Read an Excerpt
How to Get the Grade Without Doing the Work
A Complete Guide on How to Make Excellent Grades in College While Not Doing the Work
By Charles Lanham
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2010 Charles Lanham
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-2699-8
Chapter One
How to Improve Memory
When I got the idea for this book, I was having a great deal of trouble focusing in school. Eventually, I went to my doctor and said, "I just can't focus in school." Within the month, I had been put on Concerta (methylphenidate), and I had raised my grade from a 70 percent average to a 90 percent average. Thankfully, I did not abuse the drug and took just enough to get the concentration I desired, so I never had to deal with the classic "zombie" reaction I would have had to endure otherwise. To my disappointment, however, I rapidly started to build up a tolerance to the medication and became extremely worried. I did further research then, looking for an alternative remedy. Lo and behold, I found that there were a whole slew of things that could be done to enhance or control my focus, attention, mood, appetite, and everything else that my pills helped me with. I learned that I could change my diet to reduce my stress and anxiety levels, improving my situation. Also, I found that by regularly exercising my brain and body not only raised my IQ score but also stimulated my senses and made my personality genuinely happier.
Nutrition and Health
According to MedHelp.com, certain foods and supplements stimulate the production of dopamine in the brain. These special foods contribute to our ability to learn more effectively, improving our lives emotionally and physically.
There are several tips you can take to improve your memory and earn that difficult college degree; however, learning to your fullest starts with diet and exercise. First, establish a healthy diet into your daily routine. After you get comfortable with your lifestyle, add the exercise. If you don't eat right, then all the work in the world will not do you any good. Each day, eat one small meal every three hours and drink about eight cups of water, which will help increase mental endurance and help preserve your memory1.
You should also eat the right way at parties so that no one feels awkward. If you ever tried to tell ever one that you were dieting at a party, you may have noticed that everyone will feel gloomy or insulted. Also, by not eating certain things some people will try everything they can to get you to eat. Not eating the same as everyone else brings the conversation down, it distracts the focus of the crowd. In the end, it could draw your friends and family to make fun of you for the rest of the night-for eating weird.
It's been shown that protein improves mental performance. Carbohydrates make you feel calm and relaxed. Fat helps regulate memory and mood. Therefore, in the morning, eat proteins like chicken, salmon, and eggs, as well as carbohydrates like oatmeal, whole wheat, brown rice, and grits. Additionally, include foods high antioxidants in your diet, such as coffee beans, green tea, acai berries, and cocoa. Sleep well at night by avoiding stimulants and embrace foods high vitamin B, preferably green leafy substances like spinach or legumes. As I had said before, research has found doing this can raise your IQ by an average of fourteen points.
Protein
According to www.thethinkingbusiness.co.uk, "Neurotransmitters are made from amino acids found in protein foods." Eating foods high in protein benefits the brain by promoting the development of neurotransmitters, dopamine, and norepinepherine, which results in making you more alert and much better at complicated thinking.
The hormone dopamine makes us feel euphoric and also controls our appetite and motor movements. We feel focused when it is high, but when it falls to a low level, we feel a distinct lack of pleasure. Our world then suddenly looks colorless. We are afflicted with an inability to "love," and we have no remorse about personal behavior. Under the pressure of a certain situations, dopamine releases norepinephrine, and norepinepherine is a neurotransmitter that causes us to fight or run away. (It will direct the heart to race, and it plays a major part in vascular tone.) Therefore, the happier you are then respectively, the more efficiently you study, and the more effectively you learn. Consequently, you must use the best stimulants-proteins like chicken, eggs, lamb, and turkey.
Prominently found in chicken, phenylalanine is an essential amino acid that the body uses in the brain and blood plasma and that the body can convert into tyrosine, which in turn is used to synthesize dopamine. (Chicken is also a good source of coenzyme CoQ10, an antioxidant as well.)
Aside from stimulating dopamine and affecting our moods, eggs are also a great source of choline, which is essential for making acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter, or chemical brain messenger that is important to memory.
I also recommend eating moderate amounts of lamb and turkey. These meats are excellent sources of protein and various B vitamins. Turkey is rich in tryptophan, a precursor to the brain's neurotransmitter serotonin. Lamb is rich in selenium, which is a potent antioxidant that works together with other nutrients to help prevent brain cell damage-but more importantly, it's good for your thyroid.
In addition, omega-3 fatty acids are found in seafood, especially mackerel, salmon, striped bass, rainbow trout, halibut, tuna, and sardines, and these fatty acids may have many jobs in the body, including a possible role in the production of neurotransmitters. (Resent research at Princeton University and elsewhere have demonstrated that we certainly do grow new brain cells in certain parts of the brain.) According to Michael A. Schmidt omega-3 stimulates the growth of existing brain cells7, protects brain cells from harmful chemicals like trans fats (trans fats are vegetable oil that has been heated to a high temperature or hardened into margarine, shortening, or something similar, which is the choice product for nearly all processed foods and is cheap to market) or phosphoric acid, and encourages the formation of branches and synapses-not to mention the fact that fish have easily digestible protein, many trace nutrients, high-quality and essential fatty acids, low cholesterol levels, and low saturated fat levels. (Children who don't get enough omega-3 in their early developmental periods may have lower IQs later in life.)
Carbohydrates
Complex carbohydrates run our whole body and kick start our mornings. In fact, according to Rachel Brandeis, a registered dietitian (RD) of Atlanta and spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, "Low carb diets may be in, but people must have complex carbohydrates to have good brain function. Without carbohydrates, you might not think as clearly, and you can be lethargic."
It makes sense, because by instinct we have carbs present in the most common foods that we eat for breakfast. For instance, runners almost always eat carbohydrates before races for prolonged performance and energy. That said, sugar is a simple carbohydrate that can be harmful to the brain's functioning, for it often creates a sharp rise in blood sugar. Sugars also trigger an increase in our dopamine levels, making us want it more and more. Foods high in complex carbohydrates include peanuts, dried apricots, dried beans, yogurt, oat bran, All-Bran cereal (be careful of the high sugar content in some brands), and sourdough bread. You should also be aware that including vinegar or lemon juice with your foods can help suppress sharp rises in blood sugar, thereby protecting your brain's health.
Despite the fact that they are a kick start to your day, carbohydrates can have a calming effect on you, too. When they function as a soothing agent, they are called slowing carbohydrates, and they usually have the calming effect when you take them with a high protein diet. This is because meat has the essential amino acid tyrosine, which can be combined with tryptophan, contained in carbohydrates.
Eating carbohydrates with trypyophan, the precursor of melatonin and serotonin, can make the calming amino acids more available to the brain. A meal high in carbohydrates will stimulate the release of insulin, which helps clear the bloodstream of amino acids that compete with tryptophan. In reaction, more of this natural amino acid is allowed to enter the brain and manufacture sleep-inducing substances like serotonin and melatonin. Eating a high-protein meal without accompanying carbohydrates may keep you awake, because protein-rich foods also contain the amino acid tyrosine, which can often perk up the brain.
To understand how tryptophan and carbohydrates work together to relax you, imagine the various amino acids from high-protein foods are students at an orgy-party. Next, picture the time when a rowdy load of students containing tryptophan and tyrosine arrives at the brain cells. If more tyrosine-students go home to study, entering the brain cells, neuroactivity will rev up. If more tryptophan-students go home to study, entering the brain cells, the brain will calm down. That's when some insulin-students, which have been stalking the sexy carbohydrate-students in the bloodstream, come along. The insulin-students keep the tyrosine-students amino acids in the orgy all night, allowing the tryptophan-calming effects to outshine the tyrosine-revving effect of the brain-a typical night for some of the smartest scholars in the world.
Hence, you can eat carbs (with amino acids) to sleep better. The most savory of these bedtime snacks are apple pie and ice cream (dangerous for the appetite), whole grain cereal with milk, hazelnuts, tofu, oatmeal and raisin cookies, peanut butter sandwiches, and ground sesame seeds. Remember that it takes around one hour for the tryptophan in the foods to reach the brain, so don't wait until right before bed to have a snack. More in-depth information on this is available at www.askdrsears.com.
Antioxidants
Be sure to eat a small meal every three hours throughout your waking day. Include the some of the best high antioxidant foods: coffee beans, green tea, acai berries, and chocolate bars of 75 to 85 percent cocoa. Also, you can get antioxidants from supplement pills like Intramax, which is 100 percent Organic Liquid Multi-Vitamin; Megahydrate, which is a powerful antioxidant supplement; and E3 Live, which is 100 percent Organic Live Blue-Green Algae. According to www.globalhealingcenter.com, antioxidants "slow down, or even prevent, the oxidation of other molecules." Plus, these are all great sources of antioxidants, catechins, and vitamins A and C. Coffee beans contain very helpful amino acids as well.
Antioxidants, in a sense, help clean up the brain. Imagine that your brain matter is a homework desk covered with dust and tar from neglect and that the antioxidants are like your mom cleaning up that desk. CoQ10 is not just a chemical that is good for the heart but a powerful antioxidant as well, one that protects the body from free radical damage. The top ten foods that contain antioxidants are as follows: prunes, raisins, blueberries, blackberries, garlic, cooked kale, cranberries, strawberries, raw spinach, and raspberries. Similarly, be sure to include legumes in your diet. They are rich in Vitamin B1 (thiamin), which helps convert food to energy and is also needed to synthesize acetylcholine (which is a neurotransmitter that is believed to be responsible for memory).
Additionally, eight ounces of purple grape juice (not white grape juice) a day can increase your memory 20 percent. Organic forms always have more antioxidants. Once you have sufficiently improved your diet, you will remember more for the amount of time you spend studying. "People who smoke, or are exposed to smoke from others and people who eat food containing a lot of artificial agents" are in higher need of antioxidants, according to www.squidoo.com.
Doctor Says
Dr. Steven F. Hotze once made a list of supplements that acted like amphetamines when taken all together, as I discussed earlier in this book. Dr. Steven F. Hotze's book, which I highly recommend, is Hormones, Health, and Happiness: A Natural Medical Formula for Rediscovering Youth with Bioidentical Hormones. The book covers in more detail how just eating your vitamins can make you mentally healthy.
As mentioned by Dr. Hotze, you must eat as many grams of protein as you have pounds in your body. For instance, if you weigh 140 pounds, you will need to ingest a minimum of 140 grams of protein a day. Essentially, protein is the building material. You will also need to take the listed supplements to assist your regular food-diet, and after about a week of regular daily use, you will see the results in your grades. I definitely saw great results in my grades. Granted, my testimony may not be the most compelling reason for to take these supplements, but if you finds it works for you, too, now that would be. Wouldn't it? Equally important, you need to read the labels of these vitamins and see what else they have in them. For instance, it would save you the trouble of taking vitamin D if you knew that your calcium tablets came already with vitamin D.
Daily Vitamin Needs According to Dr. Steven F. Hotze:
Vit. C: 6000 mg per 150 lbs Vit. E: 15 mg or 800 IU CoQ10: 120 mg Selenium: 400 mcg (helps the thyroid) Zinc: 10-20 mg Vit. B complex with a minimum of 400 mcg of folic acid Vit. D: 300-400 IU Calcium: 1000 mg minimum Magnesium: 500 mg Potassium: 200 mg Multivitamins as recommended
Partying
For the partying college student, it is important to eat right at the parties, too. Everyone will probably be eating very dense and oil-drenched foods, such as simple carbohydrates and deep-fried foods, which you will want to avoid. First, skip the one meal you would have taken before the party and then buy some tortillas chips to munch on during the party. Plus, if you have a salsa with a concentration of vinegar, that should also help suppress your appetite. Case in point, if you eat the tortillas chips during the party, you will not eat harmful foods, and you will not attract unwanted attention for not eating, either. Whenever possible, you should avoid foods and drinks like the following:
Alcohol Artificial flavoring Artificial sweeteners Cereal bars Cheetos Chicharrones Corn syrup Doughnuts Energy drinks (i.e., Monster, Red Bull, etc.) Falafel Frostings Gyros Gyozas Highly greasy foods High-sugar beverages Hydrogenated fats Jellybeans Junk sugars Marshmallows Nicotine Processed food Rice cakes Sodas (diet and regular) Twinkies White bread White rolls "Yo mom!" (just joking)
Chapter Two
Exercise
In the case of exercise, the idea is to exhaust the body and brain and let them grow by sleeping afterward. According to serendip. brynmawr.edu, if you do not sleep, your body will not be as creative or are as alert. Actually, there are stories of a person who died from not being able to sleep; he had a rare disease. Therefore, catnaps are always acceptable whenever they are appropriate. In fact, research shows that people who rest once a day retain twice as much information as those who charge through their days11. "A short nap in the afternoon can help you retain information earned earlier in the day. Long-term memories are formed as you sleep," says www.integrativepsychiatry.com.
You also need to impress the teacher. If your good looks or brains did not impress him or her, the teacher, then the great body you achieve through exercise may allow you to dress provocatively, which could improve your grade to some degree as well.
At this point, you should also have a pretty clear understanding of how your nutrition and body work. In short, the healthy body is a happy one. The brain thrives on neural stimulation, so the brain needs the body's assistance.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from How to Get the Grade Without Doing the Work by Charles Lanham Copyright © 2010 by Charles Lanham. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
