***Brain Fact #4: Underweight People Risk Brain Shutdown

Are you Starving Your Brain?

Feeling Flat? Exhausted? Lethargic?

Feed Your Brain!

Did you know…

In the average human, the brain consumes about 17% of the body’s total energy but accounts for only 3% of bodyweight.

Dietitians suggest you should not go below 1400 calories per day, as this is the minimum amount necessary to meet your daily nutritional requirements. (I am keeping this simple, recognizing there is much more involved in maintaining good health.)

Therefore, 17% of 1400 would be 238 calories. That is around the same amount of calories if you were to run 2 miles or swim 900 meters every day.

But what would happen if you are in the process of removing the excess baggage from your body? Most of the time you are told to cut back on the amount of energy (food) you take in, and exercise to burn more energy.

If you remember, the brain controls all types of things happening around your body that are essential for sustaining good health; like your heart pumping blood, breathing, and making sure your bodily functions are doing what they should be doing, and not doing what they should not be doing, like cardiac arrhythmia.

It is important that you maintain proper nutrition going to your brain, even when you are burning more calories than you take in. Otherwise, you can suffer many different debilitating symptoms. You can lose memory, experience inability to make decisions, have decreased muscle coordination and longer response time, and plenty of any number of problems; because your brain controls too many functions to mention. An exacerbated inability to make decisions is a contributing factor why anorexics have such a problem breaking free of anorexia. They have been starving their brain along with starving their body.

Maintaining your brain’s ability to work for you is paramount. Superior information gives you the edge in life. Both go hand in hand.

From the Heart, for your Heart!
Shannon Panzo, PhD
Great Things Happen Here!