It’s easy to get caught up in tending to your weight or the look of your biceps — but don’t forget about gains for your brain.
“The brain is a part of our body. The same things that create wellness within our body create wellness within our brain,” Dr. Randy D’Amico, director of the Brain and Spine Metastasis Program of Neurosurgery at Northwell Lenox Hill Hospital, told The Post.
“The brain is a network of networks. It is important to keep it strong, but it is equally important to replenish it.”
Luckily, existing research tells us a lot about exactly what makes a real difference in keeping the brain healthy, our memory sharp and the mind agile. D’Amico shared the ways he cares for his own brain day-to-day.
1. Exercise
Exercise promotes cardiovascular health, metabolic health, mood, sleep and cognition — all of which are deeply connected, D’Amico said.
If you’re having trouble imagining how going to the gym affects your brain, research actually shows that lower body strength is directly related to healthy cognition as you get older.
Here’s how: Gray matternaturally shrinks with age, and that loss can cause memory issues and be a sign of dementia or Alzheimer’s. But people with stronger lower bodies show larger gray matter volume over time.
D’Amico suggests resistance training, or working out with weights, bands or your own body weight, to keep up strength. Then, maintain it with walking, cycling or using the elliptical. These are great ways to get your heart going, too.
“The brain has blood vessels, and those blood vessels are pumped full of blood that’s pumped by your heart,” D’Amico said. “Anything you’re doing to promote cardiovascular health, which exercise is paramount to, is going to promote brain health. It’s going to promote blood flow, oxygen delivery, and help the brain function better.”
2. Diet
“Diet goes part and parcel with exercise,” D’Amico said. Your brain requires fuel to work, and giving it better nutrition makes a difference: “Nutrition is medicine.”
He avoids processed foods because they’re associated with decreased metabolic health, or how efficiently food is converted to energy in the body. This in turn affects vascular health, or the body’s network of blood vessels, and cognition.
Too much sugar can also speed up aging in the brain, and if it becomes long-term diabetes, it can cause the brain to atrophy and shrink. “I’m not saying to eliminate [sugar] completely, but to be purposeful in how you incorporate it into your diet,” D’Amico said.
Look to Mediterranean diets instead: These are packed with protein, plants, healthy fats, and fiber. “Fiber is critical to our gut microbiome, which are the bacteria that live in our gut,” he explained. “Evidence suggests that the gut microbiome may influence inflammation, metabolism, and brain function through the gut-brain axis.”
As for supplements, D’Amico only adds one thing to his routine: creatine monohydrate. Though it’s most commonly used to boost muscle performance, there’s also emerging evidence supporting its benefits for cognition, recovery from sleep deprivation, and healthy aging, especially when paired with exercise and protein intake.
“Ultimately, there is no magic food to protect the brain,” he says. But keeping metabolic health and vascular health in check helps protect our body’s command center.
3. Sleep
Sleep is critical for memory consolidation, learning, emotional regulation and cognitive recovery. In short, it “creates an ecosystem for your brain to function to the fullest extent of its abilities,” D’Amico said.
All the work your brain did during the day to learn and make memories requires a good night’s sleep for you to build on it the next day.
“Everything you read and learn is just electrical signals that are ramping around your brain for a period of time,” D’Amico explained. “When you go to sleep, the body has a way of strengthening those synapses and those connections in the networks of your brain. That’s how things are retained.”
Sleep not only cements what’s important to remember, but also helps get rid of unwanted waste. During the day, the brain burns through fuel and makes waste like lactic acid and certain proteins that cause problems when they build up. During sleep, the brain washes itself with fluid to clear it.
“If you have disrupted sleep, whether it’s sleep apnea or bad sleep hygiene, paying attention to that and remedying that to the best of your ability is critical,” D’Amico said. “Whatever your schedule is … prioritize consistency even when life is busy.”
4. Stress management
Stress makes it hard to eat well, exercise and sleep well. Over time, chronic stress can cause many health issues, from digestive issues to high blood pressure and decreased immunity. That means impacts on the brain as well, in areas like attention and mood.
“I think stress management is less about eliminating stress, because that’s impossible, and more about creating small daily practices that help regulate your nervous system,” D’Amico said. For him, that’s exercise, deep breathing, music, walking and moments of intentional quiet.
These help improve the activity in the vagus nerve, which connects the brain to the heart and other organs. Among its important functions, it returns the body to a state of calm and rest. People with “high vagal tone” can recover from stressful events faster.
The great news is we can stimulate the vagus nerve to help promote that recovery.
“What does that look like, practically? It means taking a couple minutes a day to just deep breathe, sigh out loud, sing and focus on belly breathing,” D’Amico said. “Those are things that enhance vagal tone. But they also help you center yourself and be more present and reduce that kind of constant stress and noise.”
5. Use it or lose it: Challenge yourself
Think of the brain as a living, dynamic organ where a function like taste, or memory, isn’t limited to one part or another. Instead, it’s the networks and constant communication within it that make it work.
If you don’t use that brain by challenging it and giving it new things to consider, those networks weaken and the brain will lose function.
“Learning new skills, engaging socially, reading, exercising and forcing yourself to think critically all help maintain cognitive resilience over time,” D’Amico said. “You can challenge your brain by doing a crossword puzzle, forcing yourself to think or remember, learning new things and learning new skills.”
The brain naturally seeks out new things, and it feels good to do something new, thanks to a flood of dopamine. Among the best ways is to socialize with others, which asks the brain to multitask in new ways with every interaction — to recall memories, read reactions in facial and voice changes and thinking of thoughtful responses.
“There’s a saying in neuroscience that ‘things that fire together wire together.’ And so, you want your brain to be wired tight, and you want those connections to be fresh,” he said. “The best way to do that is to constantly challenge them and stimulate them and have them firing with each other. The brain strengthens the networks we continue to use. … And then get a good night’s sleep afterward.”
