How To Keep A Healthy Brain

Through our interactions with our students, there is this one question that always comes back: ‘How do I improve my brain’.

 This course is our answer to that one question. Because, as much as we would’ve liked to reveal the one magical trick to significantly enhance our brain, it simply doesn’t work that way. As we will see, there is no scientific evidence to back up the claims of brain games and other programs, even though they claim they do.

One of my all time favourite quotes about the brain is from Emmerson Pugh, an American Scientist, who said

“If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.”

I guess, that says it all. 

So what are we going to do? What is this course all about?

The two vital elements behind improving our brain are Neurogenesis and Neuroplasticity. Neurogenesis is about the creation of new brain cells. And Neuroplasticity about putting those new brain cells to a good use. 

Now what follows is key to everything we will see in this course. You see, depending on our life style choices, we see a huge variation in the rate of neurogenesis. We’re talking 3 to 5 times more new brain cells being created... or not. And again, depending on those life style choices, we will see 60 to 70% of these new brain cells die off... or not. 

So basically, the quality of our life has a direct influence on the quality of our brain.

Some choices will boost the creation and wiring of brain cells, and other choices will drastically lower this same creation and wiring.

The place where it all starts is the hippocampus. It’s been known for a long time that the hippocampus is involved in forming new memories, and remembering them. Damage to the hippocampus will lead to cognitive deficits and memory problems. scientists have established this over and over again, with research into injuries and illnesses. Alzheimer for example, massively attacks the hippocampus, with the unfortunate results we know.

But the hippocampus does more than that. It is one of two places in the brain where we keep growing new brain cells during our entire life. Yes, our entire adult life. It doesn’t stop in our early twenties as previously thought. It just goes on, and on, and on ...

Now, for most people, the rate of neurogenesis decreases once they reach age 30 to 35. Sometimes, this decrease is so dramatic that by age 40 the first noticeable mental effects are already observable: We’re talking memory loss, cognitive impairment, anxiety and depression, loss of vitality, and so on.

But this is no fatality. Whatever our age, whatever the current state of our brain, This can change. Our brain can renew itself at any age. And depending on our lifestyle choices, we can increase that neurogenesis rate again.

And that’s exactly what we aim to do with this program.