How a high-sugar diet can gender bend your brain

Have you noticed how as some people get older they take on the characteristics of the opposite sex — men develop breasts and cry at movies and women bald and grow facial hair? Or have you wondered why people who undergo hormone therapy to change genders think and behave in new ways? Male and female hormones have a profound influence on the structure and activity of the brain, which is highly malleable under the influence of hormonal changes.

Scientists began learning about the influence of sex hormones on brain structure when they studied brain scans of people undergoing hormone therapy to change genders.

The men receiving female hormones developed more female-like brains while the women receiving male hormones developed a more male brain and larger hypothalamus. In both, the volume of grey and white matter adjusted to that of the gender to which they were transitioning. It took only four months of heavy hormone therapy for the subjects’ brains to take on the shape and structure of the opposite sex.

Additionally, a 2018 study of people with gender dysphoria — meaning they identify as the gender opposite of the one assigned at birth — had similar findings. Even without hormone therapy, their brain structure and activity more closely resembled that of the opposite sex, even though their bodies didn’t. Researchers found these differences are detectable in early childhood.

Morphing hormones in midlife

So what does this have to do with people in middle age taking on some characteristics of the opposite gender?

In functional neurology and functional medicine, we understand the various physiological and neurological consequences of diet and lifestyle on hormone and brain function.

The most ubiquitous and profound is the effect of blood sugar instability. We can blame an American

diet high in sugars and processed carbohydrates coupled with a sedentary, stressful lifestyle for throwing hormones out of balance.

A high-sugar, high-carbohydrate diet and sedentary lifestyle creates a disorder called insulin resistance, also known as pre-diabetes. Insulin resistance drives the reproductive hormones in both sexes to begin to mimic that of the opposite gender.

Insulin resistance in women leads to testosterone dominance, causing balding on the head while too much hair grows in on the face. A woman’s voice may become much deeper too. Younger women may also develop polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and infertility.

Meanwhile, insulin resistance in men causes estrogen dominance. It activates an enzyme that converts testosterone to estrogen, which is especially unfortunate in men who try to correct the disorder by taking testosterone hormones.

These men grow breasts and hips, they cry at movies and commercials, and their skin softens. They may also suffer from erectile dysfunction.

Both men and women suffering from the gender-bending characteristics of insulin resistance can be expected to experience the same changes in brain structure and activity, hence taking on the behaviors of the opposite sex.

Insulin resistance imbalances hormones and spikes inflammation

The most deleterious effect of insulin resistance isn’t the hormonal morphing but rather the highly inflammatory side effects. Insulin resistance is so inflammatory to the brain that scientists call Alzheimer’s type 3 diabetes. This is because insulin resistance damages and degenerates the brain.

It also promotes systemic inflammation throughout the body that raises the risk of diabetes, obesity, heart attack, stroke, autoimmune disease, and other diseases of chronic inflammation. The good news is this hormonal-neurological-inflammatory cascade can be unwound through a diet that lowers carbohydrate consumption and raises exercise levels.

Ask my office how we can help you restore your brain and hormone function through functional neurology and functional medicine.

Treating gut bacteria vital for brain & spinal cord injury

The focus on recovering from brain and spinal cord injuries is rest and rehabilitation, but research is showing another vital aspect of optimal recovery: Treating your gut bacteria and healing your gut.

We host about three to four pounds of gut bacteria in our intestines. Numbering in the trillions and with hundreds of varieties discovered so far, these bacteria are known as the gut microbiome. Research in the last decade has shown they are vital to many aspects of health, including brain health.

This is because gut bacteria travel to the brain via the vagus nerve, a large nerve that connects the brain with the gut. The gut and the brain communicate with one another via the vagus nerve in what is called the gut-brain axis. This means your digestive health profoundly affects your brain health and hence brain and neurological recovery from injury.

In fact, an unhealthy microbiome — too little healthy gut bacteria, too much bad bacteria, and lack of diversity of gut bacteria — has been shown to promote brain inflammation. Although inflammation following an injury is an appropriate immune response, if it continues unchecked it can not only thwart recovery but also accelerate brain degeneration and raise the risk of neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia or Parkinson’s. An unhealthy gut microbiome promotes unnecessary and destructive brain inflammation.

Study shows treating gut bacteria helps spinal cord injury recovery

There’s a reason so many people who have had a brain injury or spinal cord injury suddenly suffer from gut problems — the injury affects the gut-brain axis and gut function suffers as a result.

As a result, the gut microbiome is impacted in what is called dysbiosis — when the composition of gut bacteria becomes unhealthy and pro-inflammatory.

Plenty of people already have dysbiosis without having sustained a brain injury or spinal cord injury. Other things that cause dysbiosis include chronic stress, too much sugar and starchy carbohydrates, excess alcohol consumption, hormonal imbalances, a junk food diet, not eating enough vegetables, and other factors that are endemic to life in the United States.

As you can imagine, this means many people who sustain a head injury or spinal cord injury have dysbiosis to start with, which makes recovery even more difficult. And, indeed, the mouse study showed that dysbiosis prior to spinal cord injury exacerbates impairment and results in more damage.

Spinal cord injury promotes intestinal permeability, also known as leaky gut. This is a mechanism in which the lining of the intestines becomes inflamed and overly permeable, allowing undigested foods, bacteria, yeast, and other pathogens into the sterile environment of the bloodstream, where they trigger inflammation throughout the body. The study also showed a spinal cord injury causes dysbiosis.

The extent to which leaky gut and dysbiosis play a role predicts the magnitude of impairment from the injury.

When leaky gut happens it is common for a leaky blood-brain barrier to occur as well. This means the microscopic lining of the brain also becomes overly permeable, allowing pathogens into the environment of the brain. When coupled with dysbiosis, leaky gut and leaky blood-brain barrier trigger brain inflammation and prevent healing.

The good news is that the study showed mice fed probiotics after the injury showed less neurological damage and better recovery.

If you have sustained a brain injury or spinal cord injury, it’s vital to support healthy gut function and a good microbiome. Strategies include avoiding sugars, junk foods, and inflammatory foods (gluten and dairy are inflammatory in many people), eating plenty of vegetables to provide fuel for healthy gut bacteria, and take high quality probiotics.

Ask my office about functional neurology and dietary recovery strategies after a brain injury or spinal cord injury.

Effects of complaining versus gratitude on brain health

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the brain compared to other organs in the body is how readily it changes and evolves based on how we treat it. For instance, research shows that even how we think and see the world — whether we complain frequently or express gratitude regularly — can be the difference between accelerated brain degeneration or enhanced brain function.

Understandably, when you’re stuck in a depressed state it can seem impossible not to complain when you everything about life seems miserable. Functional neurology can help steer you to a healthier metabolic environment for your brain and rehabilitate areas of brain under activity or over activity so that you’re better able to practice healthy brain habits.

The effect of chronic complaining on the brain

Researchers have divided complainers into several categories: chronic complainers, attention seekers, and complainers who are oblivious to those around them.

Chronic complaining results from a brain mechanism called negative plasticity.

Plasticity is a term used in neurology to explain how we learn new things via communication between neurons. When you learn something new, such as a language, new pathways of communication begin developing in the brain.

The more you practice, the more efficient those pathways of communication become so that the new skill eventually becomes automatic. This conserves energy in the brain.

Unfortunately, plasticity can be negative too, making you more efficient at something that is harmful to your health. Examples include bad habits, addictions, stress, PTSD, and chronic complaining.

In other words, the more you complain, the more efficient your brain becomes at so that it becomes automatic.

As a result, you start to see life through a bleak lens and this will affect your behaviors and belief systems for the worse.

What’s worse, chronic complaining can raise your risk of dementia by releasing excess cortisol, a stress hormone, that more rapidly degenerates areas of the brain related to learning and memory.

Being positive takes more effort

Why does complaining and negativity come so easily? In what serves as a survival trait, our brains and bodies respond more actively and readily to negativity than positivity. This phenomenon is called negativity bias.

In studying negativity bias in couples, researchers found that partners in successful marriages naturally employed a five-to-one ratio of positivity to negativity in their interactions with one another.

In other words, it takes a lot more effort in a positive direction to prevent a slide into negative plasticity and the health fallouts from chronic complaining.

Some complaining is healthy and normal

This isn’t to say you should never complain or express negative emotions. Repression also raises stress levels and sabotages health.

Researchers have found the key is to stay mindful about your negative situations. Accepting the negative situation and feelings and consciously choosing to respond within a positive framework takes more work but will net more benefits.

Practice gratitude to positively rewire your brain

The research on the positive benefits of gratitude on the brain and body are extremely encouraging. But like all good things in life, they take work on your part.

One of the most reliable paths to positivity is gratitude. You can develop a more positive outlook by thinking of or writing down things in your life for which you are grateful.

A grateful attitude has been linked to less anxiety and depression, sounder sleep, kinder behavior, and overall better health. One study showed participants who wrote down five things for which they were grateful only once a week were happier, more optimistic, reported fewer physical problems, and exercised more compared to the control group. Similar results were reported in polio survivors who kept a gratitude journal.

Using functional neurology to help you get unstuck

When in the throes of depression, practicing positivity or gratitude can seem like a tall order. Sometimes, metabolic or neurological forces conspire against your desire to feel and function better, and this is where functional neurology can help.

You may have an inflammatory disorder or gut bacterial imbalance that is sabotaging your brain health. Likewise, food or chemical sensitivities, an undiagnosed or unmanaged autoimmune condition, hormonal deficiency, or chronic infection could be weighing you down. An area of your brain may be under firing or over firing, creating neurological disharmony that promotes depression and negativity. You may be struggling with PTSD, a brain injury, or some other brain disorder that is hindering your chances at a good mood.

Depression, constant complaining, and chronic negativity are red flags that something deeper needs to be addressed. Managing your brain health through functional neurology strategies can help provide a sound platform from which to employ positivity and gratitude practices that will unwind the negative plasticity and build positive plasticity for a healthier and happier you. Ask my office for more advice.

Young people today are the loneliest generation yet

Young people are more connected than ever thanks to myriad social media and gaming platforms, yet a new study shows they are also the loneliest generation studied. This is troubling as loneliness is linked with an increased risk of health disorders, including heart disease, stroke, cancer, and other immune disorders. It also raises the risk of premature death, even in younger people.

Some research even shows loneliness is a bigger threat to health than smoking and obesity.

The destructive power of loneliness appears to rise from the fact that it’s an ever present force, like chronic pain or depression, that weighs a person down. The chronic nature of loneliness takes its toll on all the systems in the body, including the immune system and the brain.

A survey of 20,000 adults around the country asked people to rate their loneliness on a scale of 20 to 80. A score of 43 or above is considered lonely enough for it to be a health risk.

More than half the respondents in this study and similar surveys in the past reported feeling socially isolated and chronically lonely, even in the company of others. They felt that they don’t have anyone in life who knows them well.

The most alarming finding is that young people are feeling lonelier than ever before, even more so than their parents and grandparents. In an age where young people are glued to their phones in constant engagement with their peers, it’s a bit surprising to find they are also the loneliest, most depressed, and most likely to commit suicide.

Members of Gen Z, those aged 18 to 22, had the highest loneliness scores while people 72 and older had the lowest.

While people who lived with others reported generally lower scores, single parents had among the highest scores for loneliness.

And only half of the respondents reported having meaningful, in-person contact with other people on a daily basis.

Habits of people who don’t feel lonely

The survey also revealed the lifestyles and habits of people with low loneliness scores.

It found people with the lowest loneliness scores had a good balance of the following in their lives:

Frequent, in-person, meaningful interactions with others.

The right amount of sleep. People who slept an appropriate amount were less lonely than those who slept too little or too much.

Spending the right amount of time with family. Spending too little time or too much time with family reflected higher loneliness scores than spending an appropriate amount of time with family.

The right amount of physical activity. Balance applies to exercise too. People who under exercised or over exercised were lonelier than those who exercised an appropriate amount.

A balanced work life. And to round it out, the same can be said for balance in work. Those who worked too little or too much were lonelier than those who said they worked the right amount. However, those who said they work too little had a loneliness score twice as a high than those who said they worked too much.

In functional neurology we look at not only your metabolic health and brain function, but also at your overall approach to life, including loneliness.

If you are struggling to connect with others, a functional neurology approach to depression and anxiety can help rehabilitate your brain so that it is easier for you to reach out to make friends and form meaningful interactions. Ask my office for more information.