Are you concerned about brain health and the deterioration of your brain as you get older? You’re not alone. We all know that our brains succumb to a loss in functionality as we get older. Poor memory, slower reactions, inability to learn new things quickly and so on. It’s part and parcel of ageing. Or is it?
While some degree of mental decline is a natural part of ageing, it’s also empowering to know that there are steps you can take to slow down or even prevent this process. You have the power to influence your brain health over the years, giving you a sense of control and a bright outlook for the future.
Whether you’re in your twenties, thirties, fifties, or beyond, these lifestyle tips are for you. They are designed to help boost your brain health and keep your mind sharp as you age. This advice is for everyone, regardless of age, ensuring that no one is left out in the journey towards better brain health.
Brain Food
Your brain relies on a mix of vitamins and minerals to help it function, and ensuring your diet has plenty of what it needs is a great place to start when it comes to boosting brain health as you age. While not a miracle cure, including foods rich in iron, zinc, and iodine can support cognitive abilities, while B5 contributes to normal brain function as B9. Vitamin D and Omega-3 are also great vitamins and minerals for brain health.
It’s important not to fall into the trap of relying solely on supplements to give you what you need for brain health. While supplements can be beneficial, they should be used to complement a healthy, balanced diet, not replace it. The desire to consume vital vitamins and minerals as part of a healthy diet is crucial for optimal brain health.
You can greatly benefit from adding foods like leafy green vegetables, fatty fish, berries, walnuts, and coffee to your diet or looking into the Mediterranean diet, which emphasises fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and unsaturated oils to boost your mental and physical health.
Exercise More
Exercise and raising your heart rate through movement are massively beneficial to your brain health as well as your body. We all know how exercise can benefit your physical health; it supports movements and functionality and keeps your body strong and healthy. However, not as many people know the benefits of exercise in the brain.
Research has shown that people who are physically active are mentally sharp regardless of age. Exercise is thought to increase blood flow through vessels in the brain, spur the development of new nerve cells, and increase the connections between brain cells.
Exercise can be gentle or vigorous, like swimming or running. However, the WHO recommends that all adults get a minimum of 150 minutes of exercise that raises their heart rate per week. This can be walking, swimming, running, strength training, cardio, dancing, or anything else they enjoy that increases their heart rate.
It doesn’t all need to be done in one go; it can be broken up into short bursts of exercise throughout the day and week.
Mental Stimulation
How often do you challenge your mind? People who train their brains like they train their bodies can enjoy prolonged brain health as they age. But what exactly does it mean to challenge your mind? It’s not just a suggestion, it’s a call to action, a way to keep your brain active and engaged.
It simply means you need to use your brain, challenge yourself, and give your brain something to do. This can be in the form of learning something new, e.g., a musical instrument, a new language, or further education in a subject that intrigues you. It can be by playing games that challenge you mentally, like Scrabble, chess, or card games. It can be in the form of reading or performing mental challenges like sudoku or creative activities like painting. Other mental challenges could include solving puzzles, learning a new skill, or engaging in stimulating conversations.
Mental stimulation is anything that requires you to think, problem-solve, and really engage with your work. It’s about keeping your brain active and challenged, whether that’s through learning something new, playing games that challenge you mentally, or engaging in creative activities.
Stay Healthy
Your physical and mental health are intricately intertwined, and the healthier your body is, the healthier your brain will be. Conditions like high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease can also impact your brain’s health and ability to function. Not only can poor health contribute to memory problems or accelerated cognitive decline, but it can also increase the risk of stroke. High blood pressure, for example, can damage the small blood vessels in the brain, leading to cognitive impairment. Type 2 diabetes can affect the brain’s ability to use glucose, its primary source of fuel, leading to cognitive decline. Heart disease can reduce blood flow to the brain, impairing its function.
Talk to your doctor about life changes you can make to improve your overall health. Eliminate bad habits, improve healthy habits, eat a balanced diet, get outdoors as much as possible, and generally take care of yourself to ward off premature cognitive signs of ageing.
Be Social
This might be harder for some people than others; however, the social aspect of life is incredibly important when discussing brain health and a decline in cognitive abilities. There is actually a grain of truth in the idea that isolation speeds up cognitive decline and is detrimental to your brain. Studies have looked at the link between social isolation and an increased risk of conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. Plus, being social with people you enjoy spending time with can ward off depression and lower stress levels. Social interaction stimulates the brain, encourages the formation of new neural connections, and can even help prevent cognitive decline.
So, if you’re on the fence about accepting that invite or meeting people, there are benefits that can be long-lasting as you age.
Sleep
Sleep is a magic elixir. For humans, it’s the equivalent of charging your electronic devices, and if you’re not sleeping well or charging your batteries, so to speak, you’ll likely be running on empty every day. This can play havoc on your cognitive ability and brain health.
A lack of sleep has been found to not only impact energy levels, concentration and cognitive function but also impair the brain. And over time, chronic sleep deprivation can increase the risk of developing Alzheimer too.
However, the same can also be said for excess sleep. Ideally, you want to prioritise 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night and have a regular bedtime and wake-up time to regulate your sleeping pattern. You want to be able to cycle through each of your sleep cycles, which last around 90 minutes and include light sleep, deep sleep, REM (rapid eye movement), and NREM (non-response to eye movement).
On a typical night, during an 8-hour sleep, each person will have 4 to 5 cycles, depending on the length of their cycle, but you should aim for at least 4 per night.
Quit Bad Habits
Identifying and quitting bad habits can be valuable in preserving brain health. Smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, and drug abuse are all examples of habits that can impact our cognitive abilities and result in poor brain health. By addressing these habits, you can take a significant step towards improving your brain health.
However, stopping cold turkey is not always easy, and in some cases, you might need additional support to break the habit and sustain going without for the rest of your life.
These bad habits can shrink the brain, damage cells, and thin the cerebral cortex. On top of this, it can increase dementia risk too. Alcohol, on the other hand, can disrupt memory, causing gaps and blackouts and damaging communication pathways. It can also make it harder to absorb the vital vitamins your brain needs and impact the blood supply to the brain.
Boost Mental Health
Mental health and brain health are two completely different things, and as such, you need to ensure you do what you can to improve your mental health to boost brain health. Those who struggle with depression, stress or anxiety are found to perform poorly on cognitive ability tests. While this isn’t a direct correlation between increased cognitive decline and age, it can impact the quality of life as you age and accelerate any decline you might experience.
If you want to care for yourself as a whole, then being in control of your emotions and actively working towards being in a good mental state can be invaluable as you move through life.
There are many ways to support brain health throughout your life, most of which you’re likely doing as standard anyway. Knowing what can impact brain health and how you can improve can enable you to make the right changes to support a healthy brain for now and well into your senior years.
