Posted on 9 December 202210 May 2024 by Kelly McGillivray

How to keep your brain healthy at any age

A healthy brain is arguably the most important part of the human body. Research shows that making some simple lifestyle changes can help keep your brain healthy.

A healthy way of life can help maintain cognitive health well into the future and provide support against the risk of neurodegeneration.

Why is it important to keep your brain healthy

The brain is an extraordinary organ. A healthy brain effectively controls our perceptions, feelings, and brain functions. Everything we see, hear, taste, think, feel, say, and do is controlled by our brain.

But it doesn’t stop there, of course. The brain is an incredible multitasker and at the same time is keeping our heart beating, our lungs filling and emptying, our muscles working and managing a myriad other functions at once. All without our conscious thought!

It’s an astonishing notion to consider how effectively the brain cells work on a daily basis, and this provides us more than one reason why we should do our best to keep our brain healthy at its peak.

Maintain a healthy brain as you grow older

So, how can we actively support our brain health over the course of a lifetime avoid the risk of cognitive decline?

According to research, you can do so by following a healthy lifestyle, which includes proper sleep, maintaining healthy blood pressure, eating a balanced diet, avoid stress and engaging in regular exercise.

Brain healthy foods

A healthy diet nourishes the brain and helps supports your brain cells over the long-term. The tried-and-true foods that support brain health are commonly available in the market.

These are the groups of foods that you should add to your diet to support a healthy brain:

Leafy greens

Vitamin K, folate, and carotenoid antioxidants like beta carotene and lutein are among the vital nutrients found in spinach, kale, broccoli, and other leafy greens that can support a healthy brain, maintain normal brain function and reduce the risk of cognitive decline.

Omega-3 fats

Omega-3 fatty acids are healthy fats found in wild caught, cold-water oily fish, that can support cognitive health.

Omega 3’s are abundant in the specific fatty acids components EPA and DHA that support and nourish our brain health. To maintain mental health, you must ensure that you are receiving sufficient quantities of these healthy fats each day. If you aren’t regularly eating enough fish in the diet, then it can help to support your omega-3 levels by supplementing with a high-quality fish oil product. Vegans and vegetarians are also at risk of missing out on essential omega-3s so using a high quality algae supplement providing EPA and DHA essential fatty acids is a fantastic fish-free option.

Antioxidants

Brightly coloured berries like cranberries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries and raspberries are bursting with natural, health-supporting antioxidants and are a visual clue signifying their high nutritional values.

The natural plant pigments that give berries their colour are antioxidant flavonoids that help our circulation throughout the body, including our brain.

Physical exercise

Hands up who doesn’t know that regular physical exercise is good for you? In fact, it’s widely known we need to move our bodies to keep our physical health high. What you might not have known is that regular physical activity keeps your brain fit too!

You should exercise regularly to support brain development and maintain a good mental function. Research shows that physical exercise supports crucial blood flow around the brain, boosting nutrient-giving circulation. In turn, this supports the healthy functioning of the brain, including normal hormone release for healthy and indirectly stimulates proper hormone release for normal brain function and cognitive health.

Apart from lowering the risk of chronic conditions including metabolic and cardiovascular health issues, regular exercise also supports a healthy brain, and it can be as easy as a few regular walking sessions a week. Plus, it’s not just the physical benefits of exercise that helps, the social connection of exercising with a friend or family member is also important for good mental health.

Mental stimulation

Research shows that brain games such as crossword puzzles, can actually help support brain function and lower the risk of cognitive decline. According to experts, the process of learning in itself trains the brain to be mentally active throughout our life.

Mental exercise may stimulate existing and new communication lines between nerve cells, supporting a healthy brain and cognitive abilities. And it can be fun too, like starting a new hobby, playing a musical instrument. learning a new skill or playing strategy-based games like chess; these activities force the brain to engage and forge new neural pathways.

Memory tools

We cannot expect our brain cells to recall everything. Therefore, we must sometimes rest those nerve cells.

Because various senses stimulate different areas of the brain, engaging as many of your senses as possible when learning something new implies that more sections of your brain will be involved in building that memory pattern.

Bottom line

Our brain does so much that it’s important to maintain a healthy brain at all costs. By reading this blog you can motivate yourself to focus on your brain health and brain function regularly for years to come.

After all, our brain is here to stay with us for as long as we live, so why not keep your brain healthy by altering your lifestyle and lower your risk of developing dementia, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and many other neurological conditions.