The last edition of Fueling Your Fire highlighted how to fuel top level mental performance throughout your day (avoiding Fuzzy Brain). In this edition we expand the scope of our discussion, examining what nutrients will support your mental prowess for your lifetime.

If you pay attention to advertisements for skin care products, you’ve probably heard the term “free radicals.” The same free radicals (aka cell scavengers) that promote wrinkles also damage your brain cells. As nerve cells in your brain are damaged and die, they are referred to as “clinkers”—garbage cells that clog up the transmission highways in the brain. As asserted by Elizabeth Somer in her book Food and Mood, “... the garbage that accumulates from free-radical attacks on nerve cells is at least a contributing factor, if not the primary cause, of many of the chronic degenerative diseases associated with aging... Excessive cell death means there are fewer nerve cells available to store, access, and transfer information, and fewer connections between nerve cells. Consequently, memory, thinking, and intelligence are affected.” Whoa! Heavy stuff. Who cares about anti-wrinkle cream, we need an “anti-clicker” cream. Well, there’s no such thing, but making sure the following nutrients are regularly added to your diet will give you a leg up in your fight to reduce clinkers.