Begin taking preemptive and preventive action for brain health in your 30s, 40s, and 50s, as dementia can start decades before symptoms appear. Consistency in these strategies is crucial, especially from midlife onwards, to predict better health for the rest of your life.
Increase your daily movement and ‘get vertical’ more often, as sitting all day can leave your brain in ‘first gear.’ Movement enhances brain activity, heightens senses, and stimulates the release of beneficial neurotrophic factors like BDNF, which acts as ‘miracle growth’ for the brain.
Follow a plant-centric Mediterranean-style diet focusing on vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes, using unrefined vegetable oils like extra virgin olive oil. This diet is associated with living longer, better, and a lower onset of Alzheimer’s disease, keeping brains looking years younger.
Prioritize and increase nurturing, gentle physical touch in your life and with children, as it is a fundamental necessity for optimal brain development and shaping one’s sense of self. A lack of touch during development can have catastrophic long-term consequences.
Actively learn new things, particularly music and languages, to engage different pathways and corners of your mind. This energy-consuming activity is a strong way to stave off dementia and helps the brain break out of ruts.
Find skills and habits that allow you to harness and channel flow states, characterized by being focused, awake, and calm. Learning music is specifically mentioned as a beneficial activity to achieve this alpha wave state, which makes the brain more efficient.
Incorporate fruits with dark skins, such as blueberries, strawberries, and grapes, into your diet. Flavonoids found in these foods are shown to increase neurogenesis and improve memory and blood flow to the brain.
Practice either a daily calorie restriction of 20-30% or intermittent fasting (e.g., eating 600 kilocalories two days a week, like the 5-2 diet). Both methods have been shown to improve pattern separation and increase levels of the longevity hormone, cloto, in humans.
Actively pursue happiness by engaging in relationships and crafts that bring you joy. Mental health issues like depression can lead to brain changes, so fostering happiness is one of the best things you can do for your brain.
Make subtle changes to increase your daily steps, such as keeping comfortable shoes handy for lunchtime walks, setting alarms to take walking breaks every 25 minutes, parking further away, getting off public transport early, or choosing more distant shops for errands.
Make subtle but important changes in your diet by reducing or eliminating red meat and fried foods. This aligns with a Mediterranean-style diet which benefits brain health.
Challenge your brain with puzzles, read books, and try new or unusual activities. These forms of mental stimulation are beneficial for overall brain health.