Think clearer and feel calmer with these 7 food strategies from neuroscientist Dr Miguel Toribio-Mateas
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What is the main focus of the episode and how does food affect brain health?
I'm Dr. Rupi, and on this show, I help you feel more in control of your health through food and lifestyle medicine. What we eat and how we consume food can have a profound effect on our brain health, even affecting things like depression, anxiety, and ADHD. Today, we're unpacking seven food strategies that can support your nervous system via the gut-brain axis. And I had the pleasure of chatting with Dr. Miguel Daribio-Matthias to unpack this topic. He's a clinical neuroscientist, nutrition researcher, and author of ADHD Body and Mind, a compassionate guide to rewilding your nervous system. He has a delightful way of bringing together brain health and delicious food. And this conversation is going to get you inspired to cook your way to a better brain and stick around for some of Miguel's unusual approaches to using a slow cooker to maximize
dude. Dr. Miguel, let's talk about seven food strategies to help keep your brain sharp and your gut happy. Where should we start?
We should start with variety. And I sound like a broken record with this. But variety and pairings of food. And I know that you are very keen on doing pairings, you know, combining things. So rather than think about the macros and the micros and the milligrams, think about How does the food feel in the first place? Do you like it? Does it make you feel good? Is it going to make you feel kind of regulated? Is it going to help your mood? But how can you get the maximum benefit from the foods that you're putting together as opposed to just like have one item only? So when I came here, you gave me some cocoa, neeps with a bit of honey, and we were talking about this kind of stuff. So what am I getting from the honey?
Well, I'm getting some fructoligosaccharides. I'm getting some compounds that are going to nourish my gut bacteria, and there's some interesting research on honey and how it does that. It's always going to have more things added to that. It's going to have some interesting polyphenols as well. And then the micro minerals that may be in there as well. Am I freaked out because of the sugar? No, because I'm past
that.
It's freaking out because of sugar and carbs and fats and all that kind of stuff. I'm sure we're going to talk about that today. And then the cocoa is going to give me some nice flavanols from cocoa, basically. So it's going to have the power to oxygenate my brain and bring more nutrients as a result. And also it might nourish my gut microbes as well. So there's some interesting research on how cocoa does that. And by means of doing that, my gut microbes are going to produce some interesting molecules that might nourish the gut itself and also travel through the bloodstream into my brain and do something interesting in my brain. So those kind of like really simple pairings in a rather than very analytical scientific way, I'm getting 10 milligrams of this and 10 milligrams of that.
do they feel good? Do they taste good? Do I feel good when I have them? And I know that they're doing a range of things for the whole of the body, including the gut and the brain. That's the kind of vibe I'm going for.
Yeah, I love that because I don't think we think enough about nutrient synergy or
food
synergy. We think about individual ingredients like, you know, avocados are great for this. um because they have monounsaturated fats and they have fiber and they have all these different benefits and whilst that's true what i i love about your work and your book is that you're moving people in the direction of let's think about the mixed meal let's think about how these individual ingredients are actually giving you something greater than the sum of their parts and I wonder if there are some nutrient pairings that have stood the test of time in different cultures from your own sort of cuisine and your own heritage in Spain and perhaps some other sort of cuisines as well.
yeah so very interesting what you're saying because i like to think about food as a as an orchestra in a way as as opposed to just as a solo artist so sometimes we have this idea that it's just the violin or it's just the guitar yeah and then we're really obsessed with the guitar and forget about there's a whole orchestra playing
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Chapters
3 chapters
1
What is the main focus of the episode and how does food affect brain health?
0:00–8:30
2
Why does Dr. Miguel emphasize food variety and pairings over single ingredients?
8:30–1:00:35
3
What are Microbiota‑Accessible Carbohydrates (MACs) and why are they important for the gut‑brain axis?
1:00:35–1:22:21
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The Doctor's Kitchen Podcast
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