How to Boost your Brain Health
How to Boost your Brain Health
Brain health is an emerging topic that seeks to optimise our brain structure and functioning across every domain. A healthy brain not only improves our wellbeing, it also enhances it’s ability to regulate other systems. Any work you do now to improve your brain health pays off in huge ways years down the track.
Almost 1 in 3 people worldwide will suffer from a neurological disease, many of which are offset by awareness and action around brain health. So it’s important to invest in your brain health early!
Neurochemicals and their Benefits
There are several important neurochemicals, or neurotransmitters, in the brain that play a critical role in various aspects of brain function and mental health. Here are some of the main ones and their benefits:
The Happy Chemicals
Dopamine, Serotonin and Endorphins: These chemicals are associated with feelings of pleasure, motivation, and reward. It helps to regulate movement, attention, emotional responses, sleep, appetite, digestion and some act as natural painkillers
Inhibitory Neurotransmitters
GABA: Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is an inhibitory neurotransmitter that blocks some of the effects of other neurotransmitters. For example, during sleep, GABA blocks stimulating signals, causing a calming effect on the brain helping to promote relaxation.
Stimulating Neurotransmitters
Glutamate: Glutamate is an excitatory neurotransmitter that helps to regulate learning and memory. It is involved in the formation of new neural connections in the brain.
Acetylcholine: Acetylcholine is involved in learning and memory and is essential for maintaining attention and focus. It is also involved in muscle contraction and movement.
Norepinephrine (Noradrenaline): Noradrenaline helps to regulate alertness and attention and is most prevalent as we start waking up. It stimulates our mind and keeps us active for the day.
Promoting a Healthy Balance in our Brain
Each of these strategies below build different strengths and resilience. But more importantly they all regulate their affected neurochemicals rather than just boost their levels. That’s an important distinction because too much of any of these neurochemicals can also have adverse effects just like having too little.
- Avoiding Stress and Inflammation
The first key step towards a health brain is to avoid stress and the neuroinflammation that comes with it in prolonged periods. Inflammation by itself is key to our immune response and tissue repair. However, being unable to relax causes continuous inflammation, reducing the longevity of our brain.
Like a mechanical part without maintenance and without proper care, eventually our brain will break down. And it’ll break down much faster than one that’s received continuous care and avoided strain.
- Physical Health
The links between our physical health and our brain health are well documented. The great thing is that these studies only call for an amount of exercise that is strenuous for you, whether it’s 5,10 or 20 minutes, as long as your heart is pumping. Some specific benefits include:
- Engagement in regular exercise has shown to increase the production of endorphins, dopamine and serotonin.
- Increased mobility allows us to continue to do the things we love well into old age.
- Physical activity in adults has been linked to the preservation of brain structure in the prefrontal cortex and grey matter volume.
- It also enhances neuroplasticity by increasing levels of BDNF and acts as a buffer to inflammation.
- Lifelong Learning
The concept of lifelong learning is relatively new like brain health, and has been proven to be a key preventative measure in cognitive decline. Common signifiers or cognitive decline include reduced blood flow of the brain, loss of neural pathways or minor cerebral defects. There has been shown to be a correlation between people with academic educations, or cognitively stimulating jobs and a reduced level of those signifiers of cognitive decline.
Keeping your brain active and engaged through challenging activities like music, puzzles or reading promotes neuroplasticity and significantly reduces risk of dementia.
- Vitamin D
Vitamin D has neuroprotective properties as it protects and supports damaged brain cells. Lower levels of vitamin D are linked with increased risk of cognitive decline and disease. Healthy vitamin D levels modulate the immune system, reducing the risk of neuroinflammation.
Sometimes, even with a diet high in vitamin d and increased sun exposure, we can be at risk of low vitamin d3 levels.
If you have concerns, measuring and correcting vitamin d levels is an easy process to go through with your trusted medical professional.
Remember that any work you do now towards building a healthy brain has positive ramifications for decades. Brain health is all about preventative care and building healthy sustainable habits that build a resilient brain.