PEAK PROFILE
BRENDAN LEONARD
Honey Stinger Waffles and Clif Bloks. They’re packable and seem to work with my digestive system during long days of running (4 to 12 hours).
Not hating a food product after I’ve eaten it 50-plus times. No real solution besides switching flavors and eventually switching foods.
Finishing a long run (25-plus miles) and immediately eating a bunch of inflammatory foods (pizza, ice cream). Is that best or worst?
I stopped eating meat in 2005 and have greatly reduced my intake of eggs and dairy over the past two years, as well as worked on decreasing the amount of inflammatory foods I eat. Except pizza and ice cream.
Deep-dish pizza, diner breakfasts, ice cream (dairy and nondairy), many Indian dishes.
Golden retrievers, station wagons, down.
Brendan Leonard is an ultrarunner, best-selling author of Sixty Meters to Anywhere and Bears Don’t Care About Your Problems, and creator of Semi-Rad.com.
BRAIN-TO-GUT COMMUNICATION
Sympathetic (fight-or-flight) and parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) nervous system activity has effects on the immune response, smooth muscle activity, microorganism activity, and hormonal responses directly in the gut. Experiencing high levels of stress (which means that your sympathetic nervous system is turned up) affects digestion and the rate at which food travels through the gut. In turn, this affects macro- and micronutrient absorption, and for sport performance you need all those nutrients to excel (see chapter 10, Recover Like a Champ, for more on the importance of recovery for athletes). Even facial expressions and body posture have a direct link to GI tract function, so keep on smiling when things get tough. Prolonged, chronic signaling from the brain to the gut can actually change and remodel regions of the brain, which may lead to associated anxiety disorders or depression. If you have symptoms of anxiety or depression, examine your eating habits. Keeping a food journal can help in determining if you are lacking in any macronutrient. Before reaching for psychological drugs, get a blood test (see the Resources section). You may be vitamin B12 deficient or have some other micronutrient deficiencies that can be corrected by embracing peak nutrition and strategic supplementing.
GUT-TO-BRAIN COMMUNICATION
During digestion, the physical process—movement, stretching, and pressure on the intestinal tissues—can communicate directly with the brain through spinal nerves as well as the vagus nerve, the cranial nerve that connects the brain to the body. Some examples of this communication are hunger and satiety hormones that are secreted based on ingested foods. Other examples are possible behavior changes, emotions, and memory formation based on microbial activity in the gut. The gut can also affect the decision-making process. These gut feelings or intuitive decisions could be a result of emotions created around memories and experiences of food, hunger, cravings, and nausea, and they form links to regions of the brain. The gut may know more than you think, so take the gut-to-brain connection into consideration. Knowing yourself a bit more in this way can make considerable differences in athletic performance and longevity. One strategy for knowing yourself better is to journal, especially right around the time you eat or around the time you make a decision. What emotions come up? What cravings do you have? What are the feelings in your gut? Slowing down during this process can help you be more aware.
BIG BRAINS
Humans have super-big brains compared to other mammals. This is because a few million years ago, during the Ice Age, humans became hunters and gatherers, invented tools for digging and cooking, and found fire! All of this together enabled humans to eat a lot of high-quality fats and carbohydrates without the extra caloric cost of preparing it. Humans evolved to store all of this extra energy as fat so that they would have enough energy to survive during a famine. Humans are also some of the fattest mammals, and this is because of our big brains. Brains use about 20 to 25 percent of resting energy consumption, so humans must have the storage in the body to supply this energy. That is why it’s essential to have a wide variety of high-quality fats and carbohydrates in the diet.
Another theory about the big brains of humans is that they doubled in size within a two-million-year span because of the consumption of psychedelic mushrooms that sprouted from animal poop. Consuming these mushrooms over thousands of years enabled early humans to become more “intelligent.” Magic mushrooms create more courage and reduce fear; they also cause people to become highly empathetic. These traits together helped the early humans to defeat large prey and keep a tribal mentality, enabling them to become leaders in their environments. You can geek out more on this by watching and reading Paul Stamets (see Resources). If you love to nerd out about human evolution, read The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease by Daniel Lieberman.
GI DYSFUNCTION
The gastrointestinal barrier protects you from harmful substances that enter your system. Under normal, healthy conditions, most food is digested and absorbed for the body to use. However, if the GI barrier becomes irritated, you can get sick, leading to inflammation and a compromised immune system. If this happens too often, you can develop chronic inflammation, resulting in intestinal cramping and recurring diarrhea. Ulcers or other diseases can develop, weakening the intestinal wall and leading to poor nutrient absorption. The end result is nutrient deficiencies and a decline in athletic performance. To take control of your digestion, if you have any symptoms of discomfort, keep a food journal, get frequent blood tests, use an elimination diet to determine your intolerances, and consult with a doctor. These issues are dangerous and can actually lead to other, more severe problems such as autoimmune diseases.
Elimination protocols. One elimination protocol that has seen quite a bit of success is FODMAP. FODMAP stands for fermentable oligosaccharides (such as fructans and galacto-oligosaccharides), disaccharides (such as lactose), monosaccharides (such as excess fructose), and polyols (such as sorbitol, maltitol, and xylitol). It involves eliminating a variety of plant foods that contain certain types of sugars that are often not digested or absorbed well. Read up on FODMAP if you feel you have done what you can with simple elimination. Check