Dedication This book is dedicated to the first genius I ever met: my mom Contents Cover Title Page Dedication Introduction How to Use This Book Part 1: You Are What You Eat Chapter 1: The Invisible Problem Genius Food #1: Extra-Virgin Olive Oil Chapter 2: Fantastic Fats and Ominous Oils Genius Food #2: Avocados Chapter 3: Overfed, yet Starving Genius Food #3: Blueberries Chapter 4: Winter Is Coming (For Your Brain) Genius Food #4: Dark Chocolate Part 2: The Interconnectedness of It All (Your Brain Responds) Chapter 5: Healthy Heart, Healthy Brain Genius Food #5: Eggs Chapter 6: Fueling Your Brain Genius Food #6: Grass-Fed Beef Chapter 7: Go with Your Gut Genius Food #7: Dark Leafy Greens Chapter 8: Your Brain’s Chemical Switchboard Genius Food #8: Broccoli Part 3: Putting Yourself in the Driver’s Seat Chapter 9: Sacred Sleep (and the Hormonal Helpers) Genius Food #9: Wild Salmon Chapter 10: The Virtues of Stress (or, How to Become a More Robust Organism) Genius Food #10: Almonds Chapter 11: The Genius Plan Chapter 12: Recipes and Supplements “Cheesy” Scrambled Eggs Jamaican Me Smarter Grass-Fed Picadillo Pan-Seared Wild Alaskan Salmon with Turmeric, Ginger, and Tahini-Miso Banging Liver Insanely Crispy Gluten-Free Buffalo Chicken Wings Turmeric-Almond Chicken Fingers Sautéed Greens Better Brain Bowl “Cheesy” Kale Salad Brain-Boosting Raw Chocolate Acknowledgments Resources Notes Index About the Authors Copyright About the Publisher Introduction Before you play two notes learn how to play one note—and don’t play one note unless you’ve got a reason to play it –MARK HOLLIS If you’d have told me a few years ago that I’d one day write a book about optimizing the brain, I would have been sure you had mistaken me for someone else After I switched my college major from premed to film and psychology, the idea of a career in health seemed unlikely This was compounded by the fact that soon after I graduated, I became entrenched in what I considered a dream job: a journalist and presenter on TV and the Web My focus was stories that I felt were underreported and could make a positive impact on the world I was living in Los Angeles—a city I’d idolized as an MTV-watching teen growing up in New York—and had just ended a five-year stint hosting and producing content for a socially conscious TV network called Current Life was great And it was all about to change As much as I enjoyed the Hollywood life, I’d often find myself making trips back east to see my mom and two younger brothers In 2010, on one of those trips home, my brothers and I noticed a subtle change in the way my mother, Kathy, walked She was fifty-eight at the time and had always had a spirited way about her But suddenly, it was as though she were wearing a space suit underwater— each stride and gesture looked like a purposeful, conscious decision Though I know better now, back then I couldn’t even make the connection between the way she moved and her brain’s health She also began offhandedly complaining of mental “fogginess.” This too was lost on me No one in my family had ever had memory problems In fact, my maternal grandmother lived to ninety-six and her memory was sharp until the end But in my mom’s case, it seemed as if her overall processing speed had slowed, like a Web browser with too many open tabs We started to notice that when we would ask her to pass the salt at dinner, it would take her a few extra beats to register While I chalked what I was seeing up to “normal aging,” deep down I had the chilling suspicion that something wasn’t right It wasn’t until the summer of 2011 during a family trip to Miami that those suspicions were confirmed My mom and dad had been divorced since I was eighteen, and this was one of the few times since then that my brothers and I were together with my parents under the same roof—seeking respite from the summer heat in my dad’s apartment One morning, my mother was standing at the breakfast bar With the whole family present, she hesitated, and then announced that she had been having memory problems and had recently sought the help of a neurologist In an incredulous but playful tone, my father asked her, “Is that so? Well then, what year is it?” She stared at us blankly for a moment, and then another My brothers and I chuckled and chimed in, breaking the Copyright GENIUS FOODS Copyright © 2018 by Max Lugavere All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books FIRST EDITION Cover Design by Milan Bozic Cover Photograph by David Malan Images in Chapter 6 courtesy of Mary Newport Digital Edition MARCH 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-256289-0 Version 02152018 Print ISBN: 978-0-06-256285-2 About the Publisher Australia HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty Ltd Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia www.harpercollins.com.au Canada HarperCollins Canada 2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor Toronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada www.harpercollins.ca India HarperCollins India A 75, Sector 57 Noida Uttar Pradesh 201 301 www.harpercollins.co.in New Zealand HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive Rosedale 0632 Auckland, New Zealand www.harpercollins.co.nz United Kingdom HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF, UK www.harpercollins.co.uk United States HarperCollins Publishers Inc 195 Broadway New York, NY 10007 www.harpercollins.com * The modern “problem” of ADHD may be more a consequence of brains wired for novelty and exploration clashing with routine jobs and one-size-fits-all education, a theory that I will revisit in chapter 8 † Previously, omega-3s have shown mixed results in adults with psychotic disorders, but this study offers evidence that starting treatment earlier may be more effective ‡ Sometimes experimental high-fat diets might even include trans fats This oversight makes little sense considering that man-made trans fats are highly toxic, possessing clear deleterious effects on cognitive health * There is clear person-to-person variation of the impact that a carbohydrate meal (say, a whole-grain bagel) will have on one’s blood sugar Someone with healthy glucose control might eat a baked potato and see their blood sugar return to baseline soon after, with minimal damage done Conversely, a person with poor glucose control (somebody with insulin resistance, prediabetes, or type diabetes) might see their blood sugar stay elevated for hours afterward These factors are mediated by a range of factors, including inflammation, sleep, genes, stress, and even time of day * Remember those delicate, chemically reactive polyunsaturated fats from chapter 2? They are great for creating that nonstick coating on your skillet because they oxidize and bond to the iron so easily—the exact process that happens in your blood! It’s almost impossible to get a nonstick coating with olive oil or saturated fats because they are more chemically stable and not easily oxidized * Most fats, like the fat from olive oil or a grass-fed-beef hamburger, enter the lymphatic system upon consumption, where they get disseminated throughout the body * You read that correctly Feedlot animals are routinely fed junk food like candy, cookies, and marshmallows because those foods provide cheap carbs to fatten them up * These drugs, called cholinesterase inhibitors, are not known for being particularly efficacious, in part because low acetylcholine is the result of underlying dysfunction, not the cause of it These drugs nothing to treat that dysfunction, and therefore do not alter disease progression † That’s V for Vendetta —a flawless movie in my opinion Remember, remember * Many obese and insulin-resistant patients are told to focus their energy on “doing more cardio” to lose weight, which ignores what would be the more appropriate aim of gaining more muscle to reestablish insulin sensitivity † While we surmise that there may be beneficial hormonal effects to keeping the feeding window later in the day rather than eating first thing in the morning (to allow cortisol to do its job of liberating stored fatty acids for use as fuel), you also want to ensure that you leave enough time to digest (two to three hours) before going to sleep Eating immediately before bedtime can disrupt sleep as well as the brain’s maintenance processes ... Chapter 5: Healthy Heart, Healthy Brain Genius Food #5: Eggs Chapter 6: Fueling Your Brain Genius Food #6: Grass-Fed Beef Chapter 7: Go with Your Gut Genius Food #7: Dark Leafy Greens Chapter 8: Your Brain’s Chemical Switchboard Genius Food #8: Broccoli... Chapter 2: Fantastic Fats and Ominous Oils Genius Food #2: Avocados Chapter 3: Overfed, yet Starving Genius Food #3: Blueberries Chapter 4: Winter Is Coming (For Your Brain) Genius Food #4: Dark Chocolate... Chapter 9: Sacred Sleep (and the Hormonal Helpers) Genius Food #9: Wild Salmon Chapter 10: The Virtues of Stress (or, How to Become a More Robust Organism) Genius Food #10: Almonds Chapter 11: The Genius Plan Chapter 12: Recipes and Supplements