Feeling like you need to yawn? Yeah, me too.

That’s ok though. Go ahead and yawn. In fact, I encourage it. Even if you don’t feel like yawning, go ahead and give it a go. Give yourself half a dozen good yawns. I bet you end up feeling refreshed and more alert by the time you finish. Don’t worry, I’ll wait. In fact, I think I’ll even join you…

There, doesn’t that feel better? I know I feel better.

So here’s the deal: a wealth of medical information shows that yawning actually has significant benefits. Everyone knows that you yawn when tired – but why is that? It’s actually because yawning helps to relieve the brain of the feeling of being sleepy. So when used at a time when you aren’t about to nod off, yawning’s effects can actually perk you up and bring the brain to a higher cognitive state. Similar to some meditation techniques (and actually activating similar structures in the brain) yawning can very rapidly induce a level of awareness that may take minutes with meditation.

Yawning is also highly contagious. You may have even felt like yawning just by looking at the photos at the top of this article? Why is that significant? It is because yawning activates a region of the brain thought to be involved in empathy, thus, when you and others yawn together it can actually help you work better together.

So if anyone ever tells you yawning is rude, just explain to them that it’s an important neurological function, and it actually is helping you become more alert, more aware, and more a part of whatever is going on.

gobble gobble?

Today is Thanksgiving, and if you’re like a lot of people you may be feeling prematurely guilty about all the food (and turkey!) you may be eating today. Well, don’t be. Turkey actually has a lot of benefits for your health, and it is a meat that seems to be neglected regularly in favor of that other bird, the ubiquitous chicken. But really, turkey has a lot of positive qualities if you just give it a chance.

Without its skin on, turkey actually is quite lean, having only 1 gram of fat per ounce, is a good source of some vitamins as well as folic acid, and of course, contains tryptophan. Tryptophan has often been associated with the sleepy feeling you get after eating turkey, but really the most important thing to know is that it is an essential amino acid and a precursor to the mood molecule serotonin.

And since I’m off to eat now, I’m leaving you with some useful references about turkey to peruse at your own pleasure:

About Turkey

The Health Benefits of Turkey

Brain Health Recipes

Wikipedia article on Typtophan

Wikipedia article on Turkey (the bird)

But hold on… what if some of those benefits correlate to the type of people who drink regularly, and aren’t actually causative? What if we were looking so hard for any benefits we could find that we just accepted any we saw as having been scientifically proven without the proper evidence. (I mean, I like alcohol, most of us like alcohol, and I think we’d all be happy with any extra excuse to have a drink, right?) So there was talk thrown around about long-term brain health benefits from alcohol, and new evidence seems to show that bubble has, err, popped.

In a study carried out at the University College London, researchers found that cognitive benefits thought to be associated with moderate alcohol consumption weren’t actually linked to the alcohol at all. It seems that the type of people that were drinking moderately were also the type of people that had led lives leading to greater thinking skills.

So, it seems that although there are health benefits we can associate with moderate alcohol consumption, we don’t all have the green light to drink and think that it’s some sort of wonder tonic – remember, alcohol is pretty toxic at anything more than a few glasses at a time. However, at moderate levels, it really is pretty great. I think Benjamin Franklin said it best:

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

Cheers to that!

How can cinnamon improve your brain health?

So this got me thinking about cinnamon and our use of it in meals and as a spice. I’d wager that as sugar has been used more and more, cinnamon has fallen out out favor. And this really is a shame, because as we do more and more research into traditional spices, we seem to be finding more beneficial brain health benefits. Cinnamon in particular has some interesting properties, as revealed in a recent research study published in the journal Experimental Neurology. What the researchers found was that an extract of cinnamon prevented some brain swelling associated with neuronal cell death and brain damage. Now, as this point it is unclear what the research could mean for consumption of cinnamon and any long-term beneficial effects, but I always like to see research showing that things we can eat every day can actually have a measurable beneficial effect in the body.

Happy Holidays!

Several randomized controlled trials have been performed utilizing omega-3 fatty acids as a monotherapy for depression, or as augmentation therapy (added to an antidepressant for major depressive disorder.)  Two recent meta-analyses aggregated these data, and found that there is evidence for an anti-depressant effect of omega-3 fatty acids when used in conjunction with anti-depressant medications for depression; however, there was evidence of publication bias in favor of positive studies.  That is, a normal distribution of the effect sizes showed an absence of small, negative studies that have been published.  The available evidence from randomized controlled trials is modest, but does support a role for omega-3 fatty acids as an augmentation therapy for depression.  However, randomized controlled trials do not at this time support a role for omega-3 fatty acids in monotherapy for major depressive disorder, nor for boosting “subclinical depression” (which is to say depressed mood that does not meet the criteria for major depressive disorder.)

Problem with Randomized Controlled Trials

All of these studies involve very short time courses (e.g. supplementation over the course of approximately twelve weeks.)  The epidemiological data suggests that it is the overall consumption of omega-3 fatty acids over years to a lifetime that has a protective effect.  None of our randomized controlled trials are done over a long enough time period to determine the full effect of omega-3 fatty acids on mood.

Conclusion: Omega-3 Fatty Acids Have a Protective Effect

It is important to aggregate the evidence across a range of different types of studies, including epidemiological, cellular and molecular in addition to randomized controlled trials.  When that is done, the potential effect of Omega-3 fatty acids on depression and other mood disorders looks to be far greater than the available evidence from randomized, controlled trials.  As the Committee on Research on Psychiatric Treatments of the American Psychiatric Association recently concluded, “The preponderance of epidemiologic and tissue compositional studies supports a protective effect of omega-3 EFA intake, particularly eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).”

There is mounting evidence, as more and more research is done into Alzheimer’s Disease and related neurodegenerative disorders, that diet plays a large role in the development of brain disorders later in life. What you eat matters, but what you make sure not to eat matters as well.

And despite the focus in the United States on the importance of protein in our diets, more and more evidence seems to indicate that regularly consuming high levels of protein (such as deriving >50% of ones calories from protein) can have adverse effects. The landmark research study, The China Study, examining the role of diet (and dietary protein) in health is what I consider to be essential reading for anyone interested in the link between diet and health.

For more information on the research study on high protein diets and brain mass – published in the Journal of Molecular Neurodegeneration, check here:

Dietary composition modulates brain mass and amyloid beta levels in a mouse model of aggressive Alzheimer’s amyloid pathology

Correlation Between Fish Consumption and Major Depression

In this classic article to the Lancet, JR Hibbeln demonstrated that there was an inverse correlation between annual fish consumption in a country, and that country’s incidence of depression (Hibbeln, 1998.)  As you can see from the graph, those countries that consumed the most fish per capita, such as Japan, had the lowest rates of depression.  Vice versa, those countries where people consumed the lowest amount of fish, such as the United States, had the highest rates of depression per capita.  Of course, correlation is not causation – the fact that two things are linked does not mean one causes the other.  For that reason, epidemiological studies such as this one must be confirmed by other methodologies: mechanistic studies in cell cultures, animal models of illness, and randomized clinical trials.  Research on why fish consumption might help prevent depression has focused on omega-3 fatty acids.  Cellular studies have confirmed that Omega-3 fatty acids, found mostly in certain kinds of fish, but also in walnuts, soybeans, flaxseed, and some other plants, are integral components of the cell membrane of brain cells.  Without adequate omega-3’s, membrane dysfunction may lead to cellular dysfunction, and from cellular dysfunction to conditions such as depression.

Next week: what randomized clinical trials show about omega-3 consumption and depression!

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We recently had a patient at the hospital where I work who became psychotic, or lost touch with reality, believing that the CIA wanted to assasinate him, and hearing voices whispering death threats through the hallways.  The only cause that could be found was vitamin B12 deficiency.  Once we gave him injections of vitamin B12, he slowly improved and could once again tell the difference between reality and what only existed in his mind.

Vitamin B12 is one of the crucial dietary nutrients that our bodies, and especially our brains, needs to survive.  This vitamin is involved in basic DNA replication, and it also helps to breaks down certain fatty acids that are toxic to the protective sheath around brain cells.  Deficiencies of vitamin B12 can result from a variety of causes.  Some of the most common are alcoholism, autoimmune disease, inflammatory bowel disease, and even eating a strictly vegan diet that excludes all animal products.  The reason for the latter is that the active form of vitamin B12 has only been found in animal sources, or alternatively, grown in some strains of yeast, which many vegans consider to be off-limits.  Unfortunately, tempeh, seaweed, miso, and other plant foods do not contain the form of B12 that the human body can utilize.  Without some form of supplementation in the vegan diet, vegans could begin to suffer from the symptoms of vitamin B12 deficiency, including anemia and fatigue, decreased sensation in the extremities, coordination difficulties, memory loss, dementia, depression, or even psychosis.  That is why it is critical, if you eat a purely vegan diet to take a vitamin B12 supplement.  If you have any of the above symptoms, make sure to see your doctor, as vitamin B12 deficiency might be a reversible cause.