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AMERICANS are losing their minds at an accelerating rate, according to Mike McInnes of Isoactive in Edinburgh, U.K.
Likewise, more Americans are living to very old ages; centenarians are the fastest-growing demographic.
Dementia and cognitive decline are conditions usually associated with old age. However, McInnes said neural loss actually may begin in childhood from the time the human brain is fully formed. Of course, new brain cells may be formed throughout life, but this neurogenesis is increasingly compromised in modern life.
Why? It is due to poor-quality and foreshortened sleep combined with a lack of quality darkness and lack of energy provision for the brain, according to McInnes. The consumption of honey just prior to bed can help, he noted.
(Isoactive distributes specialized honey products to European athletes.)
The dark phase of the light/dark cycle is as critical for optimal health in people now as it was for the early hunter-gatherers. They would hunt and gather during the daylight hours, return to camp to consume the food and sleep when the sun set. They slept not so much with their bellies full but with their livers replenished, having a stable reserve of energy supply for the brain over the hours of the nocturnal fast.
It has been recognized for some decades that sleep is essential to learning and memory consolidation, and without quality sleep, these are compromised.
What has been missing in most research on neurology and sleep physiology is the role of cerebral energy provision during the nocturnal fast. From an early evening meal, this fast is 12 hours -- 18 hours if breakfast is missed. Thus, McInnes said, no provision is made for restocking the liver glycogen store, the only fuel supply reserve the brain may call on during these hours of fasting.
Failure to provision cerebral energy over the hours of the nocturnal fast results in chronic activation of adrenal stress, which interferes with the only method for partitioning fuel from the body to the brain. This results in increased risk of metabolic syndrome (diabetes/heart disease/obesity) and other metabolic conditions, in particular neurological conditions. Chronic overproduction of adrenal hormones prevents consolidation of short-term to long-term memory during rapid eye movement sleep, said McInnes.
The modern notion that it is unhealthy not to eat late -- put about by diet gurus who have no knowledge of the critical role of cerebral energy provision during the nocturnal fast -- has not been challenged by the health profession.
For example, McInnes said, the last meal of the day in hospitals is 6 p.m. This results in compromised recovery physiology in every hospital bed in the land. Sleep is a very high-energy physiological excursion, and that energy for provision of cerebral energy must be sourced from the liver (the brain carries only 30 seconds of energy reserve in astroglial cells) during the overnight fast.
Thus, most of the western population goes to bed with a depleted liver, resulting in chronic nocturnal metabolic stress. McInnes said the effect of this on neural processing, memory and learning is devastating, which may be observed in the accelerating increase of all types of dementias, including Alzheimer's disease.
Furthermore, he said, it is now widely recognized that poor-quality sleep drives up the orexigenic (appetite-increasing) hormones the following day, and after missing breakfast, this level increases such that people make poor food choices, leading to increased calorie ingestion.
Increased consumption of high-calorie foods results in elevated blood glucose (hyperglycemia), which, in turn, results in raised insulin (hyperinsulinemia). The problem is that hyperinsulinemia prevents glucose uptake into the brain, resulting in chronic cerebral hunger -- the driving force behind obesity.
The signal for this hunger is the amino acid glutamate. This signal activates the adrenal hormones, further increasing the orexigenic hormones, and the cycle repeats. This toxic metabolic cycle is indifferent to the quantity of food consumed; the chronic insulin simply adds to ongoing cerebral hunger and drives us to make poor food choices.
Glutamate is recognized as the most toxic transmitter in the human brain. One of the most important Alzheimer's drugs is a glutamate antagonist.
The ubiquitous morning coffee/sugar energy fix represents the "caffeination" of modern urban culture; it's a failed strategy to relieve nocturnal metabolic stress and the cerebral energy deficit. It simply results in increased adrenal stress (coffee) and higher insulin (sugar) levels, said McInnes.
Furthermore, excess glucose is converted to fat, and fats may not provision cerebral energy. McInnes noted that people may carry several-hundred pounds of fat while not one ounce may be used in the brain.
"Thus, it becomes a 24-hour fast/feed cycle that results in increased weight gain and causes chronic cerebral hunger -- essentially a form of cerebral diabetes. This applies equally to children as to adults, with major negative impacts on memory, learning and cognition," he said.
According to McInnes, the relationship between the energy or fuel status of the liver and the quality and duration of restorative sleep is one of the most neglected areas of study in human physiology. He said chronic nocturnal metabolic stress can be easily prevented by simply providing adequate fuel for the liver and, therefore, the brain during the nocturnal fast.
After an early evening meal, the liver may be selectively replenished by consuming an ounce or two of quality honey. This is, of course, counterintuitive, but science is not intuitive, McInnes said.
An ounce or two of honey prior to sleep will activate the honey/insulin/melatonin cycle, promote quality sleep and recovery physiology and reduce the production and release of the adrenal (stress) hormones, McInnes noted.
"Modern metropolitan humans are losing their minds simply because we are failing to provision cerebral energy, in particular during the hours of the nocturnal fast. One of the most important of the multiple functions of sleep is to recalibrate energy pathways and return the body to a state of energy homeostasis, a feat impossible without provision of cerebral energy via the liver every night in life," said McInnes.
That such a simple solution may be found for such a major problem may seem surprising, but energy is the basis of all life, and the human brain, cell for cell, is the most energy-consuming organ in any species known to date, he said. | 
