Foods that will boost, balance or bust your brain

Please remember to check with your health care provider before considering any type of supplement for your child mentioned in this post. If your child is eating a well-balanced diet, it's unlikely that a supplement is needed. It's preferable to provide nutrition through foods, not supplements.

In my last blog I talked about a healthy brain diet. In this blog, my co-author Brian Balin, PhD, a neuropathologist at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, and I will discuss nutrients and foods that will help to maximize brain performance and growth. You can actually use brain science to balance, boost, or even bust your brain.

Brain Boosters

Heard of probiotics? If your child's tummy is funny, eating yogurt or taking probiotics can actually be helpful in the brain as well. This can be great for kids with ADHD. The probiotics help maintain a healthy bacteria level in the gut, which can limit inflammation that can travel to the brain. This can lift the fog on their thinking!

Brain Busters

Brain Balancers

If you want all the boosters in a few foods, go with fish, fruits, greens, nuts, and dairy. By adding a multi-vitamin, which includes other brain healthy minerals like iron, magnesium, zinc, and Vitamin C, which help develop your chemical messengers, you're brain will be smiling! But remember the saying "everything in moderation" because it definitely applies to the brain!  A brain balancer can be unbalancing if used inappropriately. A brain booster could be a brain buster if overused!

Have a question for the Healthy Kids panel? Ask it here. Read more from the Healthy Kids blog »