Summer presents a prime opportunity to prioritise cognitive wellbeing
Nurturing your brain and enhancing its function can significantly benefit your overall health, both immediately and long-term
Discover six straightforward habits, easily integrated into your busy summer routine, designed to bolster your brain health for years ahead
1. Stay active
“When we look after our hearts, we’re looking after our heads. So, anything that keeps us physically active, moving more and spending less time being sedentary or sitting down is really good for our brain,” says Katie Puckering, information services manager at Alzheimer’s Research UK
“It’s a really good way of keeping our blood pressure and cholesterol levels down, which is important because high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels are both risk factors for dementia.”
The brain also thrives on good blood flow because it brings oxygen and nutrients
“The support systems in the brain help tidy up any waste product that the brain and the nerve cells produce, and one of the things that this process is dependent on is the blood vessels in the brain,” explains Dr Steve Allder, consultant neurologist at Re:Cognition Health
“So, exercise plays a big part in this because it really helps the blood flow and blood vessels in the brain be optimal.”
The neurologist adds that exercise also helps improve the production of brain-derived neurotrophic growth factor
“It promotes the increased production of the proteins that support the nerve cells in the brain,” says Allder
It’s important to pick an activity that you enjoy
“If you do something that you enjoy, then you can easily build that into your everyday life and are therefore more likely to stick with it,” says Puckering
“The government recommendations for exercise is around 150 minutes of aerobic exercise every week, and that could be going for walks or doing things like strengthening and balancing exercises.”
2. Prioritise sleep
“The waste product mainly gets extruded from the brain during deep sleep, therefore if you sleep properly that helps this waste disposal process in the brain work optimally,” says Allder
“The key to this is to make sure that you sleep for seven hours a night.”
Puckering agrees and adds: “Other brain healthy habits around sleep include time away from screens for an hour or two before bed and keeping your bedroom as dark and as cool as possible
“Doing the same routine every evening to wind down can also be really beneficial.”
3. Get outside
Being surrounded by nature can have a calming effect on the brain
“The body has two modes, the sympathetic fight-and-flight go, go, go mode, and the parasympathetic rest-and-restore mode, and being in nature definitely helps you access the rest-and-restore mode,” says Allder. “The brain likes being active, but it also needs periods where it’s calmer and has time to clean and repair itself.”
Getting outside can also help boost your mood
“We know that depression is linked to dementia and for a lot of people being outside can be a great mood booster,” says Puckering
4. Be social
“Joining a club or attending events in your community is another great thing that you can do for your brain this summer because we know that socialisation and depression are linked to dementia risk,” highlights Puckering
“Therefore, anything that connects you with other people on a regular basis is really important for our brain health.”
Allder agrees and says: “There’s something unbelievably powerful about being connected socially with someone you like that seems to switch on the restorative mode in the brain by activating the parasympathetic nervous system.”
In contrast, loneliness can have a negative impact on both your mental, physical and brain health
“If you’re lonely and you’re not having that social connection, you spend more time in the sympathetic fight-or-flight state,” says Allder. “That in turn drives chronic inflammation in your blood, which makes you more prone to heart attacks, strokes and diabetes – all of which makes you more at risk of dementia.”
5. Eat a balanced diet
“Diet is really important when it comes to dementia risk,” says Puckering. “We want a healthy, balanced diet that includes lots of fibre, leants of saturated fats.”
She adds that the Mediterranean diet is often viewed as the gold standard diet when it comes to dementia risk
“There’s some emerging evidence that the Mediterranean style of diet is the most protective,” says Puckering
6. Learn a new skill or practice an old one
“When we challenge our brain and learn new things or practice something that we have been learning for a long time, such playing a musical instrument or learning another language, that helps build up our brain’s ‘fortress’,” says Puckering
“When the brain is faced with diseases like Alzheimer’s, that slowly chips away at our memory, functioning and cognitive skills. However, if we build up this fortress by challenging our brain over our lifetime, then it takes longer to chip away at that.”
Allder agrees and highlights that some research suggests that undertaking a hobby that’s completely unrelated to your day job could be beneficial
“Nick Petrie has been doing lots of research on burnout and found that people who didn’t burn out maintained what he called ‘opposite worlds’,” says Allder
“His findings suggest that doing something completely unrelated to what you do for work is incredibly helpful for your brain and brain resilience. The immersion into a completely different world and switching off from what you mainly spend your time doing seems to be what drives this benefit.”
