Brain Care Routine

I recently watched a YouTube video from Ali Abdaal on his brain care routine. Ali read a handful of books regarding brain care and broke down the most important attributes of a brain care routine into five categories. For each of these categories I will describe what the recommendations were and connect them to one thing I do (or can do) in my life to incorporate the ideas.

Diet

Recommendation

The basic diet recommendation is pretty simple — eat the things you already know are healthy, and avoid the things you know are unhealthy. The medical world has discovered very few absolute hard truths about what constitutes a healthy diet. But in general reducing total calories, eating less sugar and saturated fats and eating more nuts, fruits and vegetables is good for you. This stuff is not rocket science, and we really don’t know that much so just eat the things you already know are healthy, and avoid the things that you know are not healthy.

Personal Connection

There are two things I am focused on in my personal life regarding diet.

1. No Added Sugar After Dinner: The vast majority of the added sugar I consume is after dinner. I generally am pretty good at not eating sugar during the workday because it has such a negative impact on my ability to think. But after dinner time, I am much more inclined to eat something with added sugar. Therefore the habit that I am working on building is to not eat anything with added sugar after dinner. Functionally this will probably reduce the amount of total added sugar I consume by 80–90%. Additionally, by really focusing in only on sugar after dinner, I make the habit seem much more tractable.
2. Skipping Breakfast: I really have not eaten breakfast since highschool. I will occasionally be hungry in the morning and eat something, but its very rare. One of the things we “know” about diet is that eating less calories is probably good for you and one way to do that is to engage in some sort of time restricted eating. By skipping breakfast, I end up doing this almost by accident.

Exercise

Recommendation

Apparently the evidence is pretty strong that exercise is really good for the brain. It has positive impacts on memory, mental processing speeds, stress reduction, emotion regulation and more.

Personal Connection

Historically, building an exercise habit has been something that has been really hard for me. But I have just seen so many recommendations lately advocating for exercise, that I am determined to build it into part of my daily routine. My goal for 2024 is to workout everyday workday at Orange Theory Fitness for one hour. I am optimistic for my ability to stick with this goal for several reasons

1. Benefits of Workout Class: Building a routine around a workout class is easier than building a routine around a self guided workout. This is because after showing up a workout class the actual workout just flows from the teacher’s instruction and from the peer pressure of others in the group working out. When I workout alone I find it much harder because I need to think and motivate myself throughout the duration of the workout, whereas, in a workout class the only real point where I need self motivation is getting in the door.
2. Booking in Advance: Another upside of a workout class is that you can book them in advance and if you do not show up you pay some fee. This acts as added motivation to show up to class. I have built into my workout habit a routine of booking my workout class for the following week right after a workout. Right after a workout is when I am feeling best about working out and I am most inclined to book more workouts. So after each workout I either book classes for the following week or double check that all my classes are booked for the following week. This ensures I always have upcoming classes scheduled and that I will incur a fee if I don’t show up.
3. Reframing: Historically, allocating time for exercise has been hard for me because I have viewed it as a tax on my time that takes away from more productive things like work. But what I am realizing is that exercise is so critical to cognitive functioning, that I likely will actually have a net gain in productivity from spending 90 minutes per day going to the gym as opposed to working an additional 90 minutes per day. Basically, the claim is that by exercising I will be more efficient in my working hours and that added efficiently more than makes up for the time it takes to exercise.
4. Exercise During Work Hours: I am bless with a flexible enough job that I can schedule my workouts during “working hours” and just add a few working hours in my week during non-traditional working hours. I have scheduled my workouts from 4:15p–5:15p everyday. During this time we still have childcare on duty and there are not household expectations of me. This means this time is highly protected time.

Sleep

Recommendation

Sleeping well is, unsurprisingly, very important for brain health. The things you should do to get good sleep are

• Reduce sugar, caffeine and alcohol
• Don’t look at screens before bed
• Get sunlight in the morning
• Sleep in a very dark and slightly cold room
• Get sunlight in your eyes in the morning
• Have a consistent night time routine

Personal Connection

Sleep has historically been something that is hard for me. BUT, as long as I have very good sleep habits I do tend to get good sleep. There are some sleep habits I tend to be good at and others that are harder for me —

• Reduce sugar, caffeine and alcohol: Caffeine is really the one that gets me. I love drinking tea and I will often end up consuming tea too late in the day.
• Don’t look at screens before bed: This is another really hard one for me because I tend to work later at night after we put our child to bed, and this involves both looking at a screen and involves stress. Something I am considering doing is to actually printing off physical copies of work material during the day and reading these physical copies at night for my working time rather than looking at a screen. I am not sure if this will work in practice, but its something I am considering trying.
• Get sunlight in the morning: This one tends to be very easy for me because I have to walk the dog every morning and then later I need to walk to the bus stop. So its almost impossible for me to not get daily morning sunlight.
• Sleep in a very dark and slightly cold room: This one also tends to be easy because I sleep with an eye mask and with the window open.
• Have a consistent night time routine: This one tends to be harder for me. But something my wife and did recently was cancel our Netflix and unplug our TV. My hope is that by not watching TV right before bed, it will create more space for a night time routine, rather than just shutting off the TV and heading straight to bed.

Learning

Recommendation

Being a life long learner and continuing to push the brain as we age is the one of the best things we can do for memory and processing speed. Additionally, having a positive attitude about aging and believing that you can continue to grow and improve even as you age does great things for your brain. Things like learning a language, taking on a new hobby, playing mind video games, reading, etc…. are all things we can do in old age to keep learning.

Personal Connection

This one really is not much of a concern for me at this stage of my life because I have a mentally very demanding job. If I am not continuously learning and pushing myself in my career, then its hard to keep up.

Lifestyle

Recommendation

The final recommendation was to have a lifestyle in which you focus on the important and valuable things and cut out the bad things. This means focusing on things like relationships and reducing things like mindless watching TV. Turns out having good relationships is one of the best things we can do for our brain health. This is true in a few ways

• A marriage is probably the most important relationship we will have, and a bad marriage is a source of long term stress. This long term stress is horrible for our health and our brains. So investing in having a good marriage is literally one of the best things we can do for our physical and mental health.
• Loneliness is really bad for the brain, especially for older people. Loneliness can result in depression which is all sorts of negative impacts on brain functioning.
• A good conversation with a good friend is like a workout for the brain. Especially as we age having quality conversations is great for the brain.

Personal Connection

I have been blessed with a great marriage and lots of friends. This pillar is a good reminder of the importance of continued investment into these relationships. Doing things like having a weekly date night and making a habit of scheduling plans with friends are great ways to keep up these relationships.