Friday, 7 March 2014

what is the oxidative fuel for our brains?


So..., these days many people are finding that they feel much better on low sugar high fat diets.  I myself eat a diet that is rich in raw dairy and fats and, while I eat fruit, it is not my main calories source.   If the brain uses glucose as its oxidative fuel, which has been my understanding, how can this be?  Well, personally, having experimented with eliminating fruit sugars altogether, I have found I feel best if I include some fruit albeit mainly low glycemic fruit which does not elevate the blood sugar too fast for me. 

Speaking to Tony Wright about this in view of his proposition that we evolved our large brains through eating tropical fruit he explained to me that although our origins are symbiotic i.e. with fruit trees (see http://www.beyond-belief.org.uk/node/7 and http://www.beyond-belief.org.uk/node/8) we are not that symbiotic organism any more.  Our system is not frugivorous any more...we are not the same species we were..we are now running on an ancient mammalian system that precedes our frugivorous phase.  So, in short, dues to changes in our brains and digestive systems we can no longer assimilate and run healthily on a predominantly frugivourous diet.

Tony gave me this link where there is a bit of a summary regarding brain glucose and other means of fuel http://evolvinghealthscience.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/why-you-can-all-stop-saying-meat-eating.html while remarking that "no consideration is given in the article of increasingly specialised fruit eating in non seasonal tropics regarding energy requirement and gut/brain theory given our obviously delicate tropical physiology....  Also of interest is  the structure of neural tissue, which is much less protein rich than muscle i.e .protein cannot have been a limiting factor" as we see here http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/facts.html.

Interestingly something I have noticed in my own life is that in situations of exalted expanded states of consciousness my metabolism has changed in a marked way and suddenly I have craved lots of tropical fruit and can metabolise it, it as if my brain is just burning it up.  On return to a more mundane or 'normal' state of awareness this effect drifts away.

This is an interesting topic and connects us deeply to the ongoing story of our species.

6 comments:

  1. hmmm...high fruit works pretty darn good for me :]

    Although I've eaten an awful lot of plant medicines, harmalas, and melatonin.

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    1. thanks that's very interesting feedback...i think people's metabolisms vary a lot

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  2. What food do you get most of your calories from?

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  3. it varies according to where I am and what I am doing...in winter in England for example sat at the table working it may be raw dairy products, in sunny Spain, out and about, it might be seasonal fruit for a while...interesting point, thanks for commenting

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  4. " I would clarify that we are no longer a highly specialised fruit eater due to our current neural configuration. However I suspect the relics of such a system still reside in our right hemisphere. This is where I think there is a huge range of variation, degrees of cerebral dominance correlate with our capacity to assimilate our ancestral diet, without the ancestral bio-chemistry at best we are maximising a 'primitive' system.

    One management system (neuro assimilation, endocrine, immune etc) relatively primitive but dominant, one relatively advanced but mostly latent. I think this is the biggest factor to address re being able to assimilate the bio-chemistry essential for full function, bit of a catch 22 but no doubt possible to boot strap something wonderful back into life." Tony Wright

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    1. That's an important point I would restate in the article if possible, since It's not really explained.

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