Biohack Your Brain: How to Boost Cognitive Health, Performance & Power

2020 HarperCollins

My bathroom scale surely must be broken. Seemingly, all of a sudden, I weigh less. I am in territory I haven’t traversed in a long time. I hop on and off a couple of times. The numbers don’t change.

Maybe I should replace the 9-volt battery?

Why spoil the fun. I’ll enjoy this momentary pleasure while I can.

Days later, the scale’s numbers are still low.

I then realize that Biohack Your Brain, a volume I had picked up after hearing its author, the neuroscientist Kristen Willeumier, Ph.D., interviewed on a podcast, might be the reason for the weight loss. Biohack Your Brain provided the impetus for my return to intermittent fasting as well as a renewed commitment to consistent exercise, not necessarily for weight loss and physical fitness (although those are two benefits), but for cognitive health.

Biohack Your Brain advocates the usual suspects for a healthy brain: sufficient sleep, plenty of water, minimal stress, lots of exercise (if possible, running), nutrient rich foods, supplements, meditation, and brain training, among other practices. Since I perpetually need reminding about the basics, starting with sufficient shuteye seems like a sensible baseline and within my control. Living in a new place with a new job was interfering with my sleep habits, so it was good to sneak in a read that provided a health reset. For me, insistence on adequate sleep instantly calls to mind Arianna Huffington’s convincing Ted Talk on that topic. Huffington wrote the book The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time.

Whenever I read from self-help genre, I hone in on one or two ideas. After reading Biohack Your Brain, I paid particular attention to the importance of physical exercise for brain health. The author cites studies where people who work out consistently outperform those who do not on cognitive tests. The author claims that physical workouts increase cerebral circulation, neurogenesis (new brain cells) , and the size of the hippocampus, the location in the brain where new memories are stored and new skills acquired. It, like other parts of the brain, shrinks with age, so anything we can do to counteract that can potentially help fight against diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Willeumier delves into the particulars of gray matter vs. white matter, but honestly, I just focused on the wider message: Exercise benefits not only your muscles, bones, connective tissue, and cardiovascular health, it is vital for brain health, too.

Hearing about the brain benefits of exercise was startling to me. I knew about the importance of sleep and Omega 3s for brain function, and I knew that the body released feel-good hormones after exercise, but for me, this book really made the case for focusing on exercise to help my brain stay as high-functioning as possible. From where I stand, I might be able to put up with a less than ideal physique, I sure as heck don’t want to mess with my brain. I want to do as much as I can to keep it in fighting shape.

The author included case studies of former NFL players who had suffered cognitive decline but who later showed improvement with the prescribed protocols, prominent among which was exercise.

Currently, I am all ears when anything encourages me to play more pickleball. If I just remember how important running around, sweating, and being out of breath is for my brain, then I don’t have to feel guilty spending significant time doing it.

Interestingly, Willeumier also makes a case for reading a sustained narrative for at least 30 minutes daily (as opposed to social media and websites) as another brain healthy habit.

Willeumier, Biohack’s author, like many self-help books’ writers, is not a medical doctor, but she does have a Ph.D. in neuroscience, and that gives her more chops than most of the rest of us, and for the record, nothing she writes defies common sense.

For me, intermittent fasting and exercise has resulted in weight loss; I have my fingers crossed as far as the cognitive benefits.