Customer Reviews

Your Brain on Food: How Chemicals Control Your Thoughts and Feelings

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have had the pleasure of taking Dr. Wenk's class titled "Drugs and Behavior" at The Ohio State University as an undergraduate and I have to say that this book incorporates the best things from the class including Dr. Wenk's own research, odd stories from college students experimenting with drugs such as caffeine and marijuana, his extensive knowledge on neuroscience and its history - all influenced in the telling by his hilarious, dry humor.

The book explores an incredible number of topics ranging from the history of the drug which killed King Hamlet in Shakespeare's play to how Advil works in your brain to stop you from aching in pain. Although Dr. Wenk describes a lot of neuroscience concepts and terms, he always does an excellent job of explaining background information while simultaneously teaching you something new. This is including the concise paragraphs of summary at the end of every chapter which state the big picture.

I'm particularly interested in how the brain works and different types of the neurotransmitters but what I enjoyed most about this book is the cultural and historical contexts of drugs from around the world. For example, there exists a certain mushroom which, when ingested, produces a type of hallucination which causes people to see normal objects a lot bigger or smaller than they actually are. This mushroom and its effect could very well have influenced Lewis Carroll while he was writing Alice in Wonderland (as seen in Alice's adventure in a land of size disproportions). Now this statement is definitely something everyone would be interested in learning, especially at cocktail hour!

The title of the book interested me. So I bought it and it was much more than I ever expected. I learned so much from the book about the human brain. It was written with much humor and in a way I could understand our most complex organ. It is without a doubt the best book I have ever read on the brain. It is an easy to read book that everyone could benefit from. I could not put it down. Thank you Dr. Wenk for the fascinating book.

The title and subtitle of this book were highly misleading; there was almost nothing about food, thoughts and feelings. Although stuffed with useful and potentially interesting information, the book primarily dealt with the neurochemical details of how drugs affect the body and interact with the brain to create the sensations one experiences.

The transitions between new examples and topics were lacking, making the book feel somewhat choppy, and I found the author's constant, unnecessary references to evolution both annoying and distracting.

Unless you're specifically looking for a primer on drug interaction, I strongly recommend The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry Is Destroying Our Brains and Harming Our Children, Potatoes Not Prozac: Solutions for Sugar Sensitivity or Natural Prozac: Learning to Release Your Body's Own Anti-Depressants instead - all will be much more useful in exploring the affects of food on mood and human functioning.

Truth be told, the title of this book is a bit of a misnomer. It should be called Your Brain on Chemicals, because that's what Wenk spends most of the book discussing. And even more to the point, what Wenk accomplishes in a scant 165 pages is a wonderful tour of the brain and how it works, at least the parts that especially affect thoughts, feelings, and memories. I'd never been able to understand the difference between glutamate and GABA, let alone what an "action potential" is, but in Wenk's hands, these concepts were all easy to grasp. He's got a wonderfully light touch, too, that helps as he makes some very difficult concepts become clear.

One of the main points in his tour of the brain and how chemicals affect it--and thus our moods, thoughts, and actions--is that for chemicals to affect our brains, they must have an exact analogue in our many different kinds of neurotransmitters. How does marijuana affect the brain, for example? Its key molecules are able to cross the blood-brain barrier, and latch onto like minded neurotransmitters, and produce a distinct effect. The same is true of all drugs that affect us, and, yes, some foods, too.

Wenk ends with a discussion of what he calls "brain enhancement and other magical beliefs." Sure, he says, you can load up on caffeine and other drugs, and they speed up your brain's processing, but none of them make you any smarter. Likewise, nothing's going to stop the normal effects of aging on your brain and eventual cognitive decline. Still, understanding how the brain works--at least a little more than I did before--makes me feel a bit smarter, another benefit to this excellent book.

This was a pretty decent book. It discussed chemicals found in nature and their effects on your brain. The title is very misleading though. It discussed almost nothing about normal food you eat, but rather drugs like cocaine, nicotine, etc. Aside from coffee and chocolate there are few foods discussed. I doubt the author chose that title. I bet it was the marketing people who pushed it to sell more books. For misleading the reader I give a C+ to this book.

As an aging adult, I feel the title is misleading. I was looking forward to learning about the effects of food on the brain because that is how I interpreted the title.

For anyone who is raising children and wants to know how drugs affect the brain, this is an excellent book.

I bought this book thinking it was about the effects of food on the brain, but it was really more about recreational drugs along with some medicinal and food type drugs, e.g. caffeine and sugar. Regardless of this initial surprise I still found it incredibly interesting and enlightening. I already had an understanding of anatomy, but I think even someone without any knowledge would still be able to comprehend the information presented as he describes things clearly, repeatedly, and includes some great diagrams.

This is a pretty scientific little piece of work. I wouldn't recommend it to someone just wanting to read what foods to eat to feel good. I saw someone else felt a little mislead by the title and I would agree that this book is more about drugs and chemicals than food except the neat section on coffee. There is a pic of broccoli on the cover but I don't really remember reading anything about it. Anyway, this was different than any other book I have read and I would never have passed this guy's class at OSU. Now I know why my feeding tube enjoys donuts in the morning.

Dr. Gary Wenk's book is a great read, a considerably clear and understanding explanation of the brain and its complexities, and with a pinch of humor an entertaining piece of literature I read from start to finish! His stories of college students and explanations of the effects of chemicals and food on our brain is sure to give you plenty of smart conversation starters at your next
get-together. It's so fascinating how what we put into our mouth has such exponential effect on our mind and its working ability. I have recommended this book to friends, family, college students, and even professors at different colleges. Everyone should read this book, if not for the information, but at least for its entertaining nature and impressionable stories. Thanks, Dr. Wenk for writing this book!

While reading this book, I felt like I was a student who signed up for a class called "Your Brain on Food" but instead was somehow switched into one called "Your Brain on Drugs." Not that this was a undesirable switch...just an unexpected one.

And, it's no coincidence that I felt like I was in class while reading this book--the author is, after all, a college professor. The book's presentation, style, and content are rather lecture-like, but, nonetheless effectively accomplish the author's mission of showing how: "anything you consume--the drugs you take, the foods you eat--can affect how your neurons behave, and subsequently, how you think and feel." (p. X)

In the beginning of the book, the author/professor presents a clear overview of basic neurochemistry, nicely summarizing the path of neurotransmitter production, release, reuptake, and inactivation. (I've actually marked this section to revisit again whenever I need a quick neurochemistry refresher.) The rest of the book focuses on how:
"Drugs and the contents of our diet can interact with any of these various processes and impair, or even sometimes enhance, the production of neurotransmitters, as well as impair their storage into synaptic vesicles, alter their release from neurons, modify their interaction with receptor proteins, slow their reuptake, and possibly even stop their enzymatic inactivation. Because your brain is the organ of the mind, drugs and food that do any of these things can have a profound influence on how you think, act, and feel." (pp. 14-15)

Sitting through this lecture, uh, I mean, reading this book, you'll learn the key responses associated with specific neurotransmitters, including: learning, memory, and attention with acetylcholine; arousal and euphoria with norepinephrine and dopamine; processing of sensory information and mood with serotonin; excitation and neuroplasticity with glutamate; inhibition with GABA; and euphoria and pain reduction with opiates.

And, receiving the full benefits of being taught by a professor, you'll be entertained with stories of his students who have vividly demonstrated the effects of drugs on various neurotransmitter systems. Let's see...there was the one student who became temporarily paralyzed after drinking alcohol at fraternity parties to the delight of others who would place his limbs in odd positions. And, then there was the student who would collect her boyfriend's urine after he used the stimulant mescaline, realizing she was able to experience the high, without the nasty GI side effects experienced when taken in its "pre-digested" from. And, then there was that other student who consumed an entire container of nutmeg dissolved in applesauce, but instead of being able to enjoy the sought-after aphrodisiac effects, he was stuck in the bathroom for the weekend. These stories might stick in your mind long after the more academic details of the drug-induced neurotransmitter responses have faded.

(True to lecture form, at the end of his teachings, the professor even provides you with a little quiz to see if you really were paying attention. )

Although the content and delivery of the book might not be what's expected, what it does provide is certainly worthwhile.