B Vitamins Are Key to Keeping Our Brains Strong and Healthy!

You can grow older and keep your mind as sharp and strong as your body with a healthy diet full of B vitamins!

We all dream of aging well and growing older gracefully, don’t we? We work hard to protect our physical health with a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, but we also need to protect our mental health in a similar approach to strengthen our minds and memory.

By following a Body Ecology diet and lifestyle, you can protect your most important organ: your brain. A two-year clinical trial, the largest to date, recently revealed the effect of B vitamins on “mild cognitive impairment”. Mild cognitive impairment is a condition that is a major risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. [1]

The importance of B vitamins isn’t news, but their impressive effect on our brains’ vitality is – yet another fantastic reason to increase your intake of this powerful nutrient!

In the trial, large amounts of B vitamins were shown to halve the rate of brain shrinkage in elderly individuals that were suffering from memory problems, which potentially slowed their progression towards dementia.

With more and more of our elderly loved ones being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, it is predicted that in the next 20 years, one in four Americans will suffer from the disease. 5.3 million people in the United States have the disease today – the sixth leading cause of death. [2]

These statistics are scary, but they should encourage us all to be proactive! And there are many ways to be proactive in our fight against Alzheimer’s disease and stand up for our brain’s health!

B vitamins are found in garlic, cauliflower, spinach, mustard greens, fish, poultry (chicken and turkey), and lean beef tenderloin. B vitamins are also an essential component of beautifying your skin, with many other health benefits like:

• Helping the body produce red blood cells
• Maintaining the nervous system
• Protecting against cancer
• Ensuring healthy metabolism
• Fighting the negative effects of stress

But B vitamins are also linked to one of the most important elements of the Body Ecology diet: microflora. Microflora assist in making B vitamins in the gut.

The best sources of beneficial microflora are fermented foods and beverages.

Fermented foods and drinks are best because:

• Beneficial bacteria and yeast in fermented foods and drinks are live and active! Whether bought at your local health food store or made at home, you are getting active bacteria.
• Fermentation pre-digests vital nutrients for you. Packed with B vitamins, minerals, and enzymes, fermented foods and drinks are whole foods full of nutritional value on their own.
• Fermentation does not use heat. Your fermented foods and drinks retain their vital amino acids that can be destroyed by heating foods.
• You get a wide variety of live cultures supplied by nature. Lab produced probiotics are often a single strain of bacteria or heated in production.
• Supplements contain bacteria only, while fermented foods and drinks also contain “food” for the microflora to help promote their growth.
• Fermented foods and drinks are acid-resistant and are viable in your system from the time they touch your lips until they reach your gut.

The Body Ecology Culture Starter is an ideal way to create cultured vegetables with just the toss of one of the packets into 1 1/2 cups of warm water. Add in approximately 1 tsp. of sugar (we recommend Rapadura, Sucanat, honey, Agave, or EcoBLOOM), and let your mixture sit for at least 20 minutes. (The bacteria are becoming alert, and the process is beginning.) Add this starter culture to any combination of ingredients that you prefer to use as brine. The options are endless when it comes to the variety of mixes you can create and enjoy, while you reap the health benefits as well!

There are other ways to protect against Alzheimer’s disease and keep your brain strong and healthy:

• Increase your intake of omega-3 fatty acids
• Maintain a healthy body weight
• Avoid aluminum
• Avoid exposure to mercury
• Colonics are important!
• Eliminate sugar

Alzheimer’s disease is not something we need to settle for; there ARE ways to fight against it! By following a healthy diet, ensuring that we are getting our essential nutrients, we can stay young at heart, both physically and mentally, for many years to come!

WHAT TO REMEMBER MOST ABOUT THIS ARTICLE:

If you want to prevent mental decline often associated with age, it is important to protect your brain as your ultimate priority. Recent research has shown that a large intake of B vitamins reduced the rate of brain shrinkage in the elderly to potentially slow down the development of dementia. Today, 5.3 million people in the US suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, but you can protect the health of your brain by eating a diet rich in B vitamins with foods like spinach, cauliflower, garlic, fish, poultry, and lean beef tenderloin. To take it a step further, it is essential to enjoy fermented foods and drinks since they provide your body with healthy microflora to naturally manufacture B vitamins in your gut!

PRODUCT RECOMMENDATIONS:

• Body Ecology’s Probiotic Beverages
• The Body Ecology Culture Starter
• EcoBLOOM