icon-account icon-glass

Popular Searches

Popular Products

The Lean Protein
Whey protein powder for weight-loss.

CATEGORIES

How To Boost Your Brain Health

6th October 2022

health Life

6th October 2022

By Vikki Rich

In 2022 physical health is greatly spoken about, with the rise of TikTok, healthy habits have not only been more popular but are way more easily accessed. From daily gym routine videos to healthy low-calorie recipes, it seems that having a healthy body is right on trend. However, something that gets easily missed is your brain health. With a rise in mental health illnesses, it is more important now than ever to be maintaining and boosting your brain health.

Social media platforms are a fantastic way to gain knowledge on any topic you wish, with trends becoming more apparent in our day-to-day reality, there is a lot of false information out there making it harder to pick out the crazy trends from the actual facts. We have put together some scientifically proven ways to boost your brain health, so you don’t have to waste your valuable brain energy trying to figure out what’s a fad and what’s a fact.

What Is Brain Health?

The brain is the most important yet mysterious organ in our bodies. It functions in many different ways; in cognitive, social-emotional, sensory, behavioural, and motor domains. Brain health is how well our brains function in these areas. Mental health depends on how healthy your brain is, an unhealthy brain can lead to many physical and mental conditions such as anxiety and depression.

The biggest struggle in brain health is inflammation. If you are tackling brain fog, memory loss, and depression you most likely need to improve your brain health and function to reduce the inflammation. Thankfully due to neurogenesis, which is the process of a healthy brain forming new neurons, not only can we gain back our brain health but also rejuvenate it.

Improving Brain Function

One of the easiest ways you can improve your brain health is by exercising. The director of science and research at the Brain Health Network, Professor James Goodwin has looked at a number of studies that have proven a minimum of 150 minutes of aerobic activity a week can increase your memory and ability to learn.  Not only that but you should avoid sitting down for more than 45 minutes at a time. This might be quite hard for those that work in an office-based job. However, there are many ways you can incorporate movement into your life, starting with setting goals such as walking 10,000 steps a day.

If you have the space, try the innovative design of a treadmill desk. This allows you to work on your computer while walking or running on a treadmill, this not only allows you to keep yourself moving but can also improve your focus. If you haven’t got the space for a treadmill, then you can try and go for a walk after eating to help your body to digest your food and keep active.

Another recent study found that sex can be highly beneficial to your brain. Having regular sex with someone you are in a close relationship with can increase your cognitive health and even improve your memory. 

The Best Foods For Brain Health

Your diet doesn’t only impact your shape and weight but also your brain function. What you put in your body has a huge impact on your brain health. Highly processed foods such as takeaways and ready meals rarely contain the nutrients that you need, they also increase your risks of inflammation in the brain. Some of the best nutrients for brain health are B12 and Vitamin D, these can be found in omega-3 fatty acid-rich food such as cold-water fish including cod, trout, and halibut.

If you live a fast-paced and busy lifestyle you might find it hard to prepare meals from scratch and exercise every day, this is why brain health supplements can be really helpful to get your brain back to its top health.

The Focus Capsules have ingredients that play a vital role within the rejuvenation of our brain health. Siberian Ginseng increases the oxygenation of cells and improves circulations in the brain. L-Tyrosine is an important component in the production of brain chemicals that help nerve cells to communicate, improving your mood. Bacopa Monnieri is derived from plants and increases brain chemicals involved in thinking, learning, and memory. It also protects cells from the chemical involved with Alzheimer’s. CDP-Choline increases your cerebral metabolism and dopamine levels, and Rhodiola Rosea stimulates and balances the neurotransmitters within your brain.

Staying Connected For Your Brain Health

Being lonely isn’t fun, but it’s also scientifically bad for you. Social connection is as important as food warmth and water, it’s ingrained into our brains. Being lonely can cause inflammation and speed up the aging process.  The Harvard University research into the power and prevalence of loneliness has found that being lonely can be as bad for you as having 15 cigarettes a day making your life span about 8 years shorter. So, if you’re wondering whether you should say yes to that brunch date or walk in the park with your friends, you should absolutely go. Not only does seeing friends and family improve your brain health but also theirs too.

Dental Health

Believe it or not, your dental health can have quite an impact on your brain health. The University of Birmingham studies have shown that people with gum disease are more likely to have a higher risk of vascular dementia and poor mental health. The mouth is a key source of inflammation so along with putting the right food into your body, dental hygiene is a must. Make sure you are booking regular dental and hygienist appointments as well as maintaining a daily dental routine that’s consistent.

How To Maintain A Healthy Brain

A big part of keeping the brain healthy is getting enough sleep. The human body needs about 7-9 hours of sleep a night to be able to function properly. If you are skipping out on sleep you are less likely to be able to concentrate, remember things and of course, keep in good spirits. Sleep isn’t just good for our memory during the day though, when sleeping your body is taking time to store your thoughts and memories from the past day, without enough deep sleep our brains cannot consolidate the important pieces of information you need to remember making it harder on your memory the next day.

Sleep also is a vital part of how neurons communicate, your brain keeps active while you are sleeping and is found to help remove toxins that build up on your brain. Without enough sleep, your body can become deprived leading to a higher risk of developing, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, and obesity. If you are struggling to sleep, there are a number of things you can do to help get that much-needed rest your brain needs. Try to avoid caffeine before bed, if you are used to having a coffee after lunchtime, switch to decaff or ditch the glass of coke or Pepsi at dinner to allow your body to naturally settle down. Look into a more structured sleeping routine, some people have found certain sleep apps you can download that can help with your routine. However, if you find yourself endlessly scrolling on your phone until the early hours of the morning, you’re stimulating your brain with the blue light from your phone screens. Set yourself a time to put your phone down and partake in other activities, most people find reading a great way to encourage sleep, by detoxing from the blue light and moving your consciousness to the fictional world allowing your body to calm down and relax.

Keeping your brain healthy is ultimately looking after yourself physically and mentally. Make sure you are keeping active and eating the right foods. Ensuring you are on top of your dental and overall hygiene. Not depriving yourself of sleep and social interaction. If you allow yourself to keep on top of all these things, you will be right on track for a very healthy brain.
< Older post Newer post >

Need Expert Advice?

Take the quiz

Take the quiz

If you're not sure where to start, take our 5 minute health consultation to get product recommendations tailored to your goals.
Read more

Other Insights

The Glow Blend: A Confession

The Glow Blend: A Confession

I need to tell you something I've never said publicly, and it's not flattering. When our product team first brought me a plan for a collagen supplement, my honest reaction was no. Not "let me think about it." A flat no. And if I'm being fully honest about why, it wasn't the science. It was that collagen felt, in my head, like a beauty category. Something for someone else's brand. Not ours. I built Innermost around performance and evidence. Protein, creatine, mushrooms, electrolytes. Things I could point to a study for and feel comfortable talking about at a dinner table full of people who workout regularly. Collagen sat in a different mental folder. Skincare aisle. Jars with gold lids and brand sponsorship by one of the Kardashians. I'd absorbed a version of what "beauty" meant without ever examining it. The argument in the room So we had the argument internally. A proper one. A few people on the team pushed back hard, and rightly so. One of them put it to me plainly: we started Innermost to follow the evidence wherever it goes, not to follow it everywhere except the places that feel awkward. That line stuck with me. Here's what changed my mind, and it wasn't a feeling. It was the research. What the evidence actually says Collagen is the most abundant protein in your body. It's structural, it's in your skin, your joints, your gut lining, and production declines steadily from your mid-twenties onward. That's not a marketing claim, that's basic physiology. The question was never whether collagen matters. It was whether supplementing it actually does anything, and that's where most of the category falls apart. Most collagen products on the market use whole collagen molecules, which are too large to be absorbed effectively when you drink them. The ones that do use hydrolysed peptides, which are broken down into smaller chains your body can actually take up, still run into a second problem: dose. A lot of labels list collagen content that sits well below the 2 to 10 grams used in the trials that show measurable effects on skin elasticity and hydration. You're paying for a placebo with good branding. The ingredient most brands leave out The third problem is the one that convinced me completely. Vitamin C isn't a nice-to-have alongside collagen. It's a required co-factor for your body to actually synthesise collagen at the cellular level. Without adequate vitamin C, the enzymes responsible for stabilising collagen structure don't function properly. You can take a perfectly dosed hydrolysed peptide and still get a fraction of the benefit if the product doesn't include enough vitamin C alongside it. Most don't. They sell you the raw material and leave out the one thing your body needs to use it. Once I saw the category clearly, laid out like that, the decision stopped being about how I felt and started being about what the evidence supported. That's the whole operating principle of Innermost. I couldn't defend saying no to a legitimate, well-evidenced product category. What we built So we built The Glow Blend properly. Hydrolysed collagen peptides at a dose that reflects the research, alongside vitamin C, hyaluronic acid for hydration, biotin and folic acid for hair and nail health. Nothing in it that doesn't earn its place. What surprised me after launch The part I didn't expect was the response once we launched it. A good number of the messages came from women, as you'd expect, and they were generous and specific about what they'd noticed. But a surprising number came from men. Customers writing in to say they'd felt exactly what I'd felt, that awkward little flinch at "collagen," and had quietly bought it anyway because the ingredient breakdown made sense to them. That response told me more about why this category needed an honest voice in it than any research paper did. I'm not going to pretend I have this fully figured out. I still catch myself, occasionally, hesitating slightly before I mention it in a room. Old habits sit deeper than good evidence sometimes. But I take it, and increasingly a lot of men I respect take it too, quietly, without needing to make a thing of it. If this sounds familiar If any part of this resonated, and you've felt that same small resistance to a category you assumed wasn't for you, hit reply and tell me. I'd genuinely like to know I'm not the only one who had to get over it. And if you know someone, a friend, a partner, who could use this exact reasoning rather than a tesimonial, forward it on. It might do more good coming from someone else's honesty.
Read more
Your Summer Survival Kit (From Someone Who Travels A Lot)

Your Summer Survival Kit (From Someone Who Travels A Lot)

I'm putting the finishing touches to this post from an airport, which feels appropriate. By my count, I'll be going through three countries in the next six weeks. Meetings, a trip to see family including my niece and nephew, a supplier visit in Italy that I've been putting off for a year. And every summer the same thing happens. The carefully built routine, the one that took months to lock in, gets thrown into a suitcase and I hope for the best. Most people react to this by either giving up on the routine entirely ("I'll sort it out when I'm back") or overpacking so aggressively that half of it never leaves the bag. I've done both. Neither works. What actually works is deciding, in advance, which two or three things earn a place in my bag and which ones can wait until September. So here's mine. Not a wellness influencer's "what's in my bag" video. An honest list, built over about a decade of getting this wrong first. Why travel breaks routines specifically It's worth being precise about what actually changes when you travel, because it isn't just "less discipline." Three things shift at once. You sweat more and drink less water than usual, because you're distracted or the flight dried you out or the hotel room is warmer than home. You're outdoors more, often somewhere sunnier than wherever you live. And your meals stop being yours. You eat what's available, when it's available, and protein is usually the first thing to slip, because sugar, carbs and fat are what's on offer at 6am airport cafes. None of this is a discipline problem. It's an environment problem. The fix is making sure two or three specific things are in my bag before I leave home, so I’m not relying on willpower to begin with. 1. Electrolytes, non-negotiable Most people remember to pack sunscreen. Almost nobody packs electrolytes, and it's the one that actually catches up with you. Water replaces volume, not what you lose through sweat, which is mostly sodium and potassium and magnesium doing the quiet work of keeping muscles firing and fluid balanced properly. Miss that balance for a few days in the heat and you get the symptoms everyone blames on jet lag: the headache, the flat energy, the slight fog by 4pm that a coffee doesn't fix. It's usually not jet lag. It's electrolytes. I take The Hydrate Blend  for exactly this reason. Six electrolytes, no sugar, no synthetic flavouring, dissolves in a bottle of water in about ten seconds. One sachet on a travel day, first thing in the morning, does more for how I feel by evening than anything else in the bag. 2. Something for the sun you're actually going to get Here's the part most people don't think about until it's too late. UV exposure accelerates collagen breakdown, which is a slightly clinical way of saying that a week of proper sun does more to skin structure than most of the year combined. This isn't about vanity. It's a straightforward mechanism: UV generates free radicals that degrade existing collagen faster than your body can replace it. Sunscreen protects against the burn. It doesn't do anything for the collagen you're losing underneath. I've been taking The Glow Blend through summer for this reason specifically. Hydrolysed collagen peptides paired with vitamin C, which matters because vitamin C is a required co-factor for collagen synthesis and most collagen products leave it out entirely, then wonder why customers don't notice anything. It won't undo a week in the sun. It gives your skin something to rebuild with while it's under more pressure than usual. 3. Protein, especially when the meals aren't yours This is the one I've learned the hard way. When your diet goes inconsistent, protein is usually the first macronutrient to drop, simply because it's the hardest to find on the move. Airport food, hotel breakfasts, whatever's left at a conference buffet by 1pm, none of it is built around protein. And the honest science here is less dramatic than people expect: you don't need to train harder to maintain muscle through a disrupted period, you need to keep protein intake somewhere close to normal. That's the whole trick. I'll say this honestly because I'd rather be straight with you than pretend otherwise: my go-to for this is still The Strong Protein (whey based) and The Health Protein (vegan). They earn their place in my bag because they travel well, mix with nothing but water, and does the one job that actually matters on the road, which is making sure protein doesn't disappear from your day just because your routine has. The actual point None of this is about maintaining perfect discipline on holiday. Nobody does that, and if a brand tells you they do, they're not being honest with you. It's about deciding in advance which three or four things matter enough to bring, so the choice isn't being made for you by whatever's in the hotel minibar. If you've got a system that works for you when you travel, reply and tell me. I read every one of these, and I'm always looking to steal a better idea for my next trip. If this is useful, forward it to whoever in your life is about to live out of a suitcase for the next few weeks. It's the email I wish someone had sent me a decade ago.
Read more