Integrate My Brain

While any nutrient may be either marginally or absolutely deficient, marginal deficiencies are far more common. Zinc deficiency will be discussed in some detail below as an example of the effects of a single important micronutrient deficiency upon brain function, but much of this discussion also applies to most other nutrients required for optimum mental performance, especially iron whose biochemical dynamics are similar to zinc.

Did you know that zinc and iron are two of the most common micronutrient deficiencies in the world today with over two billion people affected by these deficiencies? In the Western developed world, both zinc and iron deficiency is widespread with more than half of the people having overt iron deficiency, and between 20% to perhaps as much as 50% also zinc deficient, although the extent of zinc deficiency has been less well studied.

Most people have little idea about what happens to the nutrients in their food during the process of digestion, and the processes that control and regulate nutrient use in the body - partly because this is a very complex subject obscured by scientific jargon. I will attempt to provide a succinct overview of these complex processes, so the reader can understand where it might all go wrong.

After chewing and swallowing our food, it goes to the stomach for the first stages of digestion, and then into the small intestine where digestion is finished and the nutrients are absorbed into the blood, transported to our cells, then assimilated into the cells where it is utilized in specific biochemical functions that run our bodies and our brain. We will look at each of these important processes briefly in order to gain a functional understanding of what can go wrong to create these deficiencies.

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