Free The UltraMind Solution by Mark Hyman

grasses, and particularly gluten in our diet. Wheat was introduced intoEurope during the Middle Ages, and 30 percent of those of European descent carry the gene for celiac disease (HLA DQ2 or HLA DQ8), 4 which increases susceptibility to health problems from eating gluten. Keep in mind that American strains of wheat have a much higher gluten content (which is needed to make light fluffy Wonder Bread).

    A recent review paper in
The New England Journal of Medicine
listed fiftyfive “diseases” that can be caused by eating gluten. 5 These include many neurological and psychiatric diseases such as anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, dementia, migraines, epilepsy, and neuropathy (nerve damage). 6 Gluten has also been linked to autism. 7

    Besides making the brain inflamed, gluten can be broken down in the gut into odd little proteins that are almost like psychedelic drugs (opiumlike peptides called gluteomorphins). These change brain function and behavior.

    Gluten also contains significant amounts of
glutamate,
a molecule that accelerates, activates, excites, and damages brain cells through a special brain receptor or docking station called the NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) receptor. Overactivation of this receptor by glutamate is implicated in many psychiatric disorders. 8 Glutamate is called an excitotoxin (a substance which overexcites and kills or damages brain cells).

    Gluten can cause brain dysfunction by three different mechanisms— inflammation, odd morphine or psychedelic proteins, and as an excitotoxin. 9

    So gluten, we see, can be the single cause behind many different “diseases.” These diseases are not treatable with better medication, but simply by 100 percent elimination of gluten from the diet. One cause, many diseases...
     
    One disease caused by multiple factors, one factor that causes multiple diseases? How could this happen? It completely upsets our current thinking. And it should!

    But the reason this is true is simpler than you might think.
     
    We are all unique, biochemically and genetically, and have different responses to the same insults. In one person gluten may cause arthritis, in another it can cause depression. Depression may be caused by gluten in one person; in another it may be caused by B 12 deficiency.

    The beauty of Functional Medicine, the seven keys to UltraWellness, and the science of nutrigenomics is that they take these factors into account to help create health for each individual.
     
    Medicine has been looking for answers in the wrong place. Finally, sciencehas provided a gateway to a different way of thinking about mental illness and brain disorders. We need to get out of the name-it, blame-it, and tame-it game—the myth of diagnosis—and start thinking about how the body works, how to personalize our approach, and how not to suppress symptoms but to restore normal function.

    The UltraMind Solution
leverages all of these new methods of understanding health and illness to help you sort through the real causes of your broken brain and get to the root of the problem, not just stay stuck with the name of your disease and the limited options available for treating it in this outdated paradigm.

The Myth of Medication: Drugs Are the Answer to Mental Illness

    I want to let you in on a little secret...

    Depression is not a Prozac deficiency.

    The real problem with conventional medical training is that doctors are not trained to be healers, but to be pharmacologists (except for surgeons). This problem is a direct consequence of the myth of diagnosis. We are trained to name the disease, and then assign a medication to treat it.
     
    But if the causes of a disease can be radically different in a given group of people, why should we believe that a “one-size-fits-all” prescription of medications would work to treat those underlying causes of the disease?

    Medications can be lifesaving, and are incredibly useful if given in the right dose, for the right person, at the right