner be the smallest meal of the day as early as possible. To find out more how meal timing can promote health, check out these terms: Circadian autophagy.
By Mark Smith April 6, 2026
Health News Update: Sleep Timing, Mood & Performance 4.6.26 Hello everyone: In taking a history at the start of a healthcare process, I often find people of all ages have sleep schedules that do not match optimal circadian rhythms and have un-knowingly contributed to degrading their health. Sleep is a significant component of leading an anti-inflammatory lifestyle as it fosters autophagy (an immune based essential self-cleaning function, hormonal regulation, stress reduction, immune resilience, optimal aging, and more. As it turns out, getting your sleep timing right lowers depression, reduces morning fatigue, improves physical functions, and can markedly increase your ability to think, recall things and overall cognitive functions. Proper sleep timing aligned with our natural circadian clocks may also decrease mortality risks. Background There is conflict between living according to our endogenous biological rhythms and our external environment, with disruptions resulting in negative consequences to health and performance. This is often documented in shift work and jet lag , but ‘societal norms’ (eg, typical working hours) can create profound issues for ‘night owls’, people whose internal biological timing predisposes them to follow an unusually late sleep-wake cycle. Night owls have also been associated with health issues, mood disturbances, poorer performance and increased mortality rates . Results Overall, participants demonstrated a significant advance of ∼2 h in sleep/wake timings as measured by actigraphy and circadian phase markers (dim light melatonin onset and peak time of the cortisol awakening response), whilst having no adverse effect on sleep duration. Notably, the phase advance was accompanied by significant improvements to self-reported depression and stress, as well as improved cognitive (reaction time) and physical (grip strength) performance measures during the typical ‘suboptimal’ morning hours. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1389945719301388?via%3Dihub resetting sleep timing improves brain function and overall health. Bottom Line: For long term health, assisting recovery, optimal aging, improving immune resilience, lowering your total inflammatory burden thus reducing your risk for developing chronic diseases…it looks like a very good idea to get your sleep cycles in line with your natural biological rhythms. The researchers aimed to accomplish this using only simple practical natural lifestyle methods…no medications. Here is some of what they did: · Avoid blue light after dark. · Get some early morning sunshine…even 5 minutes will help. · Exercise in the morning or early afternoon. · Adopt early time restricted feeding schedules (eTRF). · Fix a time to sleep and stick to it. If you have any chronic health issues, or just want to optimize the aging process, simply adopt a few simple lifestyle strategies. I have seen this clinically be one of the major keys to the success when it comes to overcoming fatigue, brain fog, digestive issues, and any chronic health problem. Best wishes to you for a healthy life!
By Mark Smith March 30, 2026
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By Mark Smith March 23, 2026
Health News Update: How To Fight Inflammation and Chronic Disease 3.23.26 Hello again everyone: You might wonder why I keep focusing on food…so here are some of the reasons: food choices are the leading cause of death in the U.S. and spreading around the world. Poor food choices lead to inflammation which slowly destroy health. It is that simple, plain, and clear and backed by research. The next question: how do we fight back? Introduction The positive impact of food on health was postulated by the ancient Hippocrates, father of modern medicine with his famous quote: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” [1]. In the 21st century, scientists have focused on the effect of nutritional habits in diseases. Nowadays, it is well documented that food plays a noteworthy role in the pathogenesis of chronic diseases namely cardiovascular diseases (CVD), metabolic syndrome, diabetes mellitus type II, and cancer [2–5], as it correlates with others with the lipid pattern, the blood pressure, and the endothelial function. The scientists examine the effect of nutritional habits on disease emergence and progression in both individual nutrient intake and dietary patterns models. Worldwide, two dietary patterns are usually compared—the Mediterranean diet (MD) and the Western diet (WD) [3,6]. The Mediterranean diet reflects the food culture of most Mediterranean countries based on olive oil consumption, seasonal fresh vegetables, cereals, and plants in balance with low consumption of meat [7]. The Western diet, on the contrary, is dominated by high-fat dairy products processed and red meat [8]. However, discordance in the different MD patterns and consumed food doses had been recognized. Without any doubt, those discrepancies could confine and restrict our knowledge on the health benefit mechanisms of the MD [9]. Due to the above, the medical community along with nutritionists and dieticians take a keen interest in MD and its traits [7]. https://www.academia.edu/45378994/biomedicines_Mediterranean_Diet_as_a_Tool_to_Combat_Inflammation_and_Chronic_Diseases_An_Overview?email_work_card=view-paper food choices can fight inflammation and chronic disease Bottom Line: This is a 2020 paper and since then literally hundreds of papers on the MD have emerged showing how the food plan lowers inflammation and the risk for developing multiple chronic illnesses. Even still, lots of research needs to be done to elucidate the many mechanisms of how food impacts our system and how to optimally individualize dietary recommendations. At this point, our best strategy to prevent and/or recover from any chronic condition is to eat as clean and natural as possible. It has become rather obvious that the further away from a natural diet we get, the sicker we become. On top of that, I have yet to see a full recovery from any health issue without the foundation of a predominantly plant-based, unprocessed, whole foods approach…which is why I keep posting about this subject. All the best to you and yours!
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