Keep Your Brain Healthy With 2 Simple Ways

Did you know being physically healthy helps power your brain? It’s true, nutrition and exercise help keep your brain healthy and happy. But why? How does eating well and being active help your brain? Read below to find out!

How are they connected?

Your body is like a big machine and all the parts of it are the gears and belts that make up a machine. So, when one isn’t working properly, the whole machine (or your body) is affected. In addition, if you don’t give fuel to a machine, or grease it every now and then it starts to wear and break down.

So, how this works with being healthy and your brain is it gives the fuel that your brain needs. The way you eat and the activities you do are the fuel and grease of a machine. It’ll still work, but not to its full potential, and it will most likely break down sooner.

To clarify, when you eat better or exercise more you are giving your whole body, most importantly your brain, well being by doing things it needs. You are giving it some much needed love.

The More Scientific Side

Following the above, a more scientific thing happens when you’re healthy. Being healthy, whether that be physical activity or nutrition, releases certain chemicals that benefit the brain.

Nutrition

When you eat healthy, your brain releases a chemical called BDNF. This chemical improves the growth and development of the hippocampus in your brain. The hippocampus is responsible for your learning and memory skills, as well as your mood, attention span, energy and your mental status. 

In summary, having good nutrition helps your brain be a better brain. Helping the skills mentioned above helps you feel better because your mind feels better.

Get more details on that here!

Physical Activity

Being active causes your brain to release 2 chemicals, dopamine and endorphins. These chemicals are what many call the happy chemicals because they help you feel better and relieve pain.

In addition to those chemicals, exercise also allows you to be more emotionally balanced by reducing stress and anxiety. It can also help improve your memory and thinking skills. As well as helping you feel more energized throughout the day. 

More details on how being physically active helps your brain here!

Clearly, being healthy has a big impact on your mind, however, that doesn’t mean you need to cut out all the junk and workout everyday. Just doing it more often than not will be helpful.

All Things Feelings

As touched on above, having healthy actions in your life can cause many benefits, this includes helping with your emotions and feelings. 

Many times life gets crazy and we just get overwhelmed by everything going on, it’s just how it is. Well, being active and eating well can help boost your mood, leaving you feeling better and more refreshed.

I have personally felt this when I start doing these things and it’s a great feeling. Doing physical things helps you get some emotions out and eating healthy helps your body feel better which in turn helps your mind feel better.

Like mentioned above, there are chemicals that are produced that help you. These chemicals help your feelings and emotions by playing on your brain to be in a better headspace, that’s why they are called the happy chemicals.

They also help, especially exercising, because you are focusing on the thing you are doing and not everything on your mind. This causes you to be in the moment, which helps your mind slow down, thus causing you to realize it’s okay and leaving you feeling better than you did at the start.

Nevertheless, keep in mind that doing physical things and eating healthier will no doubt help you feel better mentally, but it isn’t the cure. These things help you feel better and help you stay at that good place, but sometimes it isn’t always enough.

Just know that starting these will for sure help, but probably not resolve everything.

Your Mental Health

So, we have already talked about the physical aspect of how these 2 topics help your brain, but how does it help not just with feelings and emotions, but your mental health as a whole?

Additionally, being physically active and having good nutrition will directly affect your mental health status. Like, talked on above they will help your emotions and your feelings, but it is more than just that.

Speaking as someone with mental health problems, exercising and eating better helps my mind so much.

Actively doing these tasks almost tricks your mind. Sure the chemicals are produced and such that help, but you are willingly doing those acts for yourself. This plays across in your mind as self love.

Self love is so outrageously important to have in your life to help keep your brain and mind healthy.  Because you have to love yourself. By exercising and feeding your body and brain right, you are in turn giving yourself self love.

This love can then turn into self confidence because you are feeling better and working on yourself. Furthermore, you will take that confidence into other aspects of life unconsciously. 

Eating healthy and exercising is always beneficial for your body because you are getting in shape. This gives you love for yourself and your body because your mind is thinking you are looking better and feeling better, which is true.

So, yeah, just doing some physical activity and eating a bit better will help in many aspects of yourself; losing weight, gaining self confidence, improved mood, etc.

Your Brain Needs Love

Some of the benefits of a healthy brain are as followed:

• More energy
• Better mood
• Improved cognitive skills
• Increased focus and attention span
• Less stress and anxiety
• More confidence
• And so much more!

How To Start

At this point in time, you might be wondering, ‘okay that sounds great, let’s do it, but how do I start?’ And guess what; It’s so easy!

As touched on, you don’t have to go full out, just start small and build from there. Try starting with exercising once a week or on your next grocery shop buy more fruit and veggies than chips and dip.

Here are some ideas in where you can start exercising:

• Try starting cardio – inside or outside
• Pinterest workout routines
• Youtube a workout type your in to or want to try
• Check for personal trainers around you
• Try some apps
  • Fiton
  • DailyYoga
  • Joggo

Check out this article about different ways and examples of exercise!

Here are some ideas for better nutrition:

• Throw out junk food
• Eat at least one veggie or fruit a day
• Sign up for a meal plan
  • Noom
  • Weightwatchers
  • Create your own – check out this printable at my shop!
• Get advice from a nutritionist

Your brain is a very important thing that has to be taken care of for many reasons as you see. Incorporating these 2 things is really easy to do and will provide you with so many benefits. So give it a try!

Do you have a go too exercise or healthy food? Let me know in the comments!