It’s incredibly important to have a healthy brain.
As you know, your brain controls virtually everything you do. It controls stress, emotion, memory, reflexes, heart rate, breathing, muscle contractions, feelings, and a lot more.
Since the brain is responsible for so much, one must keep it in great health.
It doesn’t matter if you’re young and active, middle-aged and sick for the first real time, or if you’re 80 years old and aging gracefully. Brain health matters!
In this article, we’re going to give you 12 powerful tips for a healthy brain. You can use all of these tips immediately.
All of this advice will enhance your brain health within a few days to a few months! We know it’s a little cliche, but some of these tips will very likely surprise you.
Before we start, just one note of caution. None of the information here is a replacement for well-informed medical advice. Do your research here and elsewhere, then if you are going to do anything dramatic to improve your brain health, speak with your doctor first.
Now, let’s begin.
1) Intermittent Fasting Improves Brain Health
If you haven’t heard of intermittent fasting before, let us educate you.
Intermittent fasting is an eating style where you go through periods of fasting followed by periods of eating. Some people use Intermittent fasting specifically to lose weight, and others eat this way year round.
A very popular method is to eat 8 hours in a day and then fast for 16 hours, but you can do this however you like. Some people will go longer, shorter, or do something like fast two days a week.
Intermittent fasting doesn’t necessarily help you lose weight faster, because weight loss ultimately comes down to calories eaten versus calories burned. But for many people, it is a more tolerable way to lose weight. Some people just find it easier to fast and eat all at once than to eat smaller meals throughout the day, especially once they get adjusted to it.
Intermittent fasting has some well-documented health benefits. Not only does intermittent fasting slow down aging and release high amounts of HGH, but it has been shown to have a powerful anti-oxidant effect on the body. This is in stark contrast to the inflammatory state one is in after they eat meals with many processed carbohydrates.
Intermittent fasting puts the body in a non-inflammatory state. It also puts the body in a state of “autophagy,” which cleans the cells and helps with brain function. Fasting has also been shown to reduce seizures in children, and it has been shown to repair cell damage and even the body’s DNA!
As we mentioned, we cannot substitute well informed medical advice. If you have any questions about fasting, especially if you have pre-existing health conditions, make sure you speak with your doctor. This is especially true with intermittent fasting since it is likely very different from how you normally eat.
For more information on Intermittent fasting, see this video. If you are athletically minded, check out LeanGains. You don’t have to be nearly as muscular as he is to get some excellent advice from his website.
2) Maintain Normal Cholesterol Levels
That’s right, cholesterol is important. Unfortunately, it gets a very, very bad rep.
New evidence is out that reasonable cholesterol levels are healthy for the brain.
Approximately 25% of your body’s cholesterol is in your brain. This is largely because your brain needs cholesterol to maintain myelin sheaths, which are wrapped around many of your brain cells. Myelin sheaths are required for quick neurotransmission, which means that cholesterol is needed to make the sheaths to make the billions of neurons in your brain fire properly.
We know that this may be something entirely different from what you’re used to hearing. So read the evidence.
In one study, elderly people with high LDL cholesterol (which has traditionally been considered “bad”) had the lowest risk of dementia. And in another, healthy middle-aged women with higher cholesterol levels were shown to have better brain function.
This is why memory loss is a common side effect of statins. This is very well documented; no doctor disputes this side effects of statins!
Perhaps the most revealing study on this issue was done by the University of South Florida that revealed an analysis of 68000 60+ year-olds revealed that those with low LDL cholesterol lived as long, if not longer than their peers.
We understand if this is new and hard to believe, but remember, the “official” word used to be that fat was bad, carbs were good, corn was great, and so forth. Do your own research with a Google search if you don’t believe the data we showed you.
So look: the best thing you can do is stay in good shape, eat a healthy diet with plenty of antioxidants, and seriously cut back on processed sugar. And either eat a lot of green vegetables or take your Vitamin K2 to make sure your body’s calcium is properly absorbed and not in the bloodstream (but talk to your doctor first, especially if you take blood thinners!).
These tips will keep your body and your brain healthier than anything!
3) Read More For a Healthy Brain!
Reading is great for your brain.
And yeah, you happen to be on a publishing company’s website. How convenient is that?
It doesn’t really matter what kind of reading you do. Whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, reading is awesome for your brain.
Reading stimulates your creativity and imagination, teaches you important new knowledge, and creates many new connections in the neurons within your brain. This process is essential for a healthy brain.
So not only is reading important for general intelligence and open-mindedness, it may be able to help delay or prevent dementia and keep your brain sharp into old age.
Speaking of reading, it’s time for a shameless plug here, so definitely be sure to check out our books. We have many excellent fiction and nonfiction books to enhance your knowledge and stimulate your imagination.
4) Meditate
Meditation is a very powerful way to improve your brain health. As you may know, it has a ton of other benefits as well.
Meditation has been shown to reduce stress and anxiety, slow aging, improve immunity, improve life satisfaction, and improve cardiac and general health.
Is it any wonder why meditation is so popular? You can get these types of benefits even with a few minutes of meditation each day.
If you’re interested in learning basic mediation skills and daily stress relief, be sure to check out Self Compassion and Mindfulness for Healing and Acceptance. It’s a quick and informative read that will get you started very quickly on this incredible habit.
And for some help with self-guided meditation, check out this video on 6 Phase Guided Meditation by Vishen Lakhiani.
5) Express Gratitude Daily
This may sound odd to some people, but it works.
Every morning, write three things down that you’re grateful for. You can repeat what you’re grateful for from time to time, but you should generally write about new things.
You can be grateful for anything, such as your eyesight, health, relationships, and positive things that have happened to you the day before.
If you do this every morning, it becomes much more difficult to be unhappy in your life. Do this every day for at least several weeks, and see how it makes you feel.
Grateful people are happier people. Gratitude reduces negativity and makes you value what you already have in life, as opposed to what you think you should have.
Not that there’s anything wrong with hard work, of course. Just make sure you value what you have already. It will reduce your stress, make you feel uplifted, improve your brain health, and put your life into better perspective.
This is an incredibly simple step that can do a lot of positive things for your brain health, no matter what age you are.
6) Listen to, or Better Yet, Play Music
Music is very, very powerful for maintaining a healthy brain. In fact, playing music activates every part of your brain. No other activity does this.
Additionally, those who play musical instruments are much more likely to prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. They have also been shown to recover from strokes much better than those who aren’t musically talented.
Playing music also stimulates your creativity, reduces depression, helps you sleep better, enhances your coordination, increases your memory, keeps you more in touch with your emotions, and a lot more.
If you don’t play music, listening is still good. It’s just that playing is much better because it is hands-on and requires much more of your brain to perform.
You probably have heard about the Mozart effect, which induces a short-term improvement on tasks while listening to classical music. This effect is very real. Therefore it’s very helpful to listen to some classical music while you work or study.
Another popular type of music when doing work or studying is binaural beats. It may sound weird at first, but listen to these when you have a good set of headphones and you’re working on a project!
7) Exercise Is Essential For A Healthy Brain and Body
Exercise isn’t just great for your body, it’s great for your brain as well.
Exercise opens up the blood flow in your body and to your brain. It repairs old brain cells and it helps new ones grow.
Both anaerobic (lifting) and aerobic (running, bicycling) exercise also help reduce stress, depression, and anxiety, and improve insulin sensitivity. Insulin release is pro-inflammatory, which is very bad for the brain and is linked to almost every type of mental illness. Insulin also releases a lot of glucose into the brain all at once, which causes sugar fluctuations that are not good for the brain either.
And of course, exercise makes you feel and look good. These effects alone can significantly reduce your daily stress and make you feel much better about yourself.
So what kind of exercise should you do? Again, anaerobic and aerobic are both great at achieving all of these goals. Anaerobic exercise is important for building muscle mass and strength, which is important at any age. Aerobic is great for heart health, endurance, and proper blood flow.
Ideally, you want to get some of both to maximize the health benefits you get from exercise.
Be sure to talk to your doctor if you have any concerns about an exercise program.
8) A Proper Diet Is Essential for Brain Health
Like pretty much everything we’ve mentioned, a healthy diet is essential for a healthy body and for a healthy brain.
Here are general guidelines for a brain healthy diet:
- Eat More Antioxidants: Antioxidants reduce inflammation and thus free radicals in your body. This reduces your cancer risk and improves your brain health. Again, inflammation is linked to all sorts of mental health disorders. Antioxidants include almost every type of fruit and vegetable, plus tea and supplements such as Vitamin C and E.
- Eat Omega 3’s: Omega 3’s, particularly the DHA and EPA found in Fish OIl, are excellent for your brain. Fish oil has been shown to improve memory and reduce depression. It’s also great for your eyes, joints, and a lot more. Try to get at least several grams of EPA and DHA from fish every day. You may want to take even more if you’re concerned about your Omega 3:6 balance.
- Cut out the vegetable oils: We know, you’ve probably been told that vegetable oils are healthy for you. But they are not. They are highly refined, loaded with pro-inflammatory omega 6 fatty acids, and are thus bad for your brain health. Replace them with oils such as regular butter, ghee, avocado, and coconut oil.
- Eat eggs. Forget what your mother told you about eggs, cholesterol, and saturated fat. A reasonable cholesterol level is essential to keep your brain healthy. Your brain stores 25% of the cholesterol in your body. Low cholesterol is very bad for your brain health. Read our section on cholesterol for more.
- Eat less refined carbs and sugar: Refined carbs and sugar produce a large insulin response, which causes inflammation. Carbohydrates do this in general, but refined carbohydrates are the worst offenders. Moderation is fine but cut down on refined carbohydrates as much as possible.
- Drink tea or coffee. Caffeine is healthy for the brain in moderation. If you drink tea, go for yerba mate tea to reduce the harmful fluoride content. If you drink coffee, use a French Press to make better tasting coffee that reduces your exposure to xenoestrogens such as BPA.
- Eat enough protein: Not only does protein build your muscles, but it’s also the most filling macronutrient (macronutrients are carbs, fat, and protein) by far. The best sources of protein are animal protein, dairy, fish, and eggs. Other types of protein, such as from grains and nuts are incomplete, meaning they don’t have all of the amino acids required to do their job. You can have some incomplete protein in your diet, but focus on complete protein. Avoid soy protein because it will mess with your hormone levels.
- Eat less processed foods: The amount of garbage in processed foods is insane. They are loaded with Omega 6 Fatty acids, refined carbs, soy, and other unhealthy nonsense you do not want in your body. They are pro-inflammatory and have very negative effects on your brain health. Cook and prepare your meals as much as possible to avoid these foods.
Following all of these diet tips will lead to a healthy body and a healthy brain.
9) Manage Your Stress
Stress relief is a huge part of having a healthy brain.
There are many ways to relieve stress. Many of these we have repeated before. You can:
- Write autobiographically. Write about your past, present, or future self. Try Jordan Peterson’s self-authoring program.
- Breathe deep: When you feel stressed, take a large deep breath through your nose and out through your mouth. Repeat 10-15 times. This slows down your breathing and thus your response to stress.
- Keep great friendships: You should keep a network of positive people who can help you when you need it. See section 11.
- Exercise: Exercise is incredible for stress relief. See section 7
- Listen to relaxing music: The right type of music will calm you down. Try listening to music such as this.
- Meditate: Meditation is absolutely huge for stress relief. See section 4
- Express daily gratitude: Mention three things that you’re grateful for each morning. See section 5
Your brain will thank you for managing your stress. Stress releases hormones called catecholamines, which cause inflammation. As we’ve said, chronic inflammation is terrible for brain health and is linked to virtually every mental disorders.
One last note here: you must be able to manage stress, not avoid it. You need to have some stress over important things, such as your health and relationships when things go wrong. You shouldn’t be so stressed that you do not take care of yourself and your relationships.
The key is not to manage your stress levels and not stress over things you cannot control. Proper stress management is a key contributor to a very healthy brain!
10) Get Enough Sleep
Did you know that after less than 7 hours of sleep, blood flow to your brain starts to decrease?
And did you know that in the early 1900s, people averaged between 8 to 9 hours of sleep each night? Yet in 2011, the average amount of sleep each night dropped to six hours!
The effects this has on society’s health cannot be understated!
Sleep is essential to:
- Reduce stress and anxiety: Your body is in a stressed-out state when you don’t get enough sleep. This is poor
- Reduce cravings: Cravings get worse when you don’t sleep. Thus, those who sleep less eat more.
- Maintain memory and attention: As you know, if you don’t sleep, your memory gets worse and it’s harder to focus.
- Promote general health: Sleep repairs the body and gets it ready for another day. Chronic sleep deprivation causes many mental and physical health problems.
- Maintain a healthy sex drive: This is true for men and women. Even acute sleep deprivation has been shown to drop men’s testosterone levels significantly. And who doesn’t want a healthy sex drive?
- Maintain skin health: Have you ever noticed how your skin looks worse when you don’t sleep? Your skin needs rest in order to get proper blood flow.
- Maintain a healthy weight: When you don’t sleep well, it’s harder to control your bad habits. And thus, you tend to lose control of your cravings, eat more, and gain weight.
So make sure you’re sleeping at least 7-8 hours a night as much as possible. We understand that this is not always possible with a busy schedule. However, almost all of us have bad sleep habits that can be improved with just a little bit of effort and willpower.
Make sure your room is a comfortable temperature, your sheets are comfortable, you don’t let others wake you up, and you don’t put on so many blankets that you wake up sweating in the middle of the night. Also, try not to drink too much water before you go to bed so you don’t wake up in the middle of the night to pee. This is a common mistake.
Any disruption to your sleep can throw off your REM cycles and end up in sub-optimal brain health. While sometimes this is inevitable, you want to avoid these disruptions as much as possible.
11) Maintain Positive Relationships
Maintain a healthy brain by maintaining positive relationships.
People’s energy levels are contagious. Or toxic, depending on who they are.
You should stay around positive people as much as possible. Ditch the negative relationships in your life and focus on developing positive ones. Only spend time with people who have good things going on for them.
If you are a goal-oriented person, then develop a relationship with an accountability partner. These types of relationships are incredibly productive and will keep your brain very healthy. Your partner will give you positive peer pressure to expand your mindset to achieve your goals.
It may be hard to avoid negativity if it’s a close family member, but you can do as much to help them as much as possible. You can start by linking them to this article!
Positive attitudes are contagious. It sounds like something you learned in elementary school, we know. But it’s true; stressful people tend to make you feel stressed if you let them. So spend your time with positive people and ditch negative relationships as much as possible.
12) Take Brain Healthy Supplements
Before you take any supplements, remember that diet and exercise are the most important. After you’ve addressed those two, there are some very effective supplements you can take for a healthy brain. And make sure you speak with your doctor before you take any supplement that you are unsure of.
Here are some of the best brain health supplements:
- Circumin: Reduces Inflammation and has been shown to promote healthy aging. This is good for the body and good for the brain. Many users also report that it helps with chronic pain.
- Fish OIl: Excellent for all-around health and absolutely essential for brain health. Your brain is comprised of Omega 3 fatty acids, which the Western diet is heavily deficient is. You need to take Fish OIl if you don’t eat fish at least a few times a week!
- Krill OIl: Krill Oil is said to be more potent than Fish oil, and it has a very powerful antioxidant known as astaxanthin as well. Krill oil has more DHA than EPA,
- Vitamin B Complex: B vitamins are very important for proper nervous system and brain health. A large number of Americans are B vitamin deficient. VItamins B6, B9 (folic acid), and B12 are known as the most important for brain health. They work together to prevent mental decline such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
- Magnesium: Approximately half of the US population is deficient in magnesium! Magnesium is used for over 300+ chemical reactions in the body and is very important to make you feel more relaxed and calm. Make sure you get magnesium citrate because it is the best absorbing form of magnesium by far.
- Creatine: Although creatine is known to be used by athletes for athletic performance, it is also used for brain health as well. Creatine is the most studied supplement on earth and is widely considered to be safe and incredibly effective. While it might be too much to use Creatine by itself for brain health, you may want to take it for athletic performance and recovery, then enjoy the nootropic benefits of it as a helpful side effect.
- Nootropics: Nootropics are heavily sought after by those who seek to “hack” the brain. A good nootropic can increase your focus, attention, and mental energy naturally. There are many nootropics out there to choose from, including a popular one known as Clarity.
- Vitamin D: Vitamin D is absolutely essential for brain health and general health. It is essential for hormone production, proper mood, and prostate cancer prevention. Low Vitamin D levels result in poor cognitive function and are extremely common in Western society. Optimal Vitamin D levels appear to be in the 50-60 nmol/L range. It’s very cheap and easy to get your Vitamin D levels checked by your doctor to know the dose you should take. If you’re Vitamin D deficient, supplementing with this should bring you up to the proper level within a few months. Make sure you’re taking your Vitamin D with some Vitamin K2, but make sure you speak with your doctor if you’re taking any kind of blood thinner before taking Vitamin K2.
Conclusion
There’s a lot of great advice in this post for a healthy brain. In a nutshell, you should have gathered that keeping your body healthy generally gives you a healthy brain as well.
It doesn’t matter if you’re young and trying to get in great shape, or if you’re older and you just want to stay sharp until the day you die. It’s very important to take this advice seriously to have a healthy brain.
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