Five Minute tips for better mental health- Brain Health

I’m not great at writing blogs, but fascinating ideas come across my desk every day, and I’d like to share some of them with you.

Keep You Brain Healthy

with thanks for Dr Jonathan Jordan. The powerpoint of his talk is online if you’d like it.

I was shocked to discover that Dementia is the leading killer of Australian women. Deakin University has linked the shrinking of brains to our highly processed food diets but stress also has a massive impact on the brain’s ability to cope and to regrow neurons (called neurogenesis).

The good news is that we have alot of great choices available to use which can protect our poor brains from this disease and get those neurons growing. Each of the strategies below work together with mindfulness, so please keep that as an essential factor in protecting your brain.

Keeping this blog short means little detail so here’s a summary and detail is below.

1. Eat a healthy diet

2. Don’t multi-task

3. Be physically active

4. Be socially active

5. Sleep well and long enough

6. Challenge yourself mentally

7. Have an optimistic flexible attitude.

Make these practices part of your daily routine for your lifetime and this can help to slow cognitive decline.

A Little More Info

1. Eat a healthy diet : Wild Caught Salmon is one of the healthiest foods you can eat. Also Acai (although Blueberries are great too, and heaps cheaper than Acai) and Walnuts have significant health benefits. Even coffee, in moderation, has health benefits. https://eatingmindfully.com/ Also, there is a correlation between healthy teeth and good brain health because of inflammation caused by dental disease. “Your brain consumes 20-25% of all the oxygen, nutrients and energy you consume” (Jonathan Jordan) Therefore diet has a profound impact on it.

2. Don’t multi-task. Its impossible but attempting to, puts the brain into fight or flight mode, and uses a surprisng amount of energy in the frontal cortex of the brain, whose capacity is actually quite limited. Multi-sense instead. Working sequentially has been shown to be 50% more efficient. (Organise yourself based on your own natural rhythms and strengths and most effective times to do tasks, create interruption free times during your day, take brain breaks.)

3. Be physically active. Moderate exercise three times a week aids brain health and helps you feel happier. Change your lifestyle -take opportunities eg park further from you destination, use the stairs instead of the lift, use a standing desk,

   “There appears to be an interconnectivity of the brain

   areas that control movement, emotion and thinking.

   Doing activities that involve a number of these areas

   fully engages the effort-driven-rewards circuit of the

   brain and lifts depression and elevates mood” (Kelly Lambert)

4. Be socially active because of the social rewards involved. Brains are healthier when they experience these rewards because we are having their social need, there is trust, engagement, cooperation and relational creativity. Without these, the brain feels threatened and becomes defensive and stressed.

5. Sleep Well and long enough Sleep deprived brains work harder and achieve less. (Getting only 5 hours or less sleep is the equivalent of being drunk.) Anecdotal evidence shows people having more heart attacks when daylight savings cuts out an hour of sleep. Sleep impacts mental health significantly and vice versa. Also, research has found that people with poor sleep tend to eat (on avreage) 300 calories more a day. Power naps are really good for you. The best options for waking sharp are 20 minutes or 180 minutes. (Between those times you will feel groggy)

6. Challenge yourself mentally eg. Do things you normally do, but do them differently,(with the opposite hand, for example or standing on one leg). Do puzzles suck as sudoku, chess, scrabble, wordle etc. Attempt to master new things such as languages, or musical instrument, or coding.

7. Have an optimistic flexible attitude. This has actual physical advantages in terms of heart disease and stroke. The opposite applies too. Laugh alot. Laughter turns off the threat centre in your brain and turns on the reward response. You cannot have both (laughter and threat) at the same time. Surround yourself with positive people. Let resentment go. Embrace gratitude. Live in the moment with mindfulness. “We Can’t Stop the Waves, But We Can Learn to Surf” (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

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Keep your brain healthy with puzzles and thinking games