5 Steps To A Healthy Brain
Do you have a friend or family member with dementia? Have you ever had a “senior moment”? Are you concerned about keeping your kids’ brains healthy? Brain health is something that you hear a lot about.
Why is a healthy brain so important? Your brain controls every single function in your body. You name it, your brain makes it happen. Your brain takes information gathered by the nerves in your body and uses that information to make decisions. Once it’s made that decision, it sends a command via other nerves to carry out that decision. As a Doctor of Chiropractic, my job is to find and remove interference in the communication between your brain and body.
There are lots of ways you can help your brain stay healthy. I want to share 5 simple ways that you can protect your brain and your family’s brains.
#1 - Take a fish oil supplement.
Your brain uses certain fats as food. Fish oils are a fat that your brain can use as food. The fats in fish oils also lower bad cholesterol so they can feed your brain without causing issues with your heart or clogging up arteries. You can get good-quality fish oil supplements at your pharmacy at low cost.
Your body also uses the fat in fish oil to make certain hormones like dopamine and serotonin. These are your “happy” hormones that help decrease anxiety, depression, and fatigue. We are going into winter and, in Iowa, your body makes less serotonin because of our shorter days. Keeping a supply of good fats around helps your body make as much serotonin as it can and could help fight the “winter blues” or S.A.D.
#2 - Do puzzles.
This can be actual puzzles or things like crosswords, Wordle, and Sudoku. Doing something that requires focus and critical thinking exercises specific areas of your brain. Just like your muscles, your brain needs to be exercised to stay “toned”. If you don’t exercise your brain, it will prune unused information. You’ll lose memories and skills. Your brain is constantly deleting information that you don’t use to make room for new information. That can be good, because sometimes the information is harmful. But if the pruning is too aggressive, you can lose useful information too.
#3 - Learn a new language or skill.
This also exercises your brain. Yes, your brain prunes unused information. But, it also has a huge capacity to store new information. In fact, every time your body does something new or encounters something new, it physically changes your brain. Brain MRIs of people with dementia show that their brain actually shrinks over time. This also naturally happens at a slower rate with normal aging. Exposing your brain to new things helps prevent that shrinking by creating new tissue to store that new information.
I love Duolingo. I’ve been learning Scottish Gaelic, but there are tons of languages available and it’s free. You can play as much or as little as you want and it’s basically a game that teaches you another language.
You can pick up knitting, crocheting, etc. It doesn’t have to be a difficult thing, just new. You can even restart doing something that you haven’t done in a long time.
#4 - Move your body every day.
We’ve discussed how your brain uses information from your body to make decisions and carry out commands. We’ve discussed the need to exercise your brain and how exposing your brain to new information builds your brain.
Let’s put that together now. Every time you move your body, your brain is exposed to new information, which it stores. It then gets exercised because it has to make a decision about what to do with that information and then act on that decision.
Learning is essentially the brain remembering that decision and action for the next time it encounters that same information.
How you move your body isn’t important. It doesn’t even have to be different each time (bonus points if it is). What is important is exposing your brain to information and forcing it to make decisions and issue commands. Some of my favorites are taking walks, cooking, or even chair yoga. Whatever your mobility allows is great. Whatever you choose to do, 30 minutes a day is all you need. You can even break that 30 minutes up.
#5 - Get Adjusted!
How does getting your spine adjusted affect your brain? Again, your brain uses information from the nerves in your body to make decisions and carry out commands and about how exposing your brain to new information builds your brain.
Chiropractors find and remove interference in the connection between your body and your brain. That interference happens when the joints between the vertebrae of your spine stop moving correctly. The spinal cord gets irritated as it moves through that joint. The spinal cord is the main channel of communication between the nerves and the brain.
When the spinal cord is irritated, the information being sent between the brain and body gets messed up. Your brain starts using incorrect information to make decisions and commands. If the irritation is severe enough, or has been present for a long time, the brain may not even receive the information or the body may not receive the command. Over time, faulty connections are built. This affects the function of our bodies. It can speed up aging and degenerative processes like dementia. Useful information and memories can be pruned by mistake.
Research has found that each adjustment acts like a “reset button” on the brain-body connection. Researchers found that weekly or biweekly adjustments are the most effective at keeping the brain-body connection working correctly. They also found that this “reset” happens regardless of whether or not there was any pain present.
I’m on a mission to change our healthcare system here in the U.S. That’s why I’ve chosen to focus on house-calls. I’ve also been working on educating the community on this brain-body connection and why it’s so important.
Chiropractors have long been known to help with aches and pain. And it’s true, we do a great job with that.
The real magic of chiropractic is in the impact on this brain-body connection. We have the ability to help people learn better, think more clearly, and keep their brains healthy longer.
It does take investment on your part. That’s why I moved to the house-call model of practice. I wanted to take the time and travel factor out of your investment. I also recently restructured my pricing to make sure the weekly or bi-weekly care was something that fit in your budget.
To recap, the 5 things I want to encourage you to do to protect your brain health are
Take a fish oil supplement
Do puzzles
Learn something new
Move your body for 30 minutes every day
Get adjusted weekly
More than anything… I want to challenge you. I want to challenge you to begin thinking of your chiropractor outside of aches and pains. I want to challenge you to commit to getting adjusted regularly, regardless of whether anything hurts. I want you and your family to reap these amazing benefits and have a healthy brain for life.