Get inspired by a weekly roundup on living well, made simple. Sign up for CNN’s Life, But Better newsletter for information and tools designed to improve your well-being.
When thinking about how to protect their brain health, people often consider eating a well-balanced diet, getting regular exercise and improving sleep — all good ways to enhance brain power and overall vitality.
Want to do more? It turns out there are additional actions to boost your brain’s functioning and protect it from decline. Experts say establishing good habits as young as possible — even in the teen years and 20s — can nurture lifelong physical health and prevent future cognitive decline. But don’t fear, because whatever your age, it’s not too late to polish your brain.
One of the longest running studies in the world — the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has followed the same families for 86 years — discovered the key to living a longer, happier life with a well-functioning brain: positive, satisfying relationships.
“Warm relationships seemed to keep people both physically stronger and kept their brains sharper as they grew older,” said Dr. Robert Waldinger, study director and Harvard Medical School professor of psychiatry, in his popular 2022 Ted Talk. “Good relationships turn out to be stress regulators.”
Being socially isolated and feeling lonely have been linked to early death, anxiety, depression, heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and dementia.
“Loneliness, which means not just being alone, but being alone and not liking it, increases the risk for Alzheimer’s by twofold,” said Rudy Tanzi, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Related article
How many hours it takes to turn an acquaintance into a friend
You don’t have to be intimate with a person to benefit from a close relationship — friends, relatives and even work colleagues can boost your mental health if the relationship is nurturing, Waldinger said.
“Having at least one person in your life who you feel really has your back, who you could go to if you were in trouble, that’s essential for maintaining our happiness and our health,” he said.
It’s also a good idea to evaluate so-called toxic relationships, Tanzi said.
“The brain doesn’t do as well when it’s not stimulated by positive social interaction, so maximize the relationships that make you feel good,” he said.
As the size of a person’s belly grows, studies show the memory center of the brain shrinks and hallmark signs of Alzheimer’s disease can appear — namely beta-amyloid plaques and tau tangles. This accelerated march toward dementia can begin as early as the 40s and 50s, well before any cognitive decline is apparent, according to researchers.
This belly fat, also known as visceral fat, wraps itself around vital organs deep in the abdomen, often expanding the waistline — although some thin people also have visceral fat that can be detected by body scans.
Related article
This diet with exercise reduces dangerous belly fat and more, study says
“Visceral fat is metabolically unhealthy and secretes a lot of inflammatory chemicals that can cause brain atrophy and impact cognition,” said preventive neurologist Dr. Kellyann Niotis, who researches Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s risk reduction at the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Boca Raton, Florida.
Focus on your body’s composition, not just your weight on the scale, said preventive neurologist Dr. Richard Isaacson, director of research at the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases.
“It’s important to track your body fat versus muscle mass — lean muscle mass burns fat more efficiently,” Isaacson said. “We want people to gain muscle and lose body fat — that’s the way to have optimal brain health.”
You can measure your waistline yourself — without sucking in your tummy, wrap a tape measure over your waist at the top of your hip bone (typically across the belly button). Exhale normally and measure, making sure that the tape is parallel to the floor and snug, but not tight, across the skin.
Non-pregnant women with a waist size greater than 35 inches (88.9 centimeters) and men with a waist greater than 40 inches (101.6 centimeters) are at higher risk from visceral fat, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Your level of lean muscle mass is also key. You can determine it with a yearly DEXA scan, a large noninvasive X-ray machine that measures bone density, internal visceral fat and muscle mass. However, insurance companies tend only to cover the use of DEXA as a bone density test for people at risk of osteoporosis.
Related article
A new definition of obesity goes beyond BMI. What this could mean for you
There are over-the-counter biometric scales that track percentages of body and visceral fat and lean muscle mass, but they can be pricey for some, Isaacson said.
“These biometric scales are also far from perfect and may vary from scale to scale and day to day,” he said. “But they will give you a general sense of your body fat and muscle mass to help guide your exercise plan and nutrition.”
If you need to gain muscle, focus on strength training and eat adequate amounts of protein and healthy carbohydrates within a few hours of each exercise session, Isaacson said.
“Be sure to monitor your muscle mass over time,” he said. “If you’re doing all the right things and you’re not building muscle mass, talk to your doctor to rule out issues such as low testosterone that may be hindering your progress.”
Visceral fat is also a key contributor to insulin resistance, or the inability of muscle, fat and liver cells to respond to the hormone insulin. Insulin is critical in moving glucose from the blood into cells — including neurons in the brain — so the body can use it for energy.
When cells no longer respond properly to insulin, blood sugars levels rise, triggering the production of even more insulin by the pancreas. High circulating levels of both insulin and glucose can lead to heart and kidney disease, type 2 diabetes and damage the memory center of the brain.
Related article
I don’t have diabetes, but I wore a glucose monitor for six weeks. Here’s what I learned about food (and anxiety)
“We know that high levels of blood glucose are directly neurotoxic,” Niotis said.
While many doctors focus on an average of blood sugar levels over three months, the brain needs daily monitoring, Isaacson said.
“Keeping your blood sugar levels relatively constant over the day is a key goal for good brain health,” Isaacson said. “Blood sugar spikes cause brain inflammation, disrupt brain metabolism and increase shrinkage of the thinking part of the brain.”
One way to monitor how your body is reacting to meals is to wear a continuous glucose monitor, or CGM, for a two-week period — and now CGMs can be purchased without a prescription.
“What was your average blood sugar over those two weeks? The goal I give my patients is less than 105 as an overall average. Optimal blood sugar control would be an average of 98 to 100,” Isaacson said.
By journaling about the food you eat while wearing the monitor, you also will learn which foods spike your blood sugars and how to mediate those surges, he said.
“As people learn from watching their blood sugar rise and fall in response to various dietary or exercise patterns, they can learn and modify their behavior,” Isaacson said. “For example, eating fiber with healthy fats before simple carbs — such as a salad filled with leafy greens and plenty of extra-virgin olive oil before eating pasta — can slow digestion and take the edge off of the blood sugar spikes.”
Related article
Exercising before breakfast burns more fat, study says
Continuous glucose monitors also track two other key measures critical to brain health: the variability between the highs and the lows of daily blood sugars, called a standard deviation, and the highest glucose spike that occurs after meals.
“Some doctors feel that a surge of blood sugars to 180 after a meal is OK,” Isaacson said. “I would disagree — at our clinic we set our targets for less than 150 maximum blood sugars even with a meal. One drink of soda on an empty stomach could spike to that immediately.”
As for the variability between the highs and lows of your blood sugars each day, Isaacson tells his patients to strive for “less than a 15% deviation, with 10% being optimal.”
Physical activity is the key to a long, healthy life without frailty, but what does it do for your brain?
“Getting your blood flowing faster is good for your brain,” Tanzi said. “Exercise induces the birth of new nerve cells in the brain and helps remove amyloid plaques that cause Alzheimer’s disease.
“Aim to get your heart rate up by at least 50% for 30 minutes a day — say by taking a brisk walk outside or inside on a treadmill or exercise bike.”
Related article
A new study shows that 1 year of this kind of exercise yields results 4 years later
Cardio may be king when it comes to getting the heart pumping, but there’s growing evidence that resistance training — also known as strength training — may be equally important to a healthy brain.
When muscles contract from exercise, a hormone called irisin is released. Irisin then triggers an enzyme called neprilysin, which helps break down the signature amyloid plaques of Alzheimer’s disease.
Research suggests resistance training programs appear to boost circulating irisin, especially in older adults and when the resistance exercise is demanding and progressively harder over time.
There’s another benefit — irisin increases energy expenditure by accelerating the browning of white fat tissue. You want more brown fat because it breaks down blood glucose and fat molecules to create heat and maintain the body’s core temperature — white fat, which is the majority of the fat on most people, is only stored.
Related article
Want to sleep better? Lift some weights
The most effective resistance exercises for building lean muscle and losing fat are those that require multiple joints in the body to work together, according to the nonprofit American Council on Exercise. Always check with your doctor before beginning any new exercise program.
Dead lifts, lunges, planks, presses, pull-ups and push-ups require many muscles that elevate oxygen use and the release of hormones such as adrenaline that increase blood flow to muscles and boost overall heart rate — both key goals.
As you build lean muscle mass, try to add weight, increase sets and repetition and reduce the breaks you take between exercises. If you’re unsure how to do that without injuring yourself, seek out the advice of a physical trainer, the council suggests.
Taking time for yourself, especially when you’re stressed, is one of the most important things you can do for your brain, said Dr. Natalia Rost, vice chair of the American Academy of Neurology’s Brain Health Committee and professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.
“Taking breaks, making moments count through mindfulness, and literally, breathing deeply — which at times we forget when stressed — all add up,” Rost said in an email. “Stress and mental illness are major contributors to the decline of our brain health.”
While some stress is good, the prolonged kind creates chronic inflammation in the brain, Tanzi said.
“Neuroinflammation is probably the biggest killer of nerve cells, the biggest destroyer of the neural network,” he said, pointing to studies that have linked stress hormones to damaging pro-inflammatory activity by the brain’s immune cells.
While interventions such as meditation, mindfulness, yoga, tai chi or even biofeedback may ease stress and improve mood for some, there are times we may need professional assistance from a doctor or therapist, Rost said.
“Taking a first step toward asking for help — whether to assess your mood, or stress levels, or even to get guidance on what feels wrong,” Rost said, “is an important step toward improving your overall brain health.”
Enable Javascript to view this content
This is usually found in your web browser's settings
