Nurturing your brain

In our book, we draw on the latest scientific evidence, including our own, to highlight seven essential lifestyle factors that improve our brain health, cognition and wellbeing. We demonstrate how simple — and often surprising —adjustments to our daily habits can enhance brain fitness, boost cognition, and promote overall wellbeing.

We suggest small incremental steps to improving lifestyle habits and ensuring these fit within our daily activities, as well as being enjoyable and pleasurable. In this way, we can ensure, that unlike New Year’s resolutions that we give up within six days, we can maintain these throughout life. This puts us in a better position to achieve physical challenges in the future.

These lifestyle factors include exercise, diet, sleep, social interactions, kindness, mindfulness and learning, and knowing how to get the best out of work. For example, exercise is an “all-rounder”, as it can boost our physical health but also our brain health, cognition and mood. In fact, studies have shown that exercise can increase the size of our hippocampus, which is critical for learning and memory.

Similarly, sleeping the optimal number of hours each night can improve our immune system, brain structure and mental wellbeing. Our own study showed that sleeping 7-8 hours per night in middle to older adulthood was associated with better brain structure, cognition, such as processing speed and memory, and mental health.

Staying socially connected also plays an important role in our brain health. We have shown that being socially isolated in older adults is associated with a 26% increased risk of dementia. Whereas, having the optimal number of friends in adolescence, about five, is linked with better brain structure, cognition, educational attainment and wellbeing.

Learning new things is also essential to keep the neural circuits in our brain functioning at their best level for as long as possible. We need to challenge ourselves mentally to keep our brains active – just as we need to do physical exercise to keep our bodies fit.

This builds cognitive reserve and helps us in times of stress. We can also keep our brains active in a number of ways, for example, by learning a new language or how to play a musical instrument or you can read an educational book about something that interests you.

Keeping our bodies healthy is incredibly important. But we need to also nurture our brains if we want to be happy, mentally sharp and well protected against diseases such as dementia.

Embracing these simple strategies to prioritise our brain health and wellbeing is essential for a happier and more fulfilling life. Ultimately, lifestyle choices play a significant role in reducing stress and promoting resilience, creativity and overall quality of life.