As you age, your brain comes up against 3 major problems:
- Your brain shrinks, impairing neurons and dulling connections between neurons.
- Levels of neurotransmitters decline, slowing, marring and reducing messages.
- Brain circulation decreases, and oxygen delivery drops.
And research tells me that this problem is worse in men.
The shrinking starts as soon as you become an adult. The average brain shrinks 2% per decade. This means that at 80, your brain will be 12% smaller than at 20.1
Another side effect of aging is the reduction of neurotransmitters in the brain.
The two main neurotransmitters that decrease are acetylcholine and dopamine. These two chemicals are crucial for neuron communication. A lack of these chemicals causes messages to travel slowly, to break, or to stop traveling all together.
The brain also loses some blood circulation as it ages. Blood brings nourishment to cells, and keeps the cells functioning. Without good circulation, your brain works less effectively.
But here’s the good news: You can reverse the loss… and in many cases you can restore youthful brain function with two sources of “brain fuel” your doctor may have overlooked…
The fact is, your body will respond to nutrition-based treatments in nearly every area of health, especially brainpower. My patients are living proof.
Big Pharma, on the other hand, wants you to believe that your only effective solution will be to take expensive and toxic chemically-produced patent drugs. But I’ve achieved great results using nutrients as therapy with thousands of patients in my medical practice.
And, a number of scientific studies, some of them unprecedented in scale, show definitively that nutritional supplements produce immediate results.
The Council for Responsible Nutrition produced a study identifying specific benefits of nutrients to successfully combat various ailments, from a weakened immune system to poor eyesight and “brain fog.”
Here are 2 of the most effective, yet little-known brain boosters available. These are crucial if you want to repair and maintain what you’ve spent so much time and study building in the first place.2
1. DMG (Dimethylglycine): Oxygen is your brain’s number one need if you want to think clearly and think fast. And DMG helps you use oxygen better. In a Dutch study, dimethylglycine was associated with improved cognition in areas like attention, construction, sensory and motor speed and memory.3
You produce it in small amounts naturally, but as you get older you can’t produce as much as you need, and you need quite a lot. You see, DMG is a methyl donor, one of the most important classes of nutrient we know of. Vitamins, hormones, neurotransmitters, enzymes, DNA, RNA, and antibodies depend on substances like DMA to donate methyl groups to complete their synthesis. This process is called methylation.
Every organ in your body depends on this process. It’s likely that our ability to do this also declines with age, which makes taking a supplement a good idea.
You can buy DMG capsules and caplets that have up to 500 mg of DMG in them, but don’t waste your money. DMG pills that you eat don’t work. Instead, use a sublingual (under the tongue) form of DMG at 125 mg per day.
2. DMAE: This is vital to accurate brain functioning. It can improve your mood, increase your awareness and attention, give you more mental energy and prevent confusion and brain fog.
Studies show it also increases levels of acetylcholine. Degenerative brain conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are connected to the loss of brain cells that produce acetylcholine. DMAE replaces this chemical naturally and can ease symptoms.
DMAE can also temper mood and ease behavioral and learning problems:
In one study, 50 hyperactive kids showed improvement in just 10 weeks. Another study showed children with learning disabilities did better in concentration and skill tests with this nutrient.
They gave 80 people DMAE for another study and the people showed greater attentiveness, were more active and had a greater sense of wellbeing.4
The best sources are wild-caught fish like salmon and small, oily fish like pilchards. You need at least 35 mg per day.
1. American Foundation for Aging Research: Neurobiology of Aging Information “What Physical Changes Happen to the Brain?” www.infoaging.com
2. Dickinson, Annette, The Benefits of Nutritional Supplements, Council for Responsible Nutrition, June 2002.
3. Eussen SJ. “The association of betaine, homocysteine and related metabolites with cognitive function in Dutch elderly people.” Br J Nutr. 2007 Nov;98(5):960-8.
4. Dimpfel W, Wedekind W, Keplinger I. “Efficacy of (DMAE) containing vitamin-mineral drug combination on EEG patterns in the presence of different emotional states.” Eur J Med Res. 2003 May 30;8(5):183-91.