Reddit reviews Brain Maker: The Power of Gut Microbes to Heal and Protect Your Brain for Life

Work out 3 days a week with HEAVY weights. None of that high rep, pussy weight shit. Do the big lifts. I'm talking benching, squatting, deadlifting. Do cardio the other two days. Your body doesn't want to change naturally. All it wants to do is keep you alive. That's why you've gotta force it. It's like pushing a boulder up a hill. If you need a good strength program, start with Bigger Leaner Stronger by Mike Matthews. Go on www.muscleforlife.com and read some of the articles. Get the book. Lean muscle will increase your testosterone, which adds to your energy and assertiveness. It's a feedback loop and an upward cycle. The rich definitely get richer.

Start eating healthy if you don't already. Lots of greens. Juice them if you can. It tastes nasty at first - but it will get better with time. Eat calorically dense food. I'm talking lean chicken breast, broccoli, mixed veggies, etc. You can eat healthy at a cheap cost, don't think you can't. Skip the sugars. Skip the junk food. Minimize your grains. You're not eating only for your physical health - but for your mental health as well. Read Brain Maker to see how food affects your brain. I attribute a lot of my depression and "brain fog" to eating a shitty diet for 3 years in school. Jerking myself senseless didn't help either.

Don't smoke weed, especially if you have an addictive personality. I wasted a lot of money and a lot of time smoking weed.

You can never replace time. You can replace money. If you can, always choose time over money. Speaking of money, start saving 10% of anything you earn. You will thank yourself later.

Don't fall into petty bullshit. Always think long term.

Drop anyone who is lame, negative, or petty like a hot coal. I don't care if they're the President. You shouldn't have any space for that in your life. No drama. No negativity. Surround yourself with like minded individuals who want to conquer.

Get up EARLY on weekends and get shit done. Don't sleep in until 3pm. That's fucking lame. Get up early and learn how to do a new skill, like start a business. Work HARD on your school work but get it out of the way as early as possible so you can work on what really matters - YOURSELF.

READ outside of class. Most of what you'll read in class will be bullshit. Read Self-Development books. Read Biographies. Read good Fiction. Read business books. Some of my favorites are Think and Grow Rich, 48 Laws of Power, Teddy Roosevelt's biography, and the 10X Rule.

Throw yourself into as many social activities as possible. I cannot emphasize this enough. You will be around tons of different people and you won't get locked into one worldview. You'll also increase your social skills.

Get as much experience with women as possible. I don't necessarily mean sexual, but if it progresses that way - fine. Have as many girl friends as possible. Not only will you be around feminine energy, but you have a higher chance of meeting other girls who you connect with on a deeper level as well.

Continue with NoFap. 99% of the men (if they can be called that) do not do this. You will be at a supreme advantage if you do. The only time you can ejaculate is with a girl.

Yes! Dr. David Perlmutter has recently been involved in research with the gut microbiome in relation to neurodegenerative disease and psychopathologies. His book is "Brainmaker: The Power of Gut Microbes to Heal and Protect Your Brain - For Life"

http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Maker-Microbes-Protect-Brain%C2%96/dp/0316380105/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452273880&sr=8-1&keywords=Brainmaker

Anyway, he just happens to be one of the popular public heralds of this new information, but essentially, the message is that the microbial composition and diversity in the gut is responsible in large part for the production of essential hormones and neurotransmitters involved in the regulation of mood and function. The gut produces four to five times more serotonin, through the conversion of tryptophan by gut microbes, than the brain itself. Now, we all know that selective serotonin re uptake inhibitors are widely prescribed to alleviate depression symptoms, and they work by increasing the amount of circulating serotonin.

He goes on to recommend various treatments including aggressive probiotic regimens including specific microbes, probiotic enemas, and even FMT (Fecal Microbial Transplant).

In my experience, you can get the most benefit of probiotics by learning to ferment your own foods and eating fermented foods that can be purchased (unpasteurized and raw) from health-food stores. Fermented foods are a POWERFUL treatment for depression, as is a ketogenic diet (in the way it tends to suppress pathogenic bacteria through high fat intake and encourage the colonization of beneficial microbes). Broad-spectrum probiotics are very helpful as well, especially if you can summon the courage to... well... dissolve them in water in very high doses and squirt them into your rectum using an enema device. I've done it many times and felt the benefits of 1400 billion (not a typo) CFU probiotics taken by enema once daily for one week, in a huge way!

Depression is so very often linked to dysbiosis and you need to investigate this. Good luck.

Primarily change your diet. Drop grains and sugars. Eat healthy whole foods. Learn to cook. Read up on proper nutrition. Get some moderate exercise. Look into improving your gut bacteria through probiotics and prebiotics. Get sufficient sleep!

www.dietdoctor.com

http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Maker-Power-Microbes-Protect/dp/0316380105

Concentrate on looking after yourself and improving your body, mind and spirit. There is a wealth of information online for self improvement.

Read everything you can. Leaders are readers.

Watch some classic motivational speakers like Jim Rohn on YouTube.

The list goes on man, the only thing you need is the determination in your mind that you are sick of being where you are. Only you can know when that moment is.

Actually, if you are reading Good Calories, Bad Calories, you can skip Metabolic Typing Diet. MTD is just another system to help you determine how your body processes fats and carbohydrates, which imho is the big variable when it comes to diet. But GCBC covers that along with updated information.

IIRC, GCBC also recommends starting with a super low-carbohydrate diet for a few weeks and then introducing carbs until you start to feel funky again, then pulling back til you feel better. This is pretty common practice for a lot of dieticians now. Incidentally, Taubes wrote a follow-up called Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It.
which is a bit of a rehash of GCBC but focuses more on putting the knowledge into practice. IMHO both are worth reading.

I'm also a huge fan of David Perlmutter's Grain Brain, which talks about the link between carbs and the brain and brain disease and imho is really worth a read. It has a couple of follow up books too (Brain Maker about the vital role that gut flora plays and Grain Brain Cookbook).

Since embarking on my nutritional journey, I discovered I have a gluten allergy (explains all those times I fell asleep at the wheel after eating a sandwich). I cut out grains for the most part and eat primarily protein and veg, very little sugar, definitely no refined sugar.
My mood is better and more consistent, brain fog is gone, weight is easier to maintain, and I have more lasting energy.

It's unfortunate that institutions like the FDA and AHA (who are backed by industrial farming corps) hammered the American public with the lie of the one-size-fits-all Food Pyramid and low-fat, "heart-healthy" diets & that the word "diet" carries a connotation of weight-loss instead of health.

Our generation is paying for it with our health.