10 Tiny Ways You’re Hurting Your Brain Without Meaning To

How to protect your mind beyond exercising and socializing.

It’s no secret that one of the easiest ways to have a better life is to control our minds.

Emotional intelligence preaches that though we can’t control what we feel, we should control how we react, something ancient philosophers already figured out. Stoics like Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius often wrote about controlling our minds and impulses to lead a wiser and more fulfilling life.

The problem is that that isn’t always possible.

If you have a healthy brain and no mental illness, controlling your mind shouldn’t be impossible. Things like self-discipline and emotional regulation are within reach. But for people like my father-in-law, who suffered a brain stroke ten years ago, or my great-grandmother, who suffered Alzheimer’s, emotional intelligence is sadly impossible.

That’s why I believe caring for our brains and mental health should be our number one priority, the former being the most important. Without a healthy brain, you can’t have good mental health.

Without a healthy brain, you can’t control your life.

In the past, I’ve written a lot about what we should do to keep our brains healthy, from the BRIGHT MINDS approach to a brain-healthy diet. Even about how to exercise every inch of your brain. However, I recently came across an interesting article by Jon Hawkins, where he explains three everyday habits that damage our brain:

• Sedentarism.
• Social Isolation.
• Listening to loud music.

Hawkins’ article was a reminder that, to care for our brains, sometimes it’s more important to avoid bad habits than include good ones.

Below, you’ll find 10 ways — beyond the ones Hawkins explained — you might be hurting your brain without meaning to. Becoming aware is the first step to prevent a brain stroke or a memory-related problem.

1. Not Getting Enough Magnesium and Potassium

Both magnesium and potassium are necessary to keep your blood pressure healthy. If you don’t get enough, the blood flow to your brain decreases, the number one indicator of future memory-related problems. Yikes!

But why is this something you should consider? Because recent studies have shown that half of all Americans are magnesium-deficient and that 98% of American diets lack potassium.

To restore healthy levels of both minerals, introduce foods to your daily diet like:

• Potassium-rich foods (You need roughly 3,500–4,700 mg/day): Spinach, yams, avocados, bananas, cabbage, and fish, such as salmon.
• Magnesium-rich foods (You need roughly 310–420 mg/day): pumpkin seeds, spinach, almonds, cashews, peanuts, wheat cereal or bread, soymilk, and black beans.

You can also try supplementation but make sure to go to the doctor first.

2. Drinking Too Much Caffeine

According to brain-health expert Dr. Daniel Amen, too much caffeine can hurt your brain for two main reasons:

• Disrupts your sleep: “What caffeine does is, it blocks adenosine. Adenosine is a chemical your body naturally produces to help you with pain, but also to put you asleep when you’re tired. So, sleep is absolutely essential for your brain to clean and wash itself.” That’s why we often feel foggy if we didn’t sleep well.
• Reduces blood flow to the brain: Even 100 mg of caffeine — roughly one cup of coffee — reduces the blood flow to the brain, which, as I said before, leads to memory-related diseases.

So what can you do?

It depends. If you drink coffee because you don’t get enough sleep, work on sleeping better (obvious, I know). If you do it because you enjoy the flavor, switch to decaf. And, if, like me, what you love is having a warm drink as soon as you wake up, replace it with a healthier alternative like green tea, which is beneficial for our brain health.

3. Not Drinking Enough Water or at a Proper Time

Research cited in Dr. Amen’s book, Memory Rescue: Supercharge Your Brain, Reverse Memory Loss, and Remember What Matters Most, shows that brain tasks requiring attention and memory are diminished when you are just 2 percent dehydrated. Therefore, drinking eight to ten glasses of water per day is paramount for good brain health.

Timing, though, is also crucial. “Avoid drinking water with your meals because it dilutes stomach acid, slowing digestion.” Instead, drink 30 minutes before or an hour after your meal.

4. Abusing “No Brain” Activities

According to Dr. Amen, “watching TV is usually a ‘no brain’ activity.” In other words, too much time binge-watching stifles the growth of our brains. Taken too far, it can even shrink it or lead to memory-related problems.

That’s why Dr. Amen recommends limiting our television (or anything similar like YouTube) intake to no more than 2 hours per day. Even better, try to watch either funny programs (laughing boosts our immunity) or instructional documentaries (learning trains the brain).

5. Eating Too Much Sugar

“If you eat a fast-food diet, you will have a fast-food mind that is less capable of thinking and reliable decision making.”

— Dr. Amen

Several studies have found a link between sugar consumption and memory-related problems. But this isn’t something only prediabetic or diabetic people should care about. As Dr. Amen says, “even mildly elevated blood sugar levels are significant problems and are associated with brain atrophy, memory problems, and dementia.”

However, artificial sweeteners aren’t the solution. Dr. Amen warns us that they can contribute to “chronically high insulin, which increases your risk for Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, and other health problems.”

So what can we do if we love sweet treats?

First, we should try to limit our daily intake. By learning how to read food labels, we can spot hidden sugar and avoid it. Here are some ways to identify it:

• Sugar
• Molasses
• Caramel color
• Barley malt
• Corn syrup
• Corn syrup solids
• High fructose corn syrup
• Honey
• Sorbitol
• Fructose
• Cane Juice Crystals
• Maltose
• Fruit juice concentrate
• Maltodextrin

Second, we can replace sugar with healthier options such as erythritol, a sugar alcohol; and stevia, a sweetener extracted from a herb. They don’t spike insulin like other natural or artificial forms of sugar.

6. Not Learning Something New Every Day

Every single day, our brains produce up to 700 new neurons regardless of our age.

This is called neuroplasticity. Put simply, it’s the brain’s ability to continue growing and adapting despite aging. According to Marian Diamond, one of the founders of modern neuroscience, “with proper stimulation and an enriched environment, the human brain can continue to develop at any age.”

Beyond regular exercise, learning new things every day is a must if we want to continue growing our brains as we age. After all, if your brain assumes you don’t need those 700 new neurons because you’re doing the same things you always do, it will just toss them aside.

To keep your brain strong, then, consider learning a new vocabulary word every day, playing a new instrument (this is extremely beneficial), meeting new people, etc.

7. Not Including Prebiotics and Probiotics in Your Diet

As Dr. Amen says, “chronic Inflammation acts like an ongoing, low-level fire that destroys organs. Just as poor blood flow and oxidative stress can devastate your brain, so can chronic inflammation.”

Some things that trigger it are:

• Environmental toxins.
• Smoking.
• Low levels of vitamin D.
• Hormone imbalances.
• Gastrointestinal issues.
• Emotional stress.
• Pro-inflammatory foods: sugar and fast food.

To combat chronic inflammation, you can tackle the triggers, especially those related to gastrointestinal problems and hormone imbalances. How? By making your microbiome, the group of “good bacteria” that live in your gut, as healthy as possible through the consumption of prebiotics (beans, lentils, onions, fruits, cocoa, …) and probiotics (full-fat yogurt, cheese, kimchi, sauerkraut,…).

You can also try supplementation but make sure to go to the doctor first.

8. Not Flossing Your Teeth

When we don’t floss our teeth regularly, gum disease follows. And when we have gum disease, chronic inflammation spreads across our bodies, deteriorating our brains.

That’s why, though annoying and time-consuming, we should floss our teeth at least once every day. Our future selves depend on it.

9. Playing Sports That Lead to Head Injuries

Dr. Amen says in his book that he would never let his children play football. As shown in the 2015 film “Concussion”, a head injury can damage the brain irreversibly. It diminishes the overall blood flow to the brain and can destroy brain areas forever.

Though not playing some sports can make life a little less fun, taking care of our brains is more than worth it. We must remember that though our skulls are hard, our brains are not.

10. Handling Cash Register Receipts

Cash register receipts have a plastic coating that can get absorbed through our skin, filling our bloodstream with toxins that reduce cerebral blood flow, damage the DNA, disrupt our hormones, and impair the immune system. It’s better, then, to get digital receipts or handle physical ones with gloves.

Now, you might be thinking: The quantity of BPA must be minimal.

True. If you only handle cash register receipts, the number of toxins you get into your body is easily purified by your liver.

But our modern world is a toxin-rich environment.

Lead and arsenic from polluted water. BPAs found in plastics. Excessive alcohol. Artificial food dyes, preservatives, and sweeteners. Herbicides and pesticides. Health and beauty products with toxic ingredients absorbed through the skin. Air pollution.

No matter where you go or what you do, you’ll likely come into contact with toxins. That’s why we should try to reduce our exposure as much as possible through tiny things like not handling cash register receipts or using apps like Think Dirty to pick food that isn’t full of additives.

Other ways to reduce our toxin exposure are:

• Limit alcohol to two glasses a week.
• Include cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower) into your diet for their detoxifying ability.
• Avoid buying lead-contaminated lip products.
• Quit smoking.
• If you can, eat organic.
• Don’t drink or eat out of plastic containers.

“Your brain doesn’t have to deteriorate. With a little forethought, you can slow or even reverse the aging process in the brain.”

— Dr. Amen

My great-grandmother, who died of Alzheimer’s, often indulged in sugary treats and fried foods. Though she had a genetic predisposition, the tiny choices she made every day when it came to eating or spending her free time hurt her brain. They worsened her disease until she couldn’t even recognize her children or go to the bathroom alone.

In contrast, her daughter — my grandmother — is now nearing the age her mother died with perfect brain health. My grandfather even says it’s scary how much she remembers things.

Though my grandmother also has a genetic predisposition, she has learned from her mother’s mistakes and cared for her brain.

Like her, you don’t have to let your genes define your brain-health future. By being mindful and avoiding the tiny ways you may be hurting your brain without meaning to, you can keep a healthy brain throughout your life and maintain control of your choices.