Simple Daily Habits That Silently Damage Your Brain
Good health is not just about staying physically fit. Taking care of your mind is just as important. Often, we focus so much on our bodies that we overlook our mental habits that affect our well-being. Some habits can seriously harm your brain over time, so it's important to recognize and avoid them.
Habits to avoid
Unhealthy diet: Your diet plays a huge role in ensuring your brain works in the right manner. Dr. Ashutosh Shah, Consultant Psychiatrist at Sir H. N. Reliance Foundation Hospital, Mumbai, considers bad food habits to have a significant impact on brain health. “The brain utilises 20% of the energy we consume daily and more when it is active, like when studying. As an organ, it consumes maximum energy in the form of oxygen and glucose. A healthy diet would help to provide these to the brain both directly and by maintaining good cardiovascular health.” Opting for a Western diet can have a higher dietary inflammatory index, which in turn can negatively impact brain health. Choose a Mediterranean diet for brain health.
Stressful life: Living with constant stress and not finding ways to manage it can harm your brain cells. Over time, stress can make it harder for your brain to adapt, affect your thinking, increase anxiety, and even lead to depression. It can also disrupt your sleep.
Sedentary lifestyle: Leading a sedentary life can be called a risk factor since it brings in many lifestyle disorders like diabetes, ischemic heart disease. These result in impaired brain health. Dr Shah reveals, “From an evolutionary perspective, muscle movements have been intertwined with better brain health by virtue of secretion of endorphins and other brain growth factors. Also indirectly, muscle movements would lead to better cardiovascular health and subsequent benefits for brain health.”
Lack of sleep: How much you sleep and its quality impact your brain health on a big scale. When you sleep, the removal of metabolic waste created during the day is an active process. During this process, various metabolic waste generated in the brain during the daytime, resulting from different biochemical processes, is removed. Dr Shah adds, “Sleep in adult humans by evolution is to start three-four hours after sunset and last around seven to eight hours. Any compromise on either the onset of sleep or the duration of sleep has consequences not just for the brain but also for the body. Sleep deprivation is a known risk factor for various psychiatric disorders as well as various neurodegenerative conditions like dementia (neurocognitive disorders).”
Social media addiction: Most people use social media for fun or work, but spending too much time on it can affect the chemicals in your brain that control mood. This can lead to addiction and harm your mental and emotional health. Without social media, you might even feel lonely.
Consuming psychoactive substances: Consumption of varied psychoactive substances can give temporary relaxation or pleasure to the brain, but can damage the brain and body in the long run. Socially sanctioned substances in moderation, like tea and coffee, can boost wakefulness. But Dr Shah mentions, “Used excessively or during the later part of the day, even tea or coffee could have adverse effects on cardiovascular activity and interfere with nighttime sleep. Alcohol is a known carcinogen, and no amount is absolutely safe. Ditto for cigarettes/e-cigarette and various street drugs.”
To keep the brain healthy over time, it’s important to know the habits that must be avoided.
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