You Think You Got It? Then Take a Pencil and Draw Your Path - Keys For Brain Optimization and Mental Health

Hi

Here are some thoughts for today that you might just use for your emotional wellbeing!

✔️ Whether you are seeking to maximize your brain health potential or overcome chronic pain or illness, the path to success is the same: strengthen your biology. BUT it's important that, even if you're not suffering from ANY affection, you take care of your mental health through simple steps daily.

In your journey of acquiring health knowledge, you will encounter a vast landscape of ideas and information. You can improve your ability to discern and navigate it all by seeing it through a perspective of optimizing your biological performance rather than fixing what is broken.

Learning about your organ systems, hormones, digestive function, lymphatic system, and especially the nervous system helps us understand how optimizing each will increase cellular energy production and enhance biology.
The microbiome is important for your brain health as well.

There are a lot of modalities and technology I'm a fan of to increase performance but here are the core components that truly are the foundation.

Sleep

From weight gain to cognitive function to an increase in diabetes, heart disease, and inflammation, studies show lack of sleep is extremely detrimental to your brain/mental health. Ideally give yourself space, quiet, and time to sleep 8-10 hours per night. Turn your thermostat to below 66 degrees as studies show we actually sleep better in a cooler room. Unplug all devices in the bedroom. Turn off the WiFi in your house while you sleep and keep your phone off or in airplane mode. Use a blue light blocking filter on your phone and computer in the evening to prevent the blocking of melatonin production. Melatonin is a powerful sleep hormone and antioxidant that is stimulated through the darkness.

Calm down

No matter what efforts you're making to be healthy, if your nervous system is in sympathetic dominance you can't utilize them. Think about how much quiet time our ancestors had compared to what we put ourselves through now. The stress we put on our biology now with all the constant stimulus is unprecedented. Deep breathing even just for two minutes can lift the parasympathetic nervous system allowing the body to relax and carry out its regenerative duties. If you have difficulty relaxing the mind, don't hesitate to use a meditation app, or sound program designed to help shift your brainwaves to a calmer deeper state.

Awareness

Some call it meditation but I'm not a fan of the term. Awareness is a broader aspect of consciousness that includes your thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations such as tension in certain places in the body. Mindfulness, on the other side, is a great way to increase self-awareness and simply observe the relevance of what you notice.

Eat real food

Diet is a very complex and personal topic. With so much information about what is supposedly ideal, I do recommend getting a qualified biological medicine or functional medicine doctor to guide you and possibly do some genetic nutrition and microbiome testing. If most everyone just ate actual food rather than processed versions we call food we could eliminate most of the obvious consequences diet has on us. Eat several servings of different vegetables per day as this is the best way to increase your microbiome diversity. Consume some whole fruit and eliminate fats from all sources of vegetable oil, hydrogenated fats, and fried or packaged foods. Consuming healthy fats like avocados, nuts, dark chocolate and oils like coconut oil and olive oil can be a great way to add more variety to your diet but it's easy to overdo these fats as well so use in moderation. If possible, eat only lean, organic, or free-range meats, avoid gluten, pasteurized dairy, processed carbohydrates, GMO foods, and sugar. This isn't a forever diet, it's an optimization diet and over time you will feel so much better that it will become the diet you want rather than what you have to do.

Detoxify your environment

Studies show newborn babies have over 200 chemicals in their blood before even being born! Why make your body use extra energy constantly detoxifying from stuff you're exposing it to unnecessarily?
Changing out all your daily cleansers, toothpaste, lotions, potions, deodorants, and detergents is a way to immediately stop putting this additional burden on the body. In addition, open your windows as often as possible and get some houseplants to help clean the air you are breathing. If you are dealing with any mysterious symptom or chronic illness, test yourself and your home for mold. Don't chase a hundred modalities and doctors looking for a cure just to find out the cause was literally at your feet.

Vitamin D

I take it along with K2 and no lactose while taking it.

This is so much more than just a vitamin, it is a powerful hormone responsible for regulating gene expression in the body. Even mainstream science now acknowledges that there is a link between Vitamin D deficiency and numerous diseases especially cancer and autoimmune disease. Any credible physician and of course any biological or functional medicine doctor will test your level regularly.

Grounding

One of the most amazing and free therapies we can give ourselves. Get your feet on the grass, sand, or earth anywhere you can. Combine this with exercise in the park or meditation in your back yard or reading at the beach. Absorbing the earth's electromagnetic field can regulate the nervous system and has a profound antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect.

The ideas expressed in this article are from one of the digital guides that I sometimes offer to my students.

Movement

Exercise creates temporary stress on the body that stimulates a regenerative reaction throughout your biology including beneficial hormone responses and circulation, which will bring more oxygen and nutrition to tissues as well as cleanse the lymphatic system.

Laughter and gratitude

It all comes back to the nervous system and the message the cells are receiving. Laughing stimulates the parasympathetic response, as does doing something altruistic and practicing gratitude. The better you feel the better you perform and heal.

Learn

Immerse yourself in the knowledge to heal, learn about your biology, and all the ways to optimize it.

❤️ I have expressed some of these ideas in some of my previous articles in Hive and I hope they can help you decide and act towards a healthier plan for your life.

Let me know what are you doing to improve your mental health or to be able to function better, take better decisions, act towards your dream, anything.

Thank you for being here!

With respect,
@regenerette

ENJOY YOUR LIFE!
~all the photos are mine

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