The human brain is uniquely powerful, but it is also very vulnerable to stress, toxins, and malnutrition that is all too common in our world. Many of the toxins in our environment – things like mercury, aluminum, lead, Round-Up weed killer, flame retardants, plastics, etc. – are fat-soluble, meaning they get stuck in our fat tissue. Since the brain is mostly fat, it gets full of these toxins too. Over time this accumulation of fat-soluble toxins, heavy metals, and poisonous chemicals from our modern world makes our brain sick. This is a tragic problem as the end result of this brain toxicity can be diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s Disease, and dementia.
Alzheimer’s is such a big problem now that it is the #1 leading cause of death in the United Kingdom! That is a telling statistic that shows just how common this brain-destroying process has become. In our office, we don’t just look at labels; we also look at the whole person with their history, symptoms, and lab values, including DNA profiles. There are several genes in our body that have an outsized impact on our brain function. The two most important genes are COMT and MAO (you can read about them here), and they have a huge influence on the amount of dopamine and serotonin in our brain. People dealing with dementia, Parkinson’s Disease, movement disorders, and Alzheimer’s all know how important neurotransmitters can be for brain function. Understanding how these genetic variants are impacting our patients’ brain function is a big part of how we practice at Red Mountain. No matter your age, optimizing brain function with state-of-the-art functional medicine will help improve your life.
To help the brain, we need to feed the brain vitamins, nutrients, antioxidants, minerals, and amino acids that it needs to function at its best. Exposure to stress and toxins reduces nutrition inside our brain, and using a functional medicine approach to supplementing your brain will help restore it. Our doctors are uniquely trained to help you figure out the right foods, supplements, and lifestyle adjustments, not to mention the best chiropractic and kinesiology treatments that will help optimize your brain function.