The 4th Horsemen: Your Brain Needs Antioxidants

There are four horsemen of the mental health, apocalypse, brain fats, B, vitamin sugar. And now let’s talk about antioxidants. Your brain expends so much energy with all that thinking and seeing and hearing and processing information. And like any engine, the consequence of making all that energy are exhaust fumes. These exhaust fumes are called oxidants, and they age your brain and your body. That’s why the skin goes wrinkly. And in fact, your brain gets exhausted every day, and that is literally why you have to sleep. Seven hours of sleep creates the minimum risk of dementia in sleep. You literally reset your brain. So what are these antioxidants and how do they work? All life depends on oxygen. We react oxygen with glucose to make energy that makes oxidants. These oxidants ultimately age and kill you. Vitamin C is a water based antioxidant. It also disarms smoke while vitamin E is a fat-based antioxidant. It disarms fried food And vitamin C can reload vitamin E and put it back to work, and vitamin E can reload. Vitamin C, both are reloaded by the master antioxidant called glutathione inside your cells. And glutathione is reloaded by antho, and these are blue red foods. Think of blueberries. You also need co-enzyme Q and lipoic acid. These are the antioxidant team that keep your brain and body young, and it’s best to both eat them and supplement them. And when you eat antioxidants, you want to go for the foods that have bright colors. It’s the range of colors that gives you the range of antioxidants that protect your brain. I’m talking here about orange foods like carrots and butternut squash and very yellow colors like mustard and turmeric, and also the blues and reds and purples. This is your blueberries and beetroot and black currents. These are fantastic for your brain and the strong greens, asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, avocados. If you eat a significant amount of these antioxidants, rich foods, you literally halve your risk of dementia, but it’s also worth supplementing them. And the absolute king and the oxidant that we all need is vitamin C. You may not know that all animals make vitamin C, except for very few primates don’t. The Guinea pig doesn’t, which is why it’s the experimental animal of choice. And animals that don’t make vitamin C have got to eat it. Apes like gorillas will eat four and a half grams of vitamin C. A day. A gram is 20 oranges worth. So I want a supplement, at least a gram. I take two grams. I’m in my sixes of vitamin C every day, but I also supplement an antioxidant providing the whole range. That’s the co-enzyme Q, the lipoic acid glutathione, or it’s precursor called Anac acetylcysteine, vitamin C and vitamin E. So that’s the fourth orin of the mental health apocalypse. Increasing your intake of fruit and vegetables and herbs and spices and supplementing to maximize your intake of antioxidants. But also you need to do everything you can to reduce your exposure to oxidants. That means not smoking, reducing your exposure to pollution, but also not eating a lot of burnt fried barbecued foods. That’s part of the equation to help keep your brain young and your body and your skin.