‘You are what you eat.'
This is a proverb that has fuelled generations before us, and is still true! Eating healthy helps our body to perform core functionalities while maintaining an optimum condition for growth.
For people suffering from brain injury, the daily diet can be of greater value for a quick recovery from the injury. Also, the nutrition you're intaking on a regular basis can have a negative impact on your memory, cognitive functions, and emotional health!
It’s crucial that you take the best brain diets during your times of brain injury; these can really help your brain fight off the injury. You can also get the energy of overcoming your physical and mental enigma.
While eating healthy is important, you must also steer clear of the worst brain foods! These can truly have detrimental effects on our human brain. In most cases, however, we fail to acknowledge these worst brain foods and continue consuming them.
The primary reason for this being the case is the lack of awareness among us. To help us understand which brain diet foods you should avoid, we have shortlisted 5 least effective brain injury diets!
Without further ado, let’s get started!
5 Foods You Must Avoid
In this section, we've pointed out some of the foods that you should make sure isn't in your meals. There are more; however, we chose the five most common food that you must avoid! So, here's the list of the foods that you should avoid!
Sugary Drinks
Drinks with high amounts of sugar are not only detrimental to the human body but can also seriously affect the functionality of the brain. Carbonated beverages, sports drinks, energy drinks, and artificial fruit juice can increase the odds of developing type 2 diabetes; this is directly responsible for the increased risk of Alzheimer's disease, reduced cognitive flexibility along with short and long-term memory impairment.
Moreover, high blood sugar levels increase the risk of dementia, lower cognitive response timing and a lot more! High consumption of such high sugary drinks can lead to high blood pressure, accumulation of blood fats, diabetes, arterial dysfunction, and even obesity!
In another study, it was found that high intakes of sugars increased the chances of brain inflammation and impaired memory.
Foods Rich In Trans Fat
Similar to intaking sugary diets, trans fat can be another detrimental component towards a healthy person. While trans fat occurs naturally in animal products such as meat and dairy, these organic trans fat do not oppose much of a threat. It is the industrially produced trans fat that can pose serious threats, and these are commonly known as hydrogenated vegetable oil. Sounds familiar, right?
These artificial trans fat can be found in almost every prepackaged food - snacks, cakes, and prepackaged cookies. The use of such fats? It's to extend the shelf life and to enhance the flavor of the food product!
How serious can it be?
It’s proven people who consume high amounts of trans fat tends to have an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease, poor memory, lower brain volume, and cognitive decline.
In addition to all that, trans fat caused the human’s brains to act haphazardly along with less favorable cognitive functions and less total cerebral brain volume!
Highly Processed Food
Highly processed foods can contain a plethora of sugar, added fats and salts - which are harmful to the human body and may pose threats to the recovery of brain injury. You'll find highly processed food everywhere you go - it's in each and every departmental store you find in your neighborhood!
Such foods contain high amounts of calories against low amounts of other nutrients; this is exactly why they can contribute to a person’s obesity and have negative impacts on the brain.
The high levels of saturated fat in such takeouts can increase the chances of Alzheimer's. The sodium can contribute to high blood pressure while you can experience a cognitive decline. It is also proven that such foods increase the chances of impaired learning ability and reduce brain plasticity.
For people suffering from brain injury, it can prolong (or even halt) the progress. In some cases, it might even lead to detrimental effects on the patient.
Alcohol
Before anyone argues the health benefits of alcohol, we must acknowledge the fact that most people drink far too much that what’s recommended.
Chronic alcohol can result in a reduction in brain volume, metabolic changes and the disruption of essential neurotransmitters within the brain. For brain injury patients suffering from TBI or concussions, excessive alcohol intake can lead to severe damages to the brain which may include memory loss, disturbances in eyesight, confusion, and unsteadiness.
Furthermore, teenagers who drink alcohol face abnormalities within their brain structure, cognitive functionalities and behavior compared to the people who don't regularly drink.
Also, the alcohol content can result in impaired driving, risky behavior, and a disruption in the sleep patterns. For brain injury patients, sleeping is very important. Disruption to such a crucial component in their life can make things worse.
White Rice
As we've said before, there are certain carbs that may have detrimental effects on the human body. One prime example of such brain diet foods to avoid is white rice. This is mainly because of the high glycemic index (GI) contained within the rice. This means that the cards are digested very quickly, which causes an uprise in the blood sugar and insulin levels.
White rice also contains high glycemic load (GL), which refers to the amount of blood sugar level rise based on the serving size of the rice.
Foods containing high GI and GL are considered to be deleterious to the human body; it can cause impaired brain functionality, fatigue, mood swings and other symptoms of depression.
The Smart Brain Diet
Up until now, we've gone through the brain diet foods that you should avoid at any cost if you're suffering from brain injury. However, what should you be eating more to stay healthy and to recover faster from brain injury?
In our previous blog, we’ve gone through the ultimate brain injury diet for faster recovery.
We've also focused on the fact that you need high amounts of protein, certain vitamins, and minerals such as magnesium and zinc for brain nutrition. These nutrients are depleted during brain injury, and you must replenish these fast!
Moreover, Omega-3 DHA and α-linolenic acids are proven to be excellent nutrition for brain health.
In addition to all these, one must ensure high levels of antioxidant consumption. The antioxidants help to protect the brain from free radicals, reduces the inflammation in brain cells and helps to improve communication between each brain cell.
In addition to that, you must also ensure you’re getting high levels of antioxidants. Antioxidants help to protect your brain from free radicals, reduce inflammation in the brain cells and improve communication in between each brain cell.
If you ensure a diet that has high levels of the nutrition discussed above, you can be sure of intaking an excellent diet that helps you in times of brain injury.
We hope that you've learned the importance of eating healthy and the food you should avoid. To know more about brain injury related insights, visit our blogs.
Also, visit our website to learn more about brain injury rehabilitation Toronto and how you can recover fast and effectively! Best of luck!