You can’t teach hungry kids: The Importance of Breakfast

By Derek Pugh

We live in enlightened times. Nutritionists and neuroscientists tell us how the brain obtains and uses the chemicals it needs for healthy function and the overwhelming importance of breakfast. Is their message getting through? When I ask school groups about their breakfast habits many kids say they skip breakfast with excuses like they don’t feel like it because they get up late for school, it’s too hot or too cold, or they wrongly think it’s a good way to stay thin. A high number of teachers also say they miss their breakfast. So clearly the breakfast message needs to be explicitly taught and promoted by schools.

We are breaking a period without eating – a fast, at breakfast time. Breakfast provides us with the fuel for the upcoming day and our brains need this fuel for clear thinking and learning. Without it you are relying on yesterday’s leftovers, or breaking down body reserves. Not that brains are expensive to run as they use 20% of the daily energy consumed.

As evidence for the value of breakfast is high some schools provide breakfast for their students and run nutrition education programs. These programs pay dividends in terms of both student behaviour and attainment. I use the following guiding principles with students. We begin with a challenge: Are you a ‘Breakfast Winners or Loser?’

The following points are based on recent research findings, but I always like to say that there’s little here our grandmothers didn’t know:

o   Breakfast winners have nutritious breakfasts and they are better students because they concentrate better and can manage more complex tasks.

o   Breakfast losers often get lower grades because they skip breakfast or eat lots of sugar or the wrong type of fats.

o   Breakfast winners can make it to lunch time comfortably and are more likely to eat a nutritious lunch and less likely to overeat. Breakfast losers have an empty belly and are likely to crave junk food during the morning and they are often overweight and sluggish.

o   Breakfast winners eat complex carbohydrates and proteins in roughly equal amounts in terms of energy. (Carbohydrates alone can make you drowsy).

o   Breakfast winners often have high calcium levels in their breakfasts (eg through dairy products) and show better behaviour and learning.

o   Breakfast winners may be calmed by the process of eating a good breakfast, thereby lowering cortisol and other stress hormones and therefore often have a better attitude towards schooling.

o   Breakfast winners also get fibre, water and other important nutrients through their breakfasts and they are likely to have lower cholesterol levels and fewer days off school sick.

What you can do?

Some teachers and students may need to rethink their diet a little and information like this needs explicit teaching in the school’s health program. Nutritionists recommend we have a breakfast that includes a mix of carbohydrates, protein, and fibre. The carbohydrates kick off the day giving you an immediate energy boost and the protein starts to provide energy when the carbs are used up. Fibre fills you up and stops you overeating and helps you avoid constipation. You will hear the term ‘glycemic index’ of GI. Food can have a low GI or a high GI, but low is better. GI refers to the relative length of time it takes for food to be burned up by your body and the longer it takes the better as you’ll have less need to snack between meals. Teachers may know what a ‘sugar hit’ feels like and most have probably seen the effect in children – it doesn’t give energy for long.

Low GI carbohydrates come best from whole-grain cereals and breads, brown rice, fruits and vegetables. Hi GI carbohydrates we don’t want come from processed sugar you find in food like doughnuts - these provide no more nutrition than a candy bar and should be rarely eaten. Protein best comes from low-fat dairy products, lean meats, eggs, nuts, seeds, and cooked dried beans. Fibre comes from whole-grain bread and cereals; brown rice, bran, and other grains; fruits, vegetables, beans, and nuts.

Remember your brain need relatively more energy than the rest of your body. If you are feeling hungry or craving food it’s your brain telling you it’s in need. Listen to it, but don’t let it fool you into eating junk food. Poor food choices are wasted opportunities for good nutrition.

My next workshop is in Singapore on the 15th Feb at the Uniting World College of SE Asia.
visit http://www.uwcsea.edu.sg/centre/brain-day-workshop-how-maximise-efficiency-and-growth-our-brains

Thanks to Mr John, Mr Baju and Mr Saju from the New Horizons School in Bahrain. They brought me in to present a Brain Day to 4000 people - parents and students or their amazing school. I had a ball - and was four meters tall on the LED display behind me. It's clearly an exciting school to be attending. I watched the finals of their dance competition and wow! .. impressive.
I look forward to getting back to the Middle East some day.

Someone just drew my attention to this, maybe I should look for more (from http://blogcritics.org/book-review-the-owners-guide-to/):

Most people eat it sometimes but you have may have heard some of the bad press that junk food gets. If your meals arrive wrapped in plastic, straight from the microwave after being flash frozen or deep fried then you will already know you’re eating poorly. I am not going to repeat the bad news here – your waist line is probably reminder enough. However as a brain education consultant I only have more bad news for you. Junk food diets lead to junk brains. On a junk food diet your IQ suffers, your intrinsic motivation sinks, you’re more likely to be a couch potato than a Rhode Scholar. As you get older the risk of suffering memory loss is substantially higher. You could be heading towards diabetes or insulin resistance or towards an early grave. Why is this?

The science behind brain chemistry is complex. Building a quality brain requires quality building blocks – use substandard materials and you get what you’ve paid for. The article told how the long chain essential fatty acids (omega 3s and 6s) we eat get woven into the membranes of our cells and give them strength and flexibility. The poor quality saturated fats we eat in junk food have the ability to replace the omega 3s and 6s in the membranes, but at the cost of flexibility. The result is cells that are not pliable and do not function optimally. That means lower IQ, greater risk of memory loss and possibly degenerative diseases later in life. The best sources of these fats and unsaturated oils, and the antioxidants that keep them in good condition need to be at the forefront of our healthy brain diets. This means seafood (especially cold water oily fish like salmon)), nuts, seeds and eggs and loads of coloured fruits and dark green vegetables for the antioxidants. Prunes, raisons and berries are also excellent sources of antioxidants. Eating all these should also ensure adequate vitamins (vitamin Bs are particularly important to the nervous system) and minerals like magnesium (important for memory) and calcium.

At some times of our lives, for example during pregnancy, or on a doctor’s advice, we may need dietary supplements of essential brain nutrients. But there is one part of our diet that never requires supplementing – the carbohydrate part.

The brain only uses one major fuel source, glucose, a carbohydrate it demands regularly as what we call “blood sugar”. Our brains need about a half cup of glucose a day (100 grams) to function properly. This is a high amount. It’s easy to come by in this day and age but our ancestors roamed the plains of Africa with the nearest convenience store millennia away. In some seasons carbohydrates were undoubtedly scarce but they survived anyhow. This is because we evolved a remarkable ability to make all the glucose our brains require from protein. So we don’t really have to eat carbohydrates at all, as far as the brain is concerned.

We can store enough glucose as blood sugar to last about 24 hours. After that the body’s survival mechanism is to break down our own protein ‘stored’ as muscle or in other organs. We evolved eating a diet of fats and proteins, with occasional and limited carbohydrates, so it’s no surprise to find that we can exist without bagels, French fries and Black Forest cakes. The brain is a sugar addict – but the body can supply the 100 grams it needs each day. In fact it gives priority to the brain in times of shortages, or even starvation, because the muscles and the other organs operate on a different fuel source for energy production, fat, so it can leave the glucose for the brain.  This is controlled by the hormone insulin. Insulin drives sugar and proteins into the cells so they can be used. In periods of shortage all cells except brain cells will become temporarily insulin resistant so the brain will continue to function normally.

The problem is with a high sugar diet our brains are awash in a sea of blood sugar we have not evolved to cope with. Too much blood sugar for too long can create insulin resistance in brain cells as well, and that’s not good. As neurosurgeon Dr Larry McCleary says “all the blood sugar in the world can’t fuel a brain resistant to insulin”.

So beware of sugar.  Powering your brain requires just the right amount of fuel – not too much, not too little   – a high carbohydrate diet may lead your body to a state where it can no longer keep the correct balance of glucose and insulin. Once you’re there you’re heading towards diabetes, you’re probably already obese, and your life line may be shrinking. The time to do something about it is now.

Further reading: 
Pugh (2011) The Owner's guide to the Teenage Brain
McCleary, Dr Larry (2007) The Brain Trust Program, Perigree

I've written a memoir. You've never heard of me and that's ok, but I had something to write, my slice of history to record. It's called Turn Left at the Devil Tree and it is an awesome literary feast, even if I do say so myself. It’s a proper book length, has a great foreword by an important man, is funny, interesting, and even includes a heart warming chapter about my dog Turkey, so who wouldn't want to read it?

The thing is unless you’re famous, or infamous, publishers don’t want to know. That’s ok too, because these days you can self publish really easily and lots of people are doing just that. Much of what people self publish is parochial at best, of interest to family and friends perhaps, and much f it is crap. But there are gems among them, and anyone who is interested in people will want to know who they are.

My mate Giorgio and I were discussing plans of starting a publishing company – focusing only on memoirs of interesting people no one has ever heard of before. Lots of people write their memoirs. We would start a company: Arnhem Publishing – Memoirs of Interesting People. Great idea, and my book, Turn Left at the Devil Tree, would be number one for the company, and Giorgio would finish his gritty memoir about his years in the music industry. We’d make hundreds of dollars a year and important personal histories would be saved for posterity.

People write memoirs for many reasons. Perhaps they have important things to say, opinions to deliver. They may have a message for their descendants. They may have a strong desire to record history as it was lived rather than in some academic treatise. They may want to make money and are deluded into thinking enough people are going to buy the book so they’d make a profit after paying off the copy editor and the designer and the ISBN number seller – poor dears – will someone tell them...?

I wrote mine because I felt I’d participated in a tiny sliver of history as a visiting teacher in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia that is sufficiently interesting other people way want to know about it. I founded several outstation schools and lived for a number of years in remote Aboriginal communities among traditional people. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity and the experiences I enjoyed I feel are unique. If I don’t write about them - well, no one else ever will.

This is the point of memoirs of unknown people. Their history is as valid as the famous but, with one great clincher –someone else will always write about the famous, no one will ever write about most of us.

Turn Left at the Devil Tree is nearly done. The text is edited professionally, the cover is designed and it won’t be long before I launch it. Then... what? It’s easier to launch into oblivion than to hit a target. I am a novice at this. I am going through a learning process and e-publishing a novel I wrote 20 years ago, which is out of print, but did all right as a paperback. It’s called Tammy Damulkurra. 

But what a novice I am – especially an e-novice. Let’s get a conversation going. I want to hear from people who know, people who want to share experiences. I want to hear from people who are as unknown as me, but who also want to write, or have finished their memoirs and want to share. Perhaps together we can build up a world of Memoirs of Interesting People we can journey with, and stop them from falling through the cracks.

BCEI Booklet #13

You are “adolescent”. A big word with heavy meaning for most of us who’re over it and perhaps ‘the best of years/the worst of years’ for you. What’s happening?

Well, it all started when you were between eight and ten years of age. This is the end of the ‘critical period’ when you brain changes from a learning sponge to something you’re going to have to work to use properly in the future. Did you ever wonder how you ever learned to speak English without studying like you do a new language now? You learned it when your brain was in a special state required for learning your first languages, but those years are gone now, which means you have to work harder for the same result (see Doidge 2007).

When you were about ten years old your brain realized it had far too many synapses. It started a period of active “synaptic pruning”. Synapses are the connections between neurons. Between 10 and 13 you could be losing as many as 30,000 synapses every second. What your brain is doing is getting rid of the weakest connections and keeping those that are useful. It’s a ruthless process that could clear away about half of your synapses. Your brain is specializing itself based on its experience to date.

Your frontal lobes during this stage are being renovated. These lobes are the areas which make you civilized human beings, they control planning, judgment, wisdom, kindness and consideration. Psychologist Andrew Fuller says someone should hang a sign on teenagers’ frontal lobes saying “CLOSED FOR CONSTRUCTION”.

Your brains are, for the early teen years, ruled by other parts. Your amygdala has a great time – making you more emotional, ready for a fight or running away, and more romantic (for the first time you start showing interest in the opposite sex). The trouble is your ability to forward plan and control your impulses is switched off for a while too, so your parents are meant to plan for you. That’s their job and it’s important – too much freedom now can be a disaster for you.

At 12 or 13 you’re really about to grow – you may put on 20 kg and get 50 cm taller in the next few years as well as getting hairy and other obvious changes. Your friends are really important now and popularity for some people is more important than ever – some kids will take big risks to gain peer acceptance. You spend a lot more time talking with your peers than to adults. You may sometimes be going “ballistic” when asked to take out the trash, and wonder why you have to do everything. You are developing your sexual identity but your need for privacy has grown considerably. You probably have a “KEEP OUT” sign on your bedroom door whereas three years ago you had “No girls/boys allowed”.

In your later teens you may also be feeling stressed because you feel you have little control over your life. Things may happen to you that are really negative in these years but later on they won’t seem as important. Your views on many things (sex, money, your future) might be so different from your family’s that for a few years you’re going to have conflict. This is common enough to be normal, but not compulsory so don’t wish it on yourself. You might also be feeling angry or aggressive. You’re probably taking risks you would never have done a few years ago. You may be experimenting with drugs or alcohol. You may be breaking your parents’ hearts but think that that’s not your problem! Or you may be a sweet teen sailing through without any of these problems.

All of us find our own pathway, and most of us survive well. You’ve just got to make sure you’re one of the survivors.

References:

• Doidge, Norman (2007) The Brain That Changes Itself, Scribe
• Fuller, Andrew (2007) Tricky Kids – Transforming Conflict and Freeing Their Potential, Finch.

By Derek Pugh

“Because it’s true” I told her. “Much of what you’re going through is caused by chemicals your brain makes”.

Lots of kids ask questions like this. Teenagers are at the mercy of their hormones. Dramatic changes are taking place in nearly every part of your body. Hormones are chemical ‘messengers’ released by parts of the body to control other parts. Many come from glands; you may have heard of some of them – the pituitary, the adrenal, the pineal gland. The hormones they release do everything from creating our sleep patterns, to stopping us urinating during the night (try going 9 or 10 hours during the day without a wee!).

But there are four main hormones you should know about that put you into your moods. Two of which are nicer than the other two.

The two you have to have but don’t really want too much of are adrenaline and cortisol.

Adrenaline
Adrenaline gives you power.  I was snorkeling with a friend once and a small sea snake swam towards us. Sea snakes are masters of their environment and have little to fear from us, therefore are usually very safe to be near. Robert didn’t think of that. The snake swam towards him, he kicked at it wildly, his flippers even came off. He panicked and the next thing he knew he was standing two meters out of the water on a barnacle covered rock. He had no memory of how he got there. Adrenaline had kicked his amygdala (the part of his brain that controls this, as well as emotions) into taking control of his body and up he went. Adrenaline gives us the “flight or fight” response. It’s survival at its most basic. I don’t know what happened to the snake.

You may not be swimming with sea snakes, but it’s possible for people to build up high levels of adrenaline even without scary things. This gives you a mood you might not want. How can you tell if you have high adrenaline?  Clinical psychologist Andrew Fuller (2007 p 87) is an expert on this. He lists the signs but I’ll turn his lists into questions. If you answer lots of yeses it’s possible you have high adrenaline levels.

1.                              Do you feel silly, or hyperactive?

2.                              Is it hard to fall asleep?

3.                              Do you have lots of energy?

4.                              Do you ‘spit the dummy’ and run off?

5.                              Do you argue a lot?      

6.                              Can you concentrate?

7.                              Are you worried about trying new things?

8.                              Are you busy without achieving much?

If you’ve answered yes too many times you may have high adrenaline levels. How do you get them down? Work with your family to help you calm down. Have quiet times. Do repetitious or ritual things that are easy. Talk with an adult you trust, perhaps a teacher or school counselor. Try to be where you feel safe as much as possible. These are things you can control, though maybe you’ll need some help.

Cortisol
Cortisol is the other hormone I warned you about. Watch out for it because it’s released during stress, and often follows adrenaline in a double whammy. I saw a two year old boy fall into a pool once and nearly drown. We rescued him and he needed resuscitating, but he didn’t seem particularly phased by the experience. His mother however was hysterical. She couldn’t speak, she pulled out her hair, she was a mess. Cortisol does this. It blocks your ability to think clearly and speak your thoughts. The boy’s mother had way too much cortisol for normal functioning for a few minutes at least.  How can you tell if you have too much? Again, answer these questions (adapted from Fuller 2007)

1.                    Do you find it hard to express your thoughts?

2.                    Are you worried or on edge?

3.                    Are you bullied regularly?

4.                    Are you upset easily?

5.                    Are you defensive and overreact to things?

6.                    Do you find it difficult to prioritise?

7.                    Do you smell more? Cortisol makes your sweat smell sour.

If you have high cortisol for a long period it will become a problem. What are you going to do? You have to be somewhere you feel safe, away from violence or humiliation. If that’s not where you spend most of the day talk to someone – school counselor, parent etc about how you feel. Try not to eat too much sugar, but drink lots of water (cortisol is soluble). Go to bed early and get more sleep. Don’t acerbate the situation by playing violent video games or watching violent movies. Listen to soothing music, put away your Megadeth albums for a while. These are things you can control.

Now for the two hormones you may want more of – dopamine and serotonin.

Dopamine
Dopamine is cool. Fuller calls it “the party animal of the neurochemical world “(2007:89). You want dopamine because it makes you feel switched on and positive. Patricia Wolfe (2002), found many neuroscientists think that dopamine might be the one neurotransmitter that is the bottom line for pleasure. Dopamine binds to the pleasure centers of the brain. Without it you experience little pleasure. Eight or nine year old kids have an adult dose. But teenagers sometimes get ripped off. Your dopamine levels may have dropped over the last few years. How can you tell if you’re low on dopamine?  Answer these questions (based on Fuller 2007):

1.                    Do you have trouble focusing or concentrating?

2.                    Are you hard to motivate?

3.                    When you finish something do you lack pride in what you have done?

4.                    Are you lethargic and tired all the time?

5.                    Is everything boring?

Too many yeses here and you may need more dopamine. Where do you get it? Your brain will make it for you if you exercise it in the right way. Try repetitive sports like swimming or ping pong or challenging games, and solve some problems. Spend more time with your friends and family and be more social. Try new things, seek success. Do things that make you laugh, especially with other people. You can eat better too – include omega 3 and 6 in your diet. These are things you can control.

Serotonin
Serotonin is a beauty – the feel good hormone of choice because it acts by calming you rather than revving you up like dopamine (Wolfe 2002). If you miss out on this one it’s a depressing experience as lack of it is linked to depression. Fuller calls it the ‘quiet achiever’ giving you a slow high that makes you feel good and calm, and in control. Here are the signs (also based on Fuller’s lists (2007)):

1.                    Are you sullen and uncommunicative?

2.                    Is it hard to get out of bed in the morning?

3.                    Are you hard to please, nothing ever good enough?

4.                    Is everything just too hard?

5.                    Are you sad or depressed?

6.                    Do you avoid looking others in the eye? (Your parents, teachers, friends?)

7.                    Do you try and avoid your family’s activities?

The good news is serotonin is easy to make. You get it from exercise – even just walking. You get it by spending time with friends or family who support you and make you feel like you belong. You get it by accepting responsibility and taking some control.

Moods and what to avoid – help yourself.

I am a great fan of education that empowers the learner to help themselves. You’ve read this far so now you have some of the knowledge that will give you power. There are ways you can change your moods. Changing moods is just shifting from the down hormones to the up hormones.

The biggest way is sleep. You’re a teenager. Statistics say you get 9 hours less sleep a week in the 2000s than I did as a kid in the 1970s. You could be sleep deprived. Read my articles on the importance of sleep (Pugh 2010). If you do nothing else to improve your mood do this one. Sleep also improves your learning and you’re more likely to stay out of trouble.

Light might also be affecting you. In the classroom move closer to the window for natural light. Keep the house lights dim in the evening and don’t sit so close to the TV!

Listen to nicer music – you know what I mean. It can really affect your mood. Or better still, play an instrument. I learned the harmonica when I was 19 so I could play when out camping – corny I know, but I had a lot of fun.

Be careful of TV, movies, computer games. Limit the time you spend on them. Get a blue light screen for your computer – blue light can directly affect your pineal gland which makes melatonin, the hormone of sleep. Blue light might be why you can play a game until dawn without feeling tired. Computer games may be fun and you develop a lot of skills playing them, but they’re empty skills, of little use outside the virtual world, they just take up brain space. You need to make a conscious decision about how important they are to you.

Ask your friends not to text or phone you when you need to be asleep. Leave your phone outside or on silent. Don’t allow yourself to be woken for no real reason. Sleep in the dark.

Make things right with your family. Really shock them one day by telling them you love them – this is not easy for many teenagers. Your parents are probably doing the best they can. No one has a degree in parenting; we all learn it as we go along. Trust that you’re loved, even if it doesn’t feel like it sometimes. Your parents are, after all, governed by the same hormones as you, so they have no choice other than to love their children.

If you’ve read all this and you’re having trouble making enough serotonin and dopamine even after talking with your friends, changing your diet or following the other tips above, and you just feel bad all the time, you’ll worry about it less if you get help. Lots of teenagers feel this way and lots of adults devote their lives to helping them get through it. So talk to your school counselor or someone you trust and know cares about you. If they can’t help, maybe they’ll know someone who can. Good luck.

References

Fuller, Andrew (2007) Tricky Kids – Transforming Conflict and Freeing Their Potential, Finch.

Pugh, Derek (2010) Sleep and Educating Your Child. www.braincompatibleeducation.com/articles

Pugh, Derek (2010) SEWBaD, The Five Rules for Preparing the Brain for Learning www.braincompatibleeducation.com/article

Wolfe, Patricia (2001) Brain Matters, Translating Research into Classroom Practice, ASCD