The UltraMind Solution: The 6-Week Plan to Heal Your Brain

Hello, this is Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome back to the last in my series of blogs on my new book, the UltraMind Solution. Now here comes dessert for the mind. You've earned it. It's the four-step program that will give you an UltraMind. Now, so far we've learned the seven keys to putting this program into place. We've opened our eyes to all the tools that will clear up your foggy, forgetful, poisoned brains. We've also learned that you no longer have to suffer with a brain and a body that's anything less than awake, engaged, present, focused and refreshed. You can have a brain that allows you to fully experience life and enjoy your family and your friends and your work and most importantly, your own heart and soul. Now, here are the four steps and if you follow these four simple steps, you'll learn more about your body and brain than you ever imagined. It may seem too simple and obvious, but it works. And as a doctor, I see everyday miracles in my practice, like the six-year-old little girl who was transformed from a violent, aggressive kid to a beautiful, loving daughter and sister by clearing out the bad bugs in her gut, or the 23-year-old woman with lifelong anxiety and depression that lifted after she quit eating food she was allergic to, or the woman who traveled 5,000 miles to see me after seeing a dozen doctors who was fatigued and depressed and overweight and mentally slipping and sluggish and she struggled every day with brain fog. And she got rid of all her symptoms in just six weeks by getting off gluten, boosting her vitamin D level and fixing her low thyroid. Her family said they had their mother and their wife back. Now here's the four steps. One, eat right for your brain. Two, tune up your brain chemistry with supplements. Three, start the ultra mind lifestyle which is exercise, sleep, relaxation and training your brain, and four, living clean and green. And here's what you might expect. You could feel more focused and alert, have more stable moods, enjoy better memory and more energy and the kind of sleep that will help you wake up feeling more refreshed and able to face your day and you'll have improved digestion and maybe less sinus problems and less joint pain and headaches and you might even have automatic weight loss and better sex drive. But don't take my word for it. I want you to prove it to yourself. Try it for just six weeks. You'll have lost nothing except for the chance for eating a few cheeseburgers and cokes. But then you have the gift of your life back and you'll realize just how good you can feel. And you'll get quick results. It won't be months or years. It'll be days or weeks. It happens if you work with your body as it was designed because then it works with you. And if you're not better in two weeks, then dig down for the underlying cause in the seven keys like a toxin or infection or low hormone function. So the first step is eating right for your brain. The most powerful tool, as I said, to change your health and improve the health of the planet and even reduce global warming is your fork. And here's what you have to do. Eat real food. Eat whole, real, fresh, organic, unprocessed, and ideally local food. If your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize it as food, then you shouldn't eat it. I want you to boost your level of phytonutrients. These are the brain protectors, the colorful fruits and vegetables that have all these protective brain compounds. I want you to eat the right carbs for your brain, which is whole grains and beans and nuts and seeds. I want you to become a fat head and eat more omega-3 fats. I want you to have protein for brain power, have protein for breakfast every day. I want you to eat early and often, every three to four hours, and not eat two or three hours before bed. And I want you to focus on whole foods, and there won't be any room left for brain-damaging food. If you follow these simple steps, which I outlined in chapter 14 of my book, for just six weeks, then you're 90% closer to staying healthy and healing your brain, and you're automatically getting rid of all those foods and chemicals that zap your brain and your body. Remember, there's no such thing as junk food. There's just junk and there's food. Now let's just talk for a minute about brain allergies. See, you know what happens when you get stung by a bee and you get poison ivy? You get an allergic reaction. You get hives or a rash. but your brain can become allergic too and it causes brain fog and depression and autism and ADD. So what are the most common brain allergens? They're the things you put in your mouth every day. Dairy and gluten, which is the sticky protein found in wheat, barley, rye, oats and spelt. And I talk much more about these food allergies and how to understand them and what to do about them in chapter 14 of my book, the UltraMind Solution. Despite the fact that the immune system and the brain are intimately linked and food has a major impact on your brain and your body, most of us, including doctors, don't make the connection between what we eat and how we feel. You see, you eat a piece of bread on Monday and you feel depressed on Tuesday and you don't make the connection. And many people are affected by these low-grade, delayed food sensitivities or allergies. Now, don't worry about the things you have to get rid of during the six-week plan, but focus on the things you can include. And there's so many delicious things that are available besides bread and milk to eat. And I give dozens of examples in my book in chapter 14. Now I want to tell you a story about a patient of mine, a 12-year-old little boy who had a long history of ADD. Because his story reflects the power of the UltraMind Solution. He couldn't focus in school, he was zoned out, disruptive, had terrible handwriting like most other kids with ADD. His brain just wasn't working and neither was his body. In fact, his brain wasn't working because his body wasn't working. He had asthma and eczema and headaches and stomachaches and hives and he was anxious and had sleep problems and sugar cravings and he had seen five docs on seven different meds and had no real relief from his physical or his mental symptoms. So instead of more meds, we fixed him by rebalancing all the seven keys to an UltraMind. We cleaned up his junk food diet, we fixed his nutritional deficiencies in omega-3 fats and zinc and magnesium. We got rid of the foods he was allergic to and the bugs in his gut. We gave him healthy bugs like probiotics for his gut. We got rid of toxins in his body like lead and mercury. He didn't have a medication deficiency. He didn't have bad parenting. He had a bad diet. He had nutritional deficiencies. He had an irritated immune system, an unhappy gut and toxins that were making him sick and making him have a broken brain. All these push the seven keys to an ultramind way out of balance. Take out the bad stuff and add the good stuff. It's that simple. Two months later, he came back to see me and he was off all of his medications. His attention was normal. He wasn't disruptive in school or home. His irritability and anxiety were gone. And he was succeeding, both academically and socially, for the first time in his life. And he even brushed off other kids who had told him he was an alien because he didn't drink soda. And all of his physical symptoms were gone. And his handwriting, which was illegible, was dramatically improved. So what happened was that his brain became coherent and synchronous in its functioning. Things started firing right. Now, we didn't work on his broken brain, but we fixed his body and the brain took care of itself automatically. The second step to creating an Ultramind is tuning up your brain chemistry with supplements because 92% of Americans are deficient in one or more nutrients at the minimum daily level. So I recommend six basic supplements for an Ultramind: a multivitamin, calcium/magnesium, vitamin D, special B vitamins, fish oil, and probiotics. So for six weeks, tune up your brain chemistry with the help of supplements. Try it. You might be pleasantly surprised. The basic supplement recommendations are found in chapter 15 of my book, the Ultramind Solution. It's important that you get the right type of these vitamins and nutrients. So in my book I go into much more detail about how you can decide exactly which brands are best for you. Start with the six weeks and continue for a lifetime, your lifetime, and you'll be having all the raw materials and ingredients you need for a vital and healthy body and a healthy brain. The next step to an UltraMind is living the UltraMind lifestyle which is exercising 30 minutes a day, getting enough sleep, finding ways to relax every day and hitting the pause button and training your brain by using it, using it by doing crossword puzzles, learning a language, doing brain exercises, a workout for your brain. And the fourth step to living clean and green is dealing with the toxins that affect us every day. Because small choices every day lead to big changes over time. So limit your exposures. It's good for you and the planet at the same time. Drink clean water. Limit your exposure to chemicals and metals and household garden and chemical and personal care products. Keep your body fluids moving and reduce electro-pollution. Wow, we've arrived. You now have the keys to the heart and the brain of the Ultramind Solution. I just want to remind you that you can get a free sneak preview of my new book, the Ultramind Solution at www.ultramind.com Just focus on your diet, supplements, getting rid of toxins in your life, lifestyle modifications and living clean and green. And you'll find a lot more information in my book, the Ultramind Solution. Just try these simple steps for six weeks and you too will experience an Ultramind, one that's calm, confident and in good spirits. My wish for all of you is to live a life that is vibrant, awake, engaged, Focused, strong and refreshed. Fix your body and you'll fix your brain. And when this happens, you'll say, Wow, I had no idea that having an Ultramind could feel this good. Thank you.