Brain health is important for quality of life and all-around wellness. If your brain isn’t healthy, it’s difficult to be healthy in other areas of your life, yet it’s an area of our well-being we often overlook.
Some things can impair brain health that may be beyond our control. For example, even after recovering from a traumatic brain injury (TBI) following an accident, your brain may still be affected.
At the same time, there are a lot of lifestyle factors we do have control over that can play a role in brain health.
The following are things to know as far as what negatively and positively affects brain health.
What Lifestyle Factors Are Bad for Brain Health?
Anything that negatively affects your blood vessels may impact your brain health. Conditions that affect blood vessel health, including high blood pressure, diabetes, and smoking, can also hurt your brain’s health.
These conditions can, over time,increase the risk of brain deterioration and increase the potential to develop types of dementia like Alzheimer’s.
Some of the primary vascular risk factors, along with those mentioned above, include body mass index and waist-hip ratio, meaning that maintaining a healthy body weight can positively affect your brain.
In a recent study, after looking at MRIs, high blood pressure, diabetes, and smoking were the most significant vascular risk factors associated with brain atrophy and the loss of white and gray brain matter.
Gray matter is the part of your brain the houses the majority of your neurons. Neurons transmit messages throughout your brain and body. When they’re impaired, it can slow down reactions and processing.
White matter is located deeper in your brain. Naturally, it declines as you age, but loss of white matter is associated with slower thought processing. Vascular risk factors can cause this loss to happen more quickly.
Other things that aren’t good for your brain health are:
- Being sedentary: Having a sedentary lifestyle with little physical activity is a risk factor for nearly every chronic illness. Unfortunately, it’s also all-too-common in modern life, especially as many of us work at desks all day. When you’re sedentary, you are more prone to obesity and diabetes, diminishing brain health. There is some evidence that not only can exercise keep your blood vessels healthier, but it may also reduce your dementia risk.
- Social isolation: When you’re socially isolated, you’re getting less mental stimulation. Less mental stimulation means a greater risk of dementia. If you’ve already been diagnosed with a cognitive disorder, social isolation can worsen it.
- High sugar diets: High sugar diets and diets high in bad fats may increase blood sugar levels and these diets contribute to heart disease and obesity. When you’re obese in middle age, it increases your odds of developing dementia by up to 50%. If you have type 2 diabetes, you are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s.
- Not managing chronic health conditions: Not only are the conditions themselves linked to poorer brain health outcomes, but if you don’t manage chronic conditions, you’re also putting your brain health at risk. For example, if you don’t manage your diabetes or high blood pressure, it can be significantly worse due to the impact on your brain.
- Depression: Having depression is associated with an increased risk of dementia, but you may be able to reduce this risk if your depression is treated and well-managed.
- Lack of sleep: We tend to believe that not getting enough sleep is just part of life, but the reality is that it affects every part of your health, including that of your brain.
Ways to Improve Brain Health
The following are some of the things you can do starting today that may help improve your brain health over time:
- Eliminate refined pasta and bread from your diet. They have no nutrients, and they lead to spikes in blood sugar. Adults who have diets high in refined carbohydrates have been shown to have impaired memory. If you’re going to have carbohydrates, it’s better to have whole grain bread and pasta or brown rice pasta. They’re digested slower, which helps regulate your blood sugar.
- Eat healthy fats such as what’s found in avocadoes and nuts. Try to avoid unhealthy saturated fats.
- Refined sugar is absolutely one of the worst things you can have in your diet. Refined sugar causes a slew of health problems. It can increase inflammation in your brain, and it causes your blood sugar to spike. Evidence from brain scans has shown added sugar actually changes the chemistry of your brain.
- Move your body more. Moving your body can change your health in many ways, and it can improve your memory if you’re older especially. Try to get at least 150 minutes of aerobic exercise every week.
- Along with aerobic exercise, do weight training as well.
- Prioritize getting enough high-quality sleep each night. Your brain needs that time to repair and heal itself.
- Use your brain regularly. You can do that by participating in a book club, doing puzzles, playing games, taking a class, or anything that you feel is challenging to you. No matter how old you are, you should never stop learning to keep your brain healthy.
- Keep your blood pressure under control. Plan to get it checked every six months.
- Socialize whenever you can. Having friends and family you see, talk with, and laugh with will strengthen your brain and keep you connected to the world.
If you’re worried about your brain health because of something like an injury or perhaps because of your lifestyle or chronic health conditions, talk to your doctor. They can help diagnose any underlying conditions that may be contributing to poor brain health.
Then, they can work with you on a treatment plan that might include getting chronic conditions under control, along with making lifestyle changes.
It’s never too late to make brain health a priority.