You can learn a lot from educational books …
So Many Types of Diet Books
Upon looking on Amazon, there are so many types of diet book out there. There are three categories of macro-nutrients that the body consume: fat, protein, and carbohydrates. And there are good and bad types of each of these. So different types of diets try to tweak different portions of these macro-nutrients.
Here are just some of the types of diet books found on amazon in no particular order. They are not recommendations and some may even be harmful. But you may find some good info in some. And not all diet is right for everyone.
Low-Fat Living
Living Low Carb
The 30-Day Low-Carb Diet Solution
The Mediterranean Diet
The South Beach Diet
The New Atkins for a New You
The Spectrum
The UltraSimple Diet
The Insulin-Resistance Diet
The Diabetes Diet
The Glycemic Load Diet
The Paleo Solution
The Dash Diet
The New High Protein Diet
The Metabolic Effect Diet
The Real Food Diet Cookbook
The Oil-Protein Diet Cookbook
The High Intensity Diet
The Flexitarian Diet
The Vegan Diet
The Vegetarian Low-Carb Diet Cookbook
Flat Belly Diet
The 10/60 Diet
The Dukan Diet
Easy HCG Diet
The G.I. Diet
The New Detox Diet
The Carb Lovers Diet
The Raw Food Diet Plan
The Fat Resistance Diet
The Fat Burning Diet
The False Fat Diet
The New Glucose Revolution Low GI Vegetarian Diet
The Mayo Clinic Diet
The PCOS Diet Plan
The Full Plate Diet
The 17 Day Diet
Crazy Sexy Diet
The Hormone Diet
The No S Diet
The Thyroid Diet
The Beck Diet Solution
The Kind Diet
Dr. Gott’s No Flour, No Sugar Diet
Books That Say Stress Kills Brain Cells
Chronic stress is damaging to the brain. If you want to maintain brain health, you have to keep the stress hormone cortisol levels low to the extent possible. This is mentioned in many brain health related books and web articles.
- In Dr. Mark Hyman’s book The UltraMind Solution
, key #7 is to “Calm Your Mind”. On page 53, he writes that cortisol damages the hippocampus part of the brain.
- The book Brain Longevity
by Dr. Dharma Khalsa, it says similarly that cortisol affects the hippocampus, and that the hippocampus of Alzheimer patients are significantly smaller as the disease progresses. It also points out that day-after-day and year-after-year of chronic stress can kill billions of brain cells. [page 121] Dr. Khalsa talks more about stress on the brain in his web article and in a video on fora.tv.
- In the book You: The Owner’s Manual, Dr. Michael Roizen and Dr. Mehmet Oz says that action number 4 of the section “Your Brain: The Live Younger Action Plan” is to “reduce stress”. And it again mentions the link between cortisol, stress, and brain health.
- Page 30 of Dr. Daniel Amen’s Magnificent Mind at Any Age points out that older adult with long-term elevated levels of cortisol had smaller hippocampus and performed worse on memory tests.
- The book The Memory Cure says on page 76 that chronic stress is one of the risk factors for Alzheimer’s. The type of stress can be that of a stressful job for example. The stress is damaging to many organs of the body including the brain.
- Page 176 of the book The Brain’s Behind It again mentions that stress can kill hippocampal neurons.
- In book Ultraprevention, page 112 of the Kindle Edition, it says “Cortisol kills neurons, especially in a particularly sensitive area called the hippocampus.”
Since it might be difficult for you to find the references to all of those books mention, here are some links to some web articles that say’s basically the same thing — that stress is harmful to the brain.
- In article stanfordalumni.org, Physiologist Robert Sapolsky looked at baboons and also came to the conclusion that high levels of stress hormones kills cells in the hippocampus. Similar article about Robert Sapolsky. Read also the article This is Your Brain on Stress.
- In the Q&A section of Dr. Andrew Weil’s website, he says that cortisol is toxic to neurons.
- ScienceCentral.com says “stress really is bad” and chronic stress can change our brains.
There are also YouTube videos about stress on the brain.
- Google Talks video of Dr. John Medina talking about brain health. Dr. Medina says that “stress damages cognition in virtually every way cognition can be measured”
- And here is a video reporting on stressed versus unstressed rats in a memory task of remembering location of submerged platform.
- In page 75 of the book, The Chemistry of Calm, it says that prolonged elevation of cortisol can lead to fat storage, insulin resistance, inflammation, and brain degeneration.
Books I Want To Read
Some books I want to read and DVDs I want to watch (when I have time)…
PermalinkBook: “Stumbling on Happiness” by Daniel Gilbert
|
This book is not only insightful, but very amusing. At times, the author Daniel Gilbert who is an psychology professor at Harvard University, writes as if a comedian. I normally do not read the acknowledgements of a book. But it starts out so funny that I had to read the rest of it as well as the forward.
This book gives lot of concrete examples and results of studies that shows that people often do not know in advanced what will make them happy. Just like the eyes can be fooled by opticial illusions, the minds imagination of the future can be fooled. Just like we can not accurately remember the past, we can not accurately fortell the future or how we would feel if this or that event were to happen. Our imagination has three shortcomings that we are often not aware of: a) Realism — The mind fills in a lot of gaps and makes a lot of things up. We tend to forget this and hence our imagination seem more real to us than should give it credit for. b) Presentism — Our imagination of the future is affected by our current state. c) Rationalization — We tend to look for things that confirms our belief or than enhances our attitude towards our current state. We are also often fooled by how and what we look for things. This is summarized on page 183 that says “The brain and the ey may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what the eye see, but in return the ey has agreed to look for what the brain wants.” The relationship between wealth and happiness is also very interesting. On page 239, it says “Economists and psychologists have spent decades studying the relation between wealth and happiness, and they have generally concluded that wealth increases human happiness when it lifts people out of abject poverty and into the middle class but that it does little to increase happiness thereafter. Americans who earn $50,000 per year are much happier than those who earn $10,000 per year, but Americans who earn $5 million per year are not much happier than those who earn $100,000 per year.” This is the concept of declining marginal utility of money. When you have none, it makes you happy to have some. But once you have enough, any additional amounts will give you a less and less return on happiness. To hear more from Daniel Gilbert, watch this video. |
Book: “Change Your Brain, Change Your Life” by Daniel Amen
|
Dr. Daniel G. Amen write an informative and practical book on how to keep your brain healthy and working well. Regardless of what state your brain is in now, it can be improved. Because the brain is so central to our being, improving the brain often will improve our lives. The two main points is good diet and exercise. |
Book: “Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill” by Matthieu Ricard
Matthieu Ricard is an scientist who turned Buddist Monk. The book’s subtitle “a guide to developing life’s most important skill” implies that happiness is a skill. It is a skill that can be developed through mind training and meditation.
| Here is a video of Ricard giving a lecture at Google on the same subject. |
Book: “The Brain Trust Program”
|
The subtitle of this book is “A Scientifically Based Three-Part Plan to Improve Memory, Elevate Mood, Enhance Attention, Alleviate Migraine and Menopausal Symptoms, and Boost Mental Energy”
This books describes the care and feeding of the brain as in what to eat and not eat. It contains sets of brain exercises that are scientifically designed to enhance the functioning of your brain. It also covers on Alzheimer’s Disease. |
Books on Brain Health
Here are some practical books on the care of your brain and how to keep it healthly.
Change Your Brain, Change Your Life
|
The subtitle of this book is “The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, Obsessiveness, Anger, and Impulsiveness”
Dr. Daniel G. Amen write an informative and practical book on how to keep your brain healthy and working well. Regardless of what state your brain is in now, it can be improved. Because the brain is so central to our being, improving the brain often will improve our lives. The two main points is good diet and exercise. Dr. Amen is a clinical neuro scientist and medical director of Amen Clinic for Behavioral Medicine. |
The Brain Trust Program:
|
The subtitle of this book is “A Scientifically Based Three-Part Plan to Improve Memory, Elevate Mood, Enhance Attention, Alleviate Migraine and Menopausal Symptoms, and Boost Mental Energy”
This books describes the care and feeding of the brain as in what to eat and not eat. It contains sets of brain exercises that are scientifically designed to enhance the functioning of your brain. It also covers on Alzheimer’s Disease. |
Preventing Alzheimer’s: Ways to Help Prevent, Delay, Detect, and Even Halt Alzheimer’s Disease and OtherForms of Memory Loss
|
The authors Dr. Shankle (neurologist) and Dr. Amen (psychiatrist) writes in the first chapter, “Alzheimer’s disease (AD) begins an average of 30 years before the first symptoms.” This books will provide you with prevention strategies that may delay onset long enough so that one never have symptoms. |
Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain
| Aerobic exercise is not just good for the heart, it is also good for the brain in more ways than one. That is according to John Ratey, the author of this book who is professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. |
A User’s Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain
| An excerpt from the back cover reads “Ratey clearly and succinctly surveys what scientists now know about the brain and how we use it. He looks at the brain as a malleable organ capable of improvement and change, like any muscle, and examines the way secific motor functions might be applied to overcome neural disorders ranging from everyday shyness to autism.” |
Permalink
Dan Ariely explains our irrational behaviors in his book
| Dan Ariely is author of the book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions |
Book: “Best of the Brain from Scientific American”
Best of the Brain from Scientific American: Mind, Matter, and Tomorrow’s Brain
This book contains 21 articles about the mind and the brain from Scientific American, a popular-science magazine. |