Brain Health Habits That Hold Up to the Research

In short

• The brain health habits with the strongest evidence are regular aerobic exercise, enough sleep, learning demanding new skills, a Mediterranean-style diet, social connection, stress management and drinking less alcohol.
• Exercise and sleep have the most direct evidence: walking increased the size of a memory region in older adults, and sleep is when the brain clears waste and consolidates memories.
• Habits seem to work best together. A two-year trial that combined diet, exercise and mental training improved thinking more than general health advice did.
• Habits take time to become automatic, often two months or more, and missing a day does not reset your progress.
• None of these habits requires special equipment, and most cost nothing.
  

The brain health habits with the best evidence are moving most days, protecting your sleep, learning things that challenge you, eating a Mediterranean-style diet, staying connected to other people, keeping stress in check and drinking less alcohol. Each is supported by controlled studies or large population data, and the research suggests they work best in combination.

Here is what each habit does for the brain, how much is enough, and how to make it stick.

What a healthy brain does

It helps to know what these habits are protecting. A young brain sleeps deeply, focuses easily, recovers quickly, lets go. Each of those is a brain function, and each can be measured. The habits below are the ones that support the functions you rely on every day, from remembering a conversation to staying calm under pressure.

Eight brain health habits

1. Move most days

Exercise has some of the most direct evidence of any habit. In a randomized trial of 120 older adults, a year of brisk walking increased the size of the hippocampus, a region central to forming new memories, by about 2%. In the stretching group, hippocampal volume declined over the same year, and the gain in the walking group was linked to better memory performance.

How much is enough: the World Health Organization recommends 150 to 300 minutes of moderate aerobic activity a week for adults, such as brisk walking, plus muscle strengthening on two or more days. For more on how movement affects the brain, see Physical Activity for Brain Health.

2. Protect your sleep

Sleep does work for the brain that waking hours cannot. In a study in mice, the space between brain cells widened during sleep, and waste products were cleared from the brain far faster than during waking. In people, research reviews describe how sleep stabilizes and strengthens the memories formed during the day.

How much is enough: the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society recommend seven or more hours a night for adults. A steady bedtime and wake time help more than catching up on weekends. For how the different stages of sleep contribute, see Deep Sleep vs REM Sleep.

3. Learn something that is hard for you

Mental challenge matters more than mental activity. In a study of older adults, people who spent about three months learning a demanding new skill, digital photography, quilting or both, improved on memory tests. Groups who spent the same time on social activities or easy mental tasks did not see the same gain. Puzzles you can already do easily are pleasant, and they are not the same stimulus.

A good test: if it feels slightly uncomfortable and you are getting better at it week to week, it counts.

4. Eat a Mediterranean-style diet

In a randomized trial in Spain, 447 older adults were assigned to a Mediterranean diet with extra olive oil, a Mediterranean diet with extra nuts, or advice to cut dietary fat. After a median of about four years, both Mediterranean groups scored better on measures of thinking than the low-fat advice group.

In practice: build meals around vegetables, legumes, whole grains, fish, olive oil and nuts, and eat less red meat and highly processed food.

5. Stay connected

Conversation is a mental workout. Talking with someone means following their meaning, holding your own thoughts in mind and responding in real-time. In one set of studies, more social contact was linked to better cognitive performance across age groups, and in an experiment, just 10 minutes of conversation improved performance on cognitive tasks about as much as 10 minutes of mental exercises did.

The evidence here is more mixed than for exercise or sleep. The three-month learning study above found limited benefits from social activities on their own, so connection seems to help most when it engages your thinking.

6. Keep stress in check

Stress and clear thinking compete for the same resources. When stress stays high, the prefrontal cortex, the region that handles planning and focus, works less efficiently. Heart rate variability, the natural variation between heartbeats, reflects how well the circuit between your prefrontal cortex and your stress response is working, and slow breathing at around six breaths a minute is one of the simplest ways to engage it.

Meditation has measurable effects too. In an eight-week mindfulness program, participants showed increases in gray matter concentration in regions involved in learning, memory and emotion regulation, including the hippocampus, compared with a waitlist comparison group.

7. Drink less alcohol

In brain imaging data from 36,678 middle-aged and older adults in the UK Biobank, higher alcohol intake was associated with lower gray and white matter volume, and the association appeared even at light to moderate levels. This is observational data, so it shows a link rather than proving cause, and it is consistent with what is known about heavy drinking.

In practice: fewer drinks a week is better for the brain than more, and alcohol-free days are an easy place to start.

8. Combine them

Habits support one another. Exercise improves sleep, sleep makes stress easier to manage, and lower stress makes it easier to keep learning. The FINGER trial in Finland tested habits together: 1,260 adults aged 60 to 77, chosen because their health profile put them at above-average risk of cognitive decline, were assigned to two years of diet guidance, exercise, mental training and health monitoring, or to general health advice. The combined program group improved more on a broad battery of thinking tests. The difference was modest, and it came from changes anyone can make.

Habits that work against brain health

The reverse of each habit above is worth watching: short or irregular sleep, long stretches of sitting, sustained stress without recovery, and regular heavy drinking. One more is easy to miss. In a brain imaging study, people who learned a task while doing a second task at the same time came away with knowledge they could apply less flexibly later. Constant multitasking changes how well you learn, even when it feels efficient.

How to make brain health habits stick

In a study of 96 people building a new daily habit, the time it took for the behavior to become automatic ranged from 18 to 254 days. Missing one day did not set people back in any meaningful way. Doing the behavior in the same context each time, such as a walk after breakfast, made it more likely to stick.

So start with one habit, attach it to something you already do every day, and give it a couple of months before judging it.

Where brain training fits

The habits above support brain function from the outside: blood flow, recovery, fuel and challenge. Brain training works on the functions directly. Attention, processing speed and self-regulation are skills the brain can train, because the brain keeps adapting throughout life. That adaptability is called neuroplasticity.

The Sens.ai at-home system combines brain stimulation, neurofeedback training and an objective assessment of brain function. Neurofeedback shows your brain its own activity in real-time through sound and images, so it can learn to self-regulate. Like the habits above, it works through regular practice: the protocol is fifteen minutes a session, three to five times a week, with impact observed and measured after weeks of use.

The Sharp Mind Mission is the protocol the app recommends to people who report brain fog that has crept in with age. In the Sharp Mind whitepaper, 42 participants were measured on an event-related potential (ERP) task before and after the Mission:

• Measured (quantitative): processing speed improved 10.2%, with 84% of users improving. Reaction time improved 7%, with 95% of users improving. Errors fell 40.6%. The 70-person comparison group showed no improvement.
• Self-reported (qualitative): after one month, 73% of users said their mental clarity and memory had improved.
  

The full results are in the Sharp Mind whitepaper on our results page. The assessment is never a rerun of the training, so an improvement reflects a change in how your brain is working rather than a better score at a game. You can read more about the system on our At-Home page.

Questions people ask

See what your brain can do

Sens.ai measures, stimulates and trains your brain in one at-home system, so you can see what is changing instead of guessing.

References

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16. Sens.ai Sharp Mind whitepaper, results page.