Supporting your brain;

The following draws heavily from the book Boost Your Brain by Majid Fotuhi, M.D., Ph.D.

in Boost Your Brain, Majid Fotuhi, M.D., Ph.D., guides you through the innovative brain fitness program that he has developed for his patients at the NeurExpand Brain Center, an institute dedicated to helping people quickly sharpen their brain performance. You start the program with an assessment of your current brain health and then are given specific brain-fit strategies proven to promote brain acuity and longevity, detailing the latest scientific evidence behind each. Concrete advice is given on how to spur new cell growth, which foods help to build new synapses, what creates brain reserve, and more. Dr. Fotuhi also highlights key behaviors to avoid—explaining, for example, how one common sleep disorder can shrink your brain’s memory and attention centers by as much as 18 percent!

Among the the broad lifestyle changes recommended in the book, three stick out in my mind as fundamental to any healthy lifestyle. These are sleep, exercise and diet. Lets take the authors prescriptions in this order.

1. Sleep well.
If nothing else, make sure that you wake up at the same time each and every day. That means going through our schedule, and picking a time that is early enough for all your daily commitments. It also means that if you wake up each day at 7:00, you need to wake up on Saturday and Sunday at 7:00. Deviating from sleep patterns starts a downward spiral, leading to lowered quality of sleep, using crutches like caffeine, and increased need for sleep. In order to insure that you enjoy the most restful sleep possible, control your intake of caffeine. The author recommends no more than 2 cups of coffee per day, and none after 2 in the afternoon. Finally, consider shutting off your electronic devices about an hour before bed. Shutting off blue lights (like LED screens) helps your brain wind down for the day.

2. Exercise.
Each of thee habits can help you sustain the other two. Exercise can help you sleep better. On a regular basis, exercise. The author recommends a long term goal of 5 bouts of aerobic exercise exceeding a half hour each week and 3 times a week strength training. In order to reach this goal, start with today. Go for a walk for half an hour. When you make your tea in the morning, do ten push ups and thirty crunches. If you know that you struggle with committing to exercise, swallow your frog (do it first thing in the morning). We all know a fitness nut or two; ask them for help, and put one or two of their suggestions into action. Lastly, recognize that there are four ways you can push yourself in exercise. These are frequency, duration, Intensity and mode. In short, in order to benefit from exercise more, exercise more frequently, for longer, with more vigor, or change to a different machine.

3. Diet.
In order to support your new exercise habit, recognize that you need to provide everything your body needs. Consider a plant first diet, full of complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats and oils. Eliminate excessive consumption of animal products, and make changes that you can adopt for the long term. Consider reading the book Eat.Q, which I have reviewed in prior posts. Supporting your body through diet can help you recover from exercise. Furthermore, a healthy dietary habit helps you cease eating late into the night, and reduce your dependence on coffee. Those two things also help with your sleep habits. Over the long term, your diet contributes to weight gain, reduced insulin sensitivity, and conditions like sleep apnea, which negatively impact brain health.

Spend a month. Focus on one of these habits each week, and then in the subsequent week, try to maintain those habits and work on the next habit. Fundamentally, food is the hardest of these habits to change long term. Studies have shown that when you are having success with lifestyle changes, you have a better chance with subsequent changes. Make your changes in series, and celebrate your little victories. Take the changes day by day, and you will notice dramatic improvements in your health and your brain.