Your Brain Can Change… By The Hour

How often do you think about your brain? Do you ever think about how much it can change?

Being a brain injury therapist, my answer is maybe a little extreme… I think about other people’s brains for 8+ hours a day at work, and I can’t help but continue to think about my own brain outside of work. When you spend so much time around injured brains, you become acutely aware of how healthy or unhealthy your own brain is at any one moment in time.

That’s right, I said “unhealthy” and I wasn’t referring to my patients. Brain injuries wreak serious havoc on the brain, but a lot of the habits and daily routines we tend to adopt also wreak a lot of havoc on it as well!

Think about how differently your brain functions after a few glasses of wine or a strong mixed drink. Within the matter of an hour or so, you’ve changed the way your brain is working. You react slower, your speech changes, your decision making takes a hit. All tasks the brain orchestrates. Sure, it goes back to normal for the most part after the alcohol is out of your system, but that’s just ONE factor that you’re aware of that’s influencing your brain functioning.

Health has been turned into hashtags and trends over the past several years, but have you ever stopped to think about how health and wellness impact your brain? 

Sure, we know sugar impacts your weight and physical fitness, but do you think about your brain on sugar? Sleep feels like a general necessity, but have you ever considered what it’s doing for your brain and how the quality may matter more than the number of hours? Water consumption! Electronic use! Light! Blood pressure! Your brain is absorbing EVERYTHING at ALL TIMES. You can change your brain, for better or worse.

It’s so cool and also a little overwhelming when you think about it. But it’s even cooler when you realize there’s actually a lot you have control over.

I don’t know about you, but I get pretty stoked just knowing that I can improve things like my energy, wit, memory, concentration, problem solving, reaction speed, mood, physical abilities… just from being more conscious and thoughtful about my own habits. Weird- being more conscious and thoughtful helps your consciousness and thoughtfulness.

This is going to be fun…

Stick around and we’ll explore:

• the gut-brain connection- how your diet affects the way your brain functions
• good sleep habits for improving the quality of your sleep and your brain’s nightly “washing”
• what good blue-light blocking glasses do for your brain, and find out when blue light IS good for your brain
• how being in nature impacts the stress responses in your brain
• how mindfulness can immediately change the signals and structure of your brain

And so much more!