{"id":1369,"date":"2011-12-09T20:29:17","date_gmt":"2011-12-10T02:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/realfoodhouston.com\/?p=1369"},"modified":"2014-07-24T09:31:17","modified_gmt":"2014-07-24T14:31:17","slug":"sugar-brain-fog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/2011\/12\/09\/sugar-brain-fog\/","title":{"rendered":"Sugar Brain Fog"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sugar<\/a>Yesterday I read an article that brought on\u00a0one of those\u00a0epiphany moments, when you say, “So that’s why I feel that way!”\u00a0 I now understand\u00a0why<\/em> I no longer have Sugar Brain Fog and how I lost it.\u00a0 Well, you ask, what is Sugar Brain Fog?\u00a0 Jonah Lehrer provides the biological reasons behind it in his\u00a0article\u00a0Why Sugar Makes Us Sleepy (And Protein Wakes Us Up)<\/a>.\u00a0 It’s\u00a0about how the orexin system <\/a>works causing us to want to sleep after a high carb meal.\u00a0 The orexin system regulates “an astonishing array of mental properties, from sleepiness to hunger.”\u00a0 When we eat sugars\/carbohydrates we decrease the orexin levels in our bodies which makes us feel “rundown and tired.”\u00a0 Because we’re tired we reduce our activity levels,\u00a0which may even help explain why eating a high sugar\/carbohydrate diet leads to obesity. \u00a0Knowing how this orexin system works in our bodies helps me understand why I felt so different when I changed from a high carbohydrate diet to a high fat\/low carbohydrate diet several years ago.\u00a0\u00a0When I changed my diet I\u00a0noticed right away that I was more aware of\u00a0everything around me–what I\u00a0saw, what I thought, what I\u00a0heard, what I felt–everything.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The awareness and clarity seemed to go hand in hand with increased energy, positive outlook, and enthusiasm for life.\u00a0\u00a0 Now I know the reason–I had lost my Sugar Brain Fog.<\/p>\n

Here’s what my diet was when I had Sugar Brain Fog:\u00a0 Just like most Americans, I had listened to, believed, and followed\u00a0the nutrition advice continually spewed out by\u00a0nutrition\u00a0“experts” in all types of media, official government recommendations, and even doctors’ dietary concerns.\u00a0 I ate very little red meat and avoided fats, and, although I never entirely gave up butter and cheese, I just tried not\u00a0to eat too much of them.\u00a0 We rarely ate junk foods or went to fast food restaurants.\u00a0 We ate organic produce\u00a0and\u00a0whole grains,\u00a0but I didn’t know how to prepare my food, and I ate way too little traditional fat.\u00a0 So, while I was probably eating better than\u00a0a lot of\u00a0Americans, my diet was still not very good–way too high in sugar and\u00a0total carbohydrates and way too low in overall nutrition, good fats, and quality proteins.<\/p>\n

Why did I want to change my diet?\u00a0 Often, I didn’t feel good after eating.\u00a0 That\u00a0 feeling\u00a0was probably caused by eating too many carbohydrates and the resulting flow of\u00a0insulin, but I didn’t know that then,\u00a0I just knew I wanted to\u00a0stop or reduce that bad feeling.\u00a0 I read some books that\u00a0opened my eyes and pointed me in the right direction: Dr. Price’s\u00a0Nutrition and Physical Degeneration<\/em>, Gary Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calo<\/em>ries, and Life Without Bread<\/em> by Allan and Lutz.\u00a0 These three, and others I read later, explained, in\u00a0detail, what was wrong with the “experts” advice about\u00a0cholesterol, saturated fats, and carbohydrates and what I needed to do to feel better.\u00a0 It became\u00a0quite obvious that all the\u00a0dietary\u00a0guidelines I had been following were not\u00a0just wrong,\u00a0they\u00a0were actually\u00a0harmful.<\/p>\n

What did I change?\u00a0 First, I cut out foods like sugar,\u00a0breakfast cereals,\u00a0and\u00a0refined carbohydrates.\u00a0 Then I significantly reduced the other carbohydrates, such as\u00a0breads, other grains,\u00a0starchy vegetables, and high sugar fruits.\u00a0 What foods did I add?\u00a0 I began drinking raw goat milk kefir, fresh raw cow milk,\u00a0 and kombucha.\u00a0 I\u00a0stopped holding back on\u00a0red meat, butter, and cheese and\u00a0added organ meats like liver, heart, kidney, and chicken gizzards.\u00a0 I began taking fermented cod liver oil (I started with a good quality cod liver oil then switched to fermented) and high vitamin butter oil.\u00a0 My breakfast changed from boxed ‘organic’ cereal to\u00a0a kefir smoothie with raw egg yolks, coconut oil, and a small amount of fruit, sweetened with stevia.\u00a0 Of course not all of these changes were made\u00a0at once, but within a few months I had cleaned out my pantry and refrigerator and was eating a very different diet.\u00a0 That’s when I noticed how much more energy I had and how much more aware and alert I was.\u00a0 I had\u00a0overcome the Sugar Brain Fog.<\/p>\n

The experiments with the orexin system found that if proteins are eaten with the sugars the sleepy effect is somewhat lessened, but when the sugars are eaten after the proteins, such as a hefty dessert, the orexin levels go down.\u00a0 There’s even some evidence that if the levels of orexin are low for long periods, it can cause depression. In any case, low orexin levels will make you\u00a0feel bad, and\u00a0who really wants to have Sugar Brain Fog?<\/p>\n

Update 12\/13\/11: Sugar Brain Fog is also known as hypoglycemic glucose nadir, per\u00a0William Davis, M.D., author of Wheat Belly<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Related posts:<\/p>\n

Could You Give Up Sugar?<\/a>
\nI Want to Drink Raw Milk<\/a>
\nAnalysis Shows No Association of Saturated Fat With Cardiovascular Disease<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I read an article that brought on\u00a0one of those\u00a0epiphany moments, when you say, “So that’s why I feel that way!”\u00a0 I now understand\u00a0why I no longer have Sugar Brain Fog and how I lost it.\u00a0 Well, you ask, what …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,75,6,19,145],"tags":[68,41,35,61,78,76,24,57,77],"class_list":["post-1369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healthy-fats","category-low-carbohydrate","category-raw-milk","category-real-food","category-sugar-2","tag-cholesterol","tag-grassfed-beef","tag-healthy-fats-2","tag-healthy-foods","tag-low-carbohydrate-2","tag-organ-meats","tag-raw-milk-2","tag-saturated-fat","tag-sugar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p70SEj-m5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1369"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2487,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions\/2487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}