The #1 WORST Food that HARMS Your Brain (avoid!)

Some foods you might be eating daily can actually DAMAGE your
brain over time. In this article, we'll explore foods that
HARM your brain vs foods that PROTECT your brain.

by Mike Geary - Certified Nutrition Specialist
Co-Author of the best seller: The Top 101 Foods that FIGHT Aging

First, the BAD NEWS...
Certain foods you eat can indeed harm your brain, both in impaired
learning ability as well as impaired memory.  Even worse, the wrong
food and drink choices throughout your life can even lead to the
terrible and deadly disease of Alzheimers.

A friend of mine just told me that her dad died of Alzheimers
recently and it was just a terrible disease where he didn't even
know who she was anymore towards the end.  It's time our society
starts taking degenerative diseases like Alzheimers, cancer, and
heart disease more seriously throughout our lives, and not just
once it's too late. Even in our 30's, 40's, and 50's, the choices
we make with our daily food can PREVENT these terrible diseases.

So let's dig in with the topic today of foods that harm your brain,
and what you can do about it...

Food #1 that HARMS your brain:  Fructose

In a 2012 UCLA study published in the Journal of Physiology,
researchers found that a diet high in fructose over time can damage
your memory and learning ability.
Beyond the harm to your brain, it's well known in the research world
that a high fructose diet can also cause insulin resistance in your
body over time, and possibly lead to type-2 diabetes and extra body
fat.  If that's not enough, a high fructose diet also detrimentally
affects your triglyceride levels in your blood as well as small dense
LDL particles that cause plaque in your arteries.

So what we have here is high-fructose intake = impaired memory and
learning in your brain, increased risk of diabetes, and increased risk
of heart disease. Oh, and we forgot to mention extra belly fat too...
Yum - who wants another can of soda pop or a large bowl of corn syrup
sweetened ice cream!
The average person eating a modern western diet of processed food
consumes a LARGE quantity of fructose without even thinking about it
from all of the soft drinks (high fructose corn syrup typically),
sweetened juice drinks, orange juice, processed junk foods such as
cakes and candies, as well as the HFCS that's added to store-bought
salad dressings, breads and cereals, and even condiments like ketchup.

Note that many sports drinks, even though marketed as "healthy", can
have large amounts of corn syrup or even crystalline fructose as their
main sweetener.  These sports drinks can be equally as bad as a soda for
your body and your brain.  Don't be fooled by the clever marketing showing
pictures of pro athletes guzzling this stuff.
Also note that agave syrup (aka, agave nectar) which is marketed as a
"healthy" sweetener as well, is one of the most concentrated forms of
processed fructose in sweeteners as well.  I personally stay away from
agave sweeteners as much as possible unless the amounts are very small.

All of these fructose-laden foods and drinks are easy to avoid though
if you choose to eat consciously... for example, make homemade salad
dressings from your favorite olive oil and vinegar with added spices,
or choose to drink unsweetened iced tea with lemon instead of sweetened
drinks or juices.  If you use a lot of ketchup, try to reduce the quantity
by mixing with mustard or hot sauce, which typically don't contain HFCS
sweetener in any significant quantities.

Last thing to note about fructose... Yes, natural whole fruits do contain
fructose, but generally contain MUCH smaller quantities of fructose than
you would consume in a sweetened juice drink, soft drink or sweetened junk
foods.  Also, the phytonutrients, antioxidants, and fiber that's contained
in most whole fruits counteracts any negative effects of fructose.
I personally try to keep fruit intake to no more than 1-2 pieces a day due
to the sugar and fructose content of larger amounts of fruit.

Here's a trick:  Did you know that limes and lemons contain virtually zero
fructose, and only 3-4 grams of total carbs in a whole lemon or lime,
whereas a typical orange contains 6 grams of fructose and 25 grams of total
sugar per fruit.  I squeeze lemons and limes daily into either water or teas
for a healthy flavorful drink. Fresh lemon juice has even been shown to
control blood sugar response from a meal...another bonus!

Other Foods that HARM Your Brain:

You probably already know some of the harmful health effects of these foods,
but long term effects on your brain are yet another...

Trans fats -- strongly inflammatory in your entire body including damage to
cell membranes throughout your body.  Avoid hydrogenated oils in processed
foods and deep fried foods.

Mercury -- studies show that mercury from pollution (coal burning plants are
the biggest source of mercury pollution to air and water) and from fish that
are high on the food chain such as tuna, shark, swordfish, tilefish, etc can
possibly cause long term negative effects on your brain.  Limit these types
of fish to a couple times a month and focus more on fish such as salmon, trout,
and many other types of smaller fish to reduce your mercury load.

Wheat-based foods -- In the groundbreaking book, Wheat Belly, Dr William Davis
makes a very convincing argument that wheat has addictive properties in the brain.
Wheat contains compounds termed "exorphins" that have an effect in your brain
similar to opiate drugs.  This explains why people have such a hard time giving
up their beloved breads, cereals, pasta, and muffins because these foods are
mildly addictive.

I know personally from past experience that if I have a pasta dinner,
I'll go back for seconds and thirds as I just can't seem to stop eating the
stuff.  And then hours after dinner, I'll get cravings for more carb-based
foods or sweets.  But if I pass on the pasta and just have meat, veggies,
and salad, I find myself totally satisfied after dinner with no cravings
later at night.

The good news is...

There are plenty of superfoods, herbs, and spices that can protect your brain
and your other organs too!

In fact, did you know that turmeric is one of the highest antioxidant spices
that also exhibits brain-protecting effects? In India, where curry containing
turmeric and other spices is eaten daily, rates of Alzheimers disease is among
the lowestin the world, proving some of the brain-protecting effects of turmeric.
In addition, the powerful DHA and EPA omega-3 fats in fish oil has been proven
in countless studies to protect your brain from damage over the years.

Want more...
I'll show you how to find dozens of delicious foods, spices, herbs, and unique
nutrients that PROTECT your brain, joints, organs, and skin from aging on the
next page!
These unique nutrients and superfoods can be found at most stores and can help
PROTECT your brain from aging, HEAL your joints, reverse or prevent type 2
diabetes, normalize your blood pressure, SLOW aging of your skin, FIGHT against
developing cancer, FIX years of digestion problems, and even help to BOOST your
metabolism...

If you want to discover these powerful superfoods and nutrients CLICK HERE

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2 Common Foods in Your Diet That May be Making You Gain Weight and Get Sick

by Mike Geary, Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Nutrition Specialist
Author of best-seller:  The Truth about Six Pack Abs & The Top 101 Foods that FIGHT Aging

Of course, you've probably heard a million times now how bad trans fats and high fructose corn syrup are for your health... so I'm not going to give you that same old story.
Instead, we need to look at a couple common foods that are probably in your diet in large quantities and may be causing major problems such as weight gain, headaches, sicknesses, indigestion, etc, etc... and those possible culprits are:

Wheat and Dairy
Don't worry, I'm NOT going to tell you that both of these staples need to be eliminated permanently from your diet... but read on to see an interesting test that may help you a great deal...
In all of my years of personal training and nutrition counseling, if I had to choose a couple VERY simple dietary changes that have made the biggest difference for my clients in allowing them to FINALLY see fat loss results (and other health problems solved), it would be this following test:
1. Test removing all wheat products from your diet for 2 entire weeks, and take notice of how you feel, look, and your body composition.  This means removing all bread, pasta, crackers, cookies, cakes, muffins, bagels, and other wheat-based foods, unless they are 100% wheat-free.  Don't worry, it's only 2 weeks for this test... you'll survive!  Just beware of gluten-free versions of these junk foods unless they are low-carb as well.
2. Test removing all dairy from your diet for 2 entire weeks, and take notice of how you feel, look, and your body composition.  Don't worry, we'll talk in a minute about how to keep dairy in your life if you find out that you are sensitive to some forms of it.
The best way to do this is to eliminate them both for 2 full weeks, and then reintroduce one at a time so that you can determine if one of them or both wheat and dairy are causing negative health effects for you.
Wheat and dairy are easily 2 of the biggest intolerances that a large percentage of the population has.
Now this does NOT mean that I'm saying you have to entirely eliminate wheat and dairy for the rest of your life, but what I am saying is that this is an important test to do for about 2 weeks to gauge if you see some dramatic changes in your body fat percentage, how you look and feel overall, your energy levels, and other health and digestive issues.
If you do the 2-week elimination of wheat and dairy and don't feel that it helped you at all or made you feel better, then you can probably do ok on small to moderate amounts of each.
Most people do not realize this, but a large percentage of the population has at least some degree of intolerance to the gluten in wheat and several other grains. The biggest offender is wheat though, as it's in such a large percentage of the average western diet... from breads, to pastas, to bagels, to cakes, wraps, cereals, etc, etc.
Most people don't have the extent of intolerance that a celiac has, but most people feel much better, improve dozens of health problems, and also lose fat faster when they eliminate wheat from their diet.
In fact, I just had a client last week tell me that when she eliminated wheat from her diet, her chronic headaches disappeared almost instantly... these are headaches she's been having for years, and after eliminating wheat from her diet, they are gone (along with some body fat that she lost too!).
You can also read this article about my dad and how he reduced wheat in his diet and saw immediate reduction in his love handles and eliminated his chronic joint pain that he'd had for years.
What about me?  Do I still eat wheat?
Well, what I personally do is try to only eat wheat on cheat days, which many times means when I'm out at restaurants or at parties, barbeques, etc.  Since wheat is so integral in the typical western diet, it's almost impossible to avoid when eating out or at other people's houses.
But I have virtually ZERO wheat products in my own house usually (with the exception of an occasional piece of sprouted grain bread once or twice a week).  Anything is simple to avoid at least 90% of the time, when it doesn't even exist in your cabinets!
Make sure to also read this article which shows 11 ways that wheat HARMS your body -- everything from joint inflammation, digestive issues, acid reflux, acne problems, belly fat, diabetes, and more.  It's a must read article!
Now with as anti-wheat as I am, I'm actually a huge fan of dairy... However, ONLY if the dairy is raw milk or raw cheese and from grass-fed cows. Did you know that many people who "think" they are lactose intolerant actually can drink raw milk without a problem?  This is because the live enzymes and friendly bacteria in raw milk aid in the digestion of the lactose and the proteins in milk. These enzymes and friendly bacteria are destroyed in pasteurized milk, which makes it more difficult to digest for many people.

I know this is a controversial topic, so you need to obviously do your own research...but check out the realmilk.com site to make your own decision about raw dairy.
If I can't get raw dairy, I choose to go mostly dairy-free (with the exception of non-sweetened full-fat yogurt and kefir, which are easier to digest due to the live probiotics in them). But I avoid commercial milk because I feel that the pasteurized, homogenized milk is not suitable for long term consumption in terms of health.  Many scientists believe that homogenized milk fat is the most dangerous type due to the machine-created tiny particles of fat that enter the blood stream more readily, which is not an issue with non-homogenized milk.
Keep in mind that yogurt, cheese, and kefir generally use non-homogenized milk, so I view them as more acceptable and healthy (as long as grass-fed) than homogenized milk itself.  And of course, yogurt, cheese, and kefir have good probiotics, so are beneficial in that respect too.
By the way, you can always search to see if raw milk co-ops or farms are available in your area on RealMilk.com.  You'd be surprised at how many co-ops are available that deliver from rural areas to urban areas.  It's important to make sure that the farm is reputable and certified (in some states) to produce raw milk. Most raw milk farms are the cleanest operations in the entire dairy industry.
oh, and for the "germo-phobes" out there... I've been drinking gallons upon gallons of raw, full fat milk for about 8 years now (I drink about 1-2 gallons per week when I can get it, which is only a couple weeks a month, so I naturally cycle my dairy intake), and I've never once gotten sick from raw milk, nor has anybody else that I know that's been drinking it long term... so to all of these so-called "experts" out there telling you that "there's a reason they pasteurize milk, because it's dangerous if not"... well, they obviously don't know what they're talking about.  If it was "dangerous", I surely would have gotten sick at least once after 8 years of drinking it.
Plus, the full-fat milk certainly has not made me fatter either... I used to foolishly drink skim milk only years, but now for the last 8 years, I've drank nothing but FULL-FAT raw grass-fed milk, and I'm easily in the best shape of my life now and leaner than ever.  And I also use FULL-FAT grass-fed cream in my coffee each day, and it's certainly not adding any body fat on me!  In fact, the healthy CLA fats and vitamin K2 in full-fat grass-fed cream is VERY healthy for you, as vitamin K2 from grass-fed dairy fat has been shown to reduce heart disease risk and increase your body's utilization of vitamin D.
Regarding raw vs pasteurized milk, people are more likely to get sick from pasteurized milk, because mass factory farms are generally dirtier operations with animals that are in poorer health than grass-fed raw milk farms.
And don't forget the high levels of fat-burning, muscle building CLA in full-fat, raw, grass fed milk (and omega-3's)!
Back from the tangent... I think this elimination of wheat and (pasteurized, homogenized) dairy is one of the most important tests anyone can easily do to see if wheat and dairy are negatively affecting them. After all, it's only 2 weeks to test yourself!
A couple quick things to note:
1. Eggs are NOT dairy... I'm not sure why so many people seem to think that eggs are a dairy product (maybe because they're in the same section at the grocery store?), but there is absolutely no dairy in eggs... eggs are basically meat if you want to categorize them.  Regardless, eggs are practically a perfect food in terms of nutrition density.
here's an entire article I did on whole eggs vs egg whites if you haven't seen it.
2. When trying to eliminate wheat, this usually means that almost ALL processed foods have to be eliminated because wheat components are in so many processed foods.  One way that I personally get around this is to satisfy my cravings for baked goods with low-carb, gluten-free versions that use coconut flour and almond flour as the base instead of wheat flour.
Check out this article to see how to get delicious healthy brownies and cakes that are low-carb, gluten-free and even support a fat-burning metabolism!
Good luck with the test if you try it!  Many people find it to be one of the best things they've done for their health.
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The 1 food my Dad reduced to eliminate his love handles

My dad has always been in pretty good shape most of his life right into his 60's.  He's always been a hard worker (he built our house that I grew up in with his own 2 hands) and very active with outdoor activities most of his life.

And he's also always eaten a pretty healthy diet with a lot of wild game meats, wild caught fish (he's a super fisherman), and lots of home grown produce that he grew himself in his huge garden.  But in addition to those super healthy foods, he's also had a lifelong addiction to cereals, breads, pasta, and ice cream (we'll talk more in an upcoming newsletter about what we found out about what all these grains have been doing to his health over the years)

About a year ago, my pops and I were talking about one of my clients that had great results and had lost a good amount of fat.  So he asked me,

"Mike, I've always been in good shape, but I've had these love handles my entire adult life for at least 40-50 years now" (he's 66 currently)

My response to him was something like this,

"Dad, you eat healthier than 90% of the population because of all of your wild game, fish, and garden produce, but I honestly think that you eat far too many grain-based foods with your daily bowl of cereal for breakfast, the bread you have during lunch, and the pasta or noodles you have several times a week at dinner... oh, and all that sugar from the ice cream every night for dessert. I think if you reduce the grains and sugars, you'll have no problem getting rid of those love handles that you've had your entire life"

My pops nodded and stored the advice away, but didn't change his daily eating habits yet at this point.  Fast forward another 6 months or so, and I gave him a copy of the book Wheat Belly, which talks not only about the effects of wheat in your body on blood sugar and body fat, but also the numerous health effects of eating too much wheat.  It was some of those health effects of eating too much wheat, such as the increased risk of heart disease, that finally got my pops to drastically reduce his wheat intake.

He went from eating cereal 7 mornings a week, bread 7 days a week, and pasta 2-3 days a week, to basically only having 1 day a week now that he eats these types of wheat based foods.

Fast forward another 6 months, and we just went back to visit my parents for the holidays last week.  After 6 months of dramatically reducing his wheat intake (and replacing those calories with healthy fats from more nuts, avocados, grass-fed dairy, etc), he looked noticeably slimmer...

In his own words, "Mike, I took your advice and cut down my cereals and breads to only 1 day a week, and those love handles I've had for 50 years... GONE... completely GONE!"

Not only that, but he also told me this surprising side benefit, "Surprisingly, once I stopped eating so much wheat, all the joint pain I've had for years is almost 100% GONE!"

Pretty cool huh!  This doesn't surprise me, and I've heard similar results with other clients of mine that have dramatically reduced their grain foods.

I'm not saying reducing grains is the miraculous cure for everything under the sun, but as you'll see in this article, there are at least 11 reasons why too much wheat in your diet can be harming your body.

I think my dads results with reducing wheat in his diet prove some pretty powerful benefits to his body!  He didn't even fully eliminate wheat... he just drastically reduced his intake from 7 days a week to 1 day a week.  And his love handles and joint pain he's had for as long as he can remember are completely GONE!

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