Importance of Vitamins and Minerals for your IQ
There are at least four mineral deficiencies that can significantly affect your IQ. That’s the topic for today. Generally speaking, it’s your intelligence, your ability to solve problems, your ability to learn and understand certain things. There’s a memory or a recall component to it. Some people say that your intelligence is really finite and either you’re born with it or you’re not. That’s absolutely not true. You can have training; you can do self-improvement and you can do a lot of other things like these. And even what your mother ate while she’s pregnant has a factor on your intelligence and your future ability to solve problems.
As you’re going to find out but there are other factors too like with learning; it could be that you’re in school and no one ever taught you how to study or learn? They don’t teach kid show to study or learn. You’re just expected to know that you go in there and you start of memorizing. You re-read and rewrite things over and over and hopefully, somehow you pass the test and you get through it. But in this article, we will really focus in on the nutrient part of your intelligence.
Important Minerals for Brain
Iodine
So, probably one of the most influential trace minerals which you don’t need a lot of it but you need a little bit of it and if you don’t have that little bit you’re going to be in big trouble. Because if you’re on low iodine diet as a child, your IQ can go down significantly like 13 points. Now, even if you’re deficient in iodine as adult there are certain studies that show that it can decrease by 15 points and that’s pretty significant. But the crucial time to use of iodine diet is when the woman is pregnant and as well as when they’re breastfeeding.
So, iodine is involved in the creation of your brain and of certain parts of the brain like the hippocampus, which is involved with learning, memory, being able to navigate yourself through different things. So, primarily we have the hippocampus and then the frontal lobe involved in problem-solving but of course how much of these parts of the brain are involved with problem-solving in IQ. Some people have had huge amounts of trauma and damage to their brains. i.e., the destruction of a good portion of the brain and they still seem to maintain their cognitive function and their IQ
Zinc
Now, the second mineral that is the most important is zinc. Zinc is good for hundreds of different enzyme reactions. It’s definitely involved with the hippocampus; it’s involved in making neurotransmitters and if you’re low on zinc your IQ is going down. This zinc correlates with copper. They both work together. So, you need this zinc to copper ratio and when you have children who have autism for example, there are nearly always extremely low zinc and copper levels. But there’s a huge correlation between high IQ and good zinc to copper ratios.
Copper
Signs of copper deficiency can be noticed in Alzheimer’s patients. Also, it’s super concentrated in a structure in your brain stem called the locus Aurelius which has everything to do with your sleeping.
Magnesium
And then we have magnesium. Magnesium is needed for making ATP. It’s needed for energy in the brain and if you don’t have enough magnesium there is a huge correlation between a lower IQ. If we look at the magnesium rich foods then we have seafood, shellfish, magnesium salad, vegetables, leafy greens but you can also get it in nuts and other foods as well. But seafood and shellfish are very important to get.
Vitamin D
Vitamin D deficiency is also correlated with learning disabilities, lower IQ and cognitive function. So, lack of vitamin D is another important thing that’s very important for your proper brain functioning.
Iron
Iron deficiency also correlates with the lower IQ probably because it’s involved with anemia, red blood cells and carry oxygen to your brain.
Sugar
Sugar is also related to cognitive function and it definitely correlates with a lower IQ. When we’re talking about sugar, we’re talking about blood sugar. We’re talking about even diabetes. So, if your A1C is like above seven, your recall is going down, your ability to recall memories is significantly affected. Diabetic patients on average have a lower IQ by points. When someone is a diabetic and they have higher sugar in their blood that shrinks the hippocampus. So, we have less hippocampus to work with which means less capacity for memory, less capacity for learning and that is intimately connected with IQ.
Now, if we take a look at the brain that has insulin resistance, which is always the case for someone that has high sugar like a diabetic. There is a lot of destruction going on in the neurons and so when you feed the brain cells with too much sugar, you end up destroying the synapses. So, sugar deficiency is directly linked with your low cognitive ability.
Ways to Prevent Brain from Damages
There’s an alternative fuel to bypass that whole thing and get the energy that the neurons need. So, you can have more intelligence and that alternative fuel is ketones.
