How to Keep Your Mind Sharp (Healthy Brain as You Age!)

Hey there my friend, it's Dr. Anthony Balduzzi and I want to welcome you to today's video. I know you watch our videos here on our YouTube channel because you want to have a strong, healthy, and fit body. You want to lose fat and build muscle and just love the way you look and feel. But the fact is that all these health habits are not just about the physical structures of our muscles and our stuff like that, it's also about our brain health. And that's exactly what I want to talk about in today's video. I want to give you my favorite research-backed ways to dramatically improve your brain health and keep you sharp, happy, and focused as you age. Because the fact is when we look around, we are having an absolute explosion in the rates of dementia and Alzheimer's, which is a form of dementia. There is cognitive decline that's massive right now. We've all met people in their 90s who are sharp as a tack. They're still reading books, having great conversations, and exploring the world. We've also seen people in their 70s who really look like they're vegetables. They're dull, they're forgetful, and they're not really sharp. And we know that the quality of our life experience is largely dictated on the quality of our brain health. And what we do with our lifestyle factors is massively beneficial or detrimental to our brain health. And that's exactly what we're going to cover today. I'm going to cover three main areas, movement, meditation, and then nutrition will be the big section. And in the nutrition section, we're going to talk about what not to do and what to avoid, which is actually more important than the brain healthy foods to include. We're going to cover all that in today's video. So if you're a person out there who wants to be sharp, you want to have a healthy and strong fit brain, or you want to even set your kids up to make sure they have the right trajectory early on in life. This is a video you've been waiting for. So tune in, let's get going. Let's improve your brain health today. Did you know that daily exercise is one of the best things you can do for your brain? This is absolutely true. The reason I actually personally motivated exercise now is not just for my physical structures and my heart health. It's for my brain. There was a recent study in 2023 published that showed that aerobic exercise, cardiovascular exercise in particular, was one of the strongest stimulators of something called BDNF, brain derived neurotrophic factor. It basically builds new neurons. And this is so cool. When we exercise, we get greater levels of blood flow to the brain, and it stimulates these areas of our brain to actually increase in size and increase more neurons. And although I'm a huge proponent, as you know, of strength training and resistance training, the kind of exercise that's best for the brain is actually cardiovascular training. So when you're planning your training throughout the week, I think it's good to get some daily cardio in some way, shape, or form. This could be a morning walk, a walk after dinner, a light amount of cardio, 15 to 20 minutes while breathing through your nose. This is going to be so good for your brain health. And then I also recommend you get those pulses of high intensity strength training. Those are going to be key for your muscles, making more insulin sensitive. They're going to be good for your mitochondria. The combination of these things is absolutely huge. And we look around the world of the people who live the longest, they are doing a combinations of these things. So exercise is one of the best things for your brain. But number two, the second habit was actually what really got me excited to shoot this video, because I saw a headline that said that people who meditate in their fifties actually have greater brain health than people in their mid twenties. Let that sink in. Right now, are you doing some kind of practice of stillness and meditation? Because if you're not, it's one of the greatest things you can do for your brain health. Specifically from the study, they found that people who meditate for 15 to 30 minutes per day have great explosions in the amount of neurons in the frontal cortex. This is the area of the brain that's implicated with memory and decision-making. So if you want to really be sharper as you age, meditation is absolutely one of your best tools. Now, how I personally incorporate this into my life, I know how important it is for the brain health, but also for my spiritual health as I meditate in the morning and before I go to bed. And for me, it's a hybrid of a meditation and prayer practice, but I know that I'm getting into my chair. I have a specific chair dedicated into my room where I do this. I sit down for a few minutes before there's any food in my body or before I go to sleep and just anchoring that in is going to be so, so good for you. Especially if you're a person right now who believes that you have a very racing mind, very active mind, and you want to learn to calm that down and get the body centered. Meditation is one of the best things you can do for brain health. Got to incorporate that. And I often hear from people, Hey, Dr. Ray, exercise is my form of meditation or having a really deep conversation or doing some art as a form of meditation for me. And yes, I think that's good to a certain extent, but actually what we know is when you sit really still and you close your eyes and you watch your breath, the brain wave activity really shifts from something called beta waves. Those active waves when we're doing different activities down to those slower alpha waves and those alpha waves are what's so healing for the brain. When we're in that alpha wave state, it actually increases blood flow to the brain and obviously increases that neuronal growth. So if you're in your fifties and you meditate, you're going to have better brain health than when you're in your actual twenties. Amazing. Now, number three, we got to talk about nutrition. Nutrition is really one of the areas where you can totally screw up your brain health or totally increase it. And I want to talk about the six things that actually kill your brain health. The first thing that actually devastate your brain health is having high amounts of sugar in your diet. We know this, we've heard that sugar is bad, but we often think of sugar as bad because it's bad for our metabolism or because it leads to fat gain. But here's the real truth. When we have sugar and we eat a lot of sugar from processed sources, primarily, it gets into the bloodstream and sugar is sticky. We know it is. We're eating sugary candy. It's sticky. When sugar is sticky, it sticks to all sorts of things. It sticks in the blood vessels and actually sticks to certain kinds of proteins and other kinds of fats in the body. And it forms these things called advanced glycation end products, AGEs. And guess what AGEs do to your body? They age you. In the brain, they can lead to development of certain kinds of plaques. They can reduce blood flow. They can down regulate areas of the brain that you want to keep very active. AGEs are absolutely devastating. And in fact, if you're looking at a doctor who orders blood work for you and they look at something called an HbA1c, the hemoglobin A1c, the amount of your red blood cells that have sugar stuck to them. And an HbA1c that's high is prediabetes and eventually diabetes. But this process is happening all the time. So another reason that sugar is not just benign, it's not just a little treat and a sweet tooth. So what I recommend you do if you're someone who feels like you have a addiction or a sweet tooth, find a substitute for the thing that you love that's so much healthier. So one of the best brain foods that we're going to talk about is cacao, dark chocolate. So if you get maybe some of these low sugar coconut ice cream bars that are covered in chocolate, it's so delicious brand I'm showing you right here is great. A square of dark chocolate, having a little bit of, let's say a banana with a little chocolate or apple with some chocolate after dinner. This is so much better than turning to lower quality sugars. They're going to destroy your brain health. The second form of a food category that's going to destroy your brain health are low quality inflammatory fats. These are things like process and baked goods, margarines, pastries, seed oils, canola oil, soy oil, fried foods. These things have inflammatory fats. And when we create inflammation in the body, that's going to create systemic inflammation, inflammation, the brain inflammation, the digestive tract inflammation, the heart. And guess what? When we have the heart disease, those buildup of those plaques throughout all of our vital arteries, your brain is getting less blood flow. Why is exercise so good for your brain? Because it increases blood flow. What is killing your blood flow? All these really bad inflammatory fats. So fried foods are not benign. It's not just about this tastes good in this moment. It's actually really harming your cardiovascular and your cerebral system. So we got to get that stuff out. Now, the third category of things that is really going to kill your brain health is actually getting stuff that's sprayed with pesticides. So non-organic grains, things like non-organic wheat that's sprayed with that roundup and glyphosate, it destroys your digestive tract. It can cause leakiness in that blood-brain barrier. Your brain is surrounded with this mesh that's helping prevent things from getting into the brain that shouldn't be there. And we have some of these pesticides. They actually cause leakiness in both the gut and the blood-brain barrier, which causes systemic inflammation and allow certain toxins to get into your brain. So you absolutely want to get non-organic grains out of your life. So non-organic rice, non-organic wheat, non-organic corn, non-organic soy, get those things out and get higher quality of those products. That's why a lot of our program members who do eat bread, they're either eating organic sourdough bread, which is fermented and has lower levels of some of these gluten proteins, or something like Ezekiel bread, which is sprouted and is an ancient recipe that's so much healthier. You can have some of these things if it tolerates well for you, as long as they're high quality. Now, the next thing you got to get out of your body for overall brain health is sources of methylmercury. And this is the kind of mercury that's found in seafood. Methylmercury is absolutely neurotoxic. It just straight up kills neurons. This is found in the bigger fish, tuna, swordfish, snapper, sea bass. Some of these fish that we absolutely love, although they have certain healthy things in them, like those omega threes, this methylmercury stays in the brain for over 20 years and kills your brain cells. And those mercury fillings many of us got growing up because we had cavities from oftentimes eating too much sugar. They can also release a kind of mercury into your body that's neurotoxic. And you can go down the rabbit hole. This stuff's legitimately not good for you, but I know you may want to incorporate seafood into your life. So what do you actually do? Well, wild caught salmon, sardines, herring, crab, trout, these smaller fish are lower in mercury, and they still give you a lot of the benefits. Now, there's other problems with seafood, like microplastics and things like this, but certainly get the high mercury seafood out of your diet. And a couple other pro tips on this. You could actually eat some Brazil nuts while you're eating seafood. Brazil nuts have selenium, which is a particular kind of metal that binds up mercury in the gut, preventing it from being absorbed in the body. So that's kind of cool. And so you may want to also have the little Brazil nut trick when you do have seafood that can be really good. Now, the other thing that's really important is artificial sweeteners. Artificial sweeteners can absolutely wreck your brain health, and they have direct studies in humans and animals that show that when you actually have artificial sweeteners in a high amount on a regular basis, it can actually decrease blood flow to the areas of your brain associated with memory and with sharper thinking and processing. They've shown this in rats and mice. They're also showing this in humans. Humans who have artificial sweeteners oftentimes have lower, more depressive moods, and they can actually induce this in people by giving them high amounts of these things. So it's not just about calories. It's the fact that these things actually harm our gut bacteria, can do changes to the probiotics in our bodies, as well as harm our brain health. So you got to get artificial sweeteners out. So it's not simple as, I'm not going to have sugar. I'm going to have that other kind of artificial sweetener kind of thing that's really crap. Get it out of your life. What you can do, though, is use things that are sweetened with monk fruit or stevia. These are okay sweeteners in the right amounts at the right times. They can still be good for your brain health. And then finally, I got to say is one thing that many of us do love to enjoy on occasion will destroy your brain health, and that is alcohol. The research is just so, so clear. People who drink even like moderately amounts have smaller brains. Alcohol makes your brain actually shrink, which means it's killing brain cells. And they found this in people from ages 35 to the 60s, who are moderate drinkers, have smaller brain volumes, and they get worse sleep. And there's a really good brain researcher named Dr. Daniel Amen, who's done functional MRI scans of people, and he scans their brains, and he sees blood flow to different regions. And when people drink, they have lower blood flow to the area of the hippocampus that's involved with memory, involved with mood, and so many of these important things. Now, when it comes to things to what to add into your nutrition plan for greater brain health, well, it certainly is some of that good high-quality seafood that has the omega-3 fatty acids. They're good for your heart. They're good for your brain. Things that I like are some wild salmon, some sardines. I also get omega-3, some walnuts, hemp seeds, and chia seeds. Get those into your life or get an omega-3 supplement, really good for your brain health. Other things, blueberries and berries in general. They're packed with these flavonoid compounds that are really good for your cerebrovascular system. They make those arteries healthier, and they really protect a lot of your brain cells from the damage from other kinds of things. So those AGEs I talked about, those really sticky proteins that make you age and harm your brain health, blueberries and other things like this, they actually combat those. So get those into your life on a daily basis. Or if you want a supplement, you can get some of these blueberry powders and put them into a shake or something like that. Very, very beneficial. What you can also get into your diet is dark green leafy vegetables. There's some powerful research that shows that people have a higher intake of dark green leafy vegetables, which contain a lot of powerful compounds. They contain natural nitrates, which increase blood flow and nitric oxide. They contain vitamin A derivatives like astaxanthin, lutein, and other things like this that are super protective. So how can you get more dark green leafy vegetables into your diet? Can you do sautés? Can you get salads into your life? Can you blend some of these things into your smoothies and shakes? The higher intake of dark green leafy vegetables is very, very cognitive protective. So in summary, all these things that you're doing to help your body are going to help your brain. But I want you to add even more weight to the fact that nutrition in particular that you're doing is can be really harmful or helpful for your brain health, as well as the fact that meditating and prayer is not something you need, you can skip if you want to have the optimal brain health and that cardiovascular activity has benefit along with strength training. So this is a holistic approach. And if you do this, I promise you, you can be super sharp and you can actually reverse some of the damage that you may be accumulating. And if right now you feel like your memory is not as good as it used to be, there is some degree of underlying damage. So you start this stuff. Now you take this seriously. You can have a healthier brain in five years than you do today. It's a holistic approach. And of course, if you want to help get help incorporating all of these different tidbits into a sustainable plan, a 360 degree plan, that's all about the nutrition, the exercise, the mindset, the daily habits, our Fit Father and Fit Mother programs are the best online for people over 40 who want a sustainable way of healthy living that helps the body and the brain and keeps you on track longterm. There's links in the description for both our free workouts and free meal plans, as well as our full paid programs. Hope you found this value, my friend. It's a lot, but you can incorporate into the lifestyle and the promises. You have a sharp mind, a sharp brain, and a really happy life. I'll see you in our future videos.