Brain Regeneration: 12 Ways to Heal Brain Cells

The science of neurogenesis suggests that that exercise aerobic as well as strength training, certain brain exercises and I’m gonna talk about that today, I’m gonna talk about neurobic’s specific exercises that are really designed to train your brain and develop something called neural plasticity, which is the ability of the brain to reorganize itself both in structure and how it functions. So there are specific exercises you can do to support brain regeneration. Also stress plays a really big role in how your brain regenerates and heals. And there’s a lot of other lifestyle habits like the nutrition we provide, like any sort of trauma we may encounter. Sleep quality is really important here. And so this is key because the better that our brain is able to heal and regenerate, that actually helps prevent and can actually treat degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and reverse damage from traumatic brain injury. 

This is really, really exciting. And there are a couple of terms that we need to know. One is neurogenesis which is the continuous generation of new neurons and certain brain regions. New synapses are little gaps between the brain cells. We know that new synapses can be really, really healthy. In fact synapses and your synaptic density or the amount of these little gaps between neurons really plays a big role in the connectivity of your brain, the ability of neurons to communicate with a wide variety of other neurons which enhances creativity, memory recall, cognitive acceleration, your ability to think sharply and quickly. In fact they did a study on Albert Einstein’s brain at Stanford. So after he died he donated his organs to science, they looked at his brain and they wanted to see what was different about Einstein’s brain compared to the average individual that’s about the same height, you know, the same brain volume. 

What they found was that he had the same amount of neurons, but he had twice as much of these gaps, these synapses between the neurons, and that was credited with giving him better conduct, better brain connectivity and the ability to think outside the box to have really sharp and creative thoughts. That allowed him to change the world with some of his ideas. And so synapses are really key, creating new synapses, strengthening certain synaptic gaps and certain neural pathways and weakening others that are not supporting us. You know, there’s a principle called use it or lose it, right? If you’re either, you know, when it comes to like muscle memory for example, you have to either train certain movement patterns or you’re not going to be efficient in those, you’re gonna lose the strength and you’re gonna lose the skill in those areas. Well, it’s kind of the same thing when it comes to synapses in our brain, we’re either using them. 

Like if for example, if we’re doing memory recall exercises, let’s say we’re trying to memorize biblical scripture or were, you know, studying for a test or whatever it is, we’re learning skills for a new job, were either training certain neural pathways or we’re not, we’re not using those and then we can obviously those, those synapses will weaken and you know we call that synaptic plastic activity where they actually break down and we get atrophy in those areas and we become weaker in those areas. Now when it comes to developing healthy neurons there is a compound called BDNF brain derived neurotrophic factor. 

We’re gonna talk a lot about that and that is a protein produced inside your nerve cells that helps your brain communicate and function properly. It protects neurons, encourages their growth, improves their functions and helps them to survive by protecting them from premature cell death. It also strengthens the signal between neurons by binding to the receptors at the synapses. BDNF is essential for optimal brain function and a key player in brain regeneration. It plays an important role in learning and memory. It regulates various body functions including eating and drinking. Now going back to synapses and how kind of this all plays in remembering synapses or junctions or gaps between neurons that allow communication synaptic plasticity. We’re gonna use this term plasticity is the change that happens at synapses and affects the quality of the communication between two neurons. Short term synaptic plasticity is a rapid sub second change that reverts to normal, quickly long term synaptic plasticity. So we get these long term changes. Plasticity is just basically means changes that things can change again depending on how well we’re taking care of our body, We may have you know really strengthened synapses in a certain pathway that helps us remember, you know certain things for a test and then once we stop studying that particular subject we start to lose that memory. And so that’s kind of the idea of plasticity. This kind of  change. Long term plasticity is a longer change that may last for minutes, hours, days or years. Long term synaptic plasticity is critical for our brain’s ability to store information and for our memory. So you know the long term plasticity are things that we’re gonna remember for a long period of time. Now research has shown that BDNF is critical for long term enhancement of synaptic efficiency. It improves neural development and synaptic plasticity. 

Hence it may lower the risk of neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders such as dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease and depression. So stimulating nerve growth factor and brain derived neurotrophic factor. NGF and BDNF are really really powerful for developing a healthy well connected brain. And so neuroplasticity again, that’s the idea that the brain’s ability to adapt, rewire and regenerate itself can take place when physiological changes occur to you know, looking at the neuron the the actual physiological mechanisms the D. N. A. Regulation and transcription the microglial activity. Microglia are the immune slash lymphatic cells of the brain. So we have something called our glymphatic system where we actually draining detox fire brain and microglia helped get rid of bad proteins that help break down bad proteins in the brain. For example things like beta amyloid which when that accumulates that leads to that actually is toxic for neurons when it accumulates in high amounts and is associated with Alzheimer’s disease. You have Lewy bodies that are deformed proteins that when they accumulate that can lead to things like Parkinson’s. 

So microglia are really important for helping to break down these proteins that damaged neurons and reduce our ability to have positive You’re a plastic changes. So microglial activity we need to have that working really really well and efficiently membrane bound ion channels. So the brain, the nervous system is all using electrolytes and it’s like an electro it’s basically like an electrical current running through our body. And so the healthier the membranes and the ion channels are the more accurate the messages because we’re going to get the right amount of deep polarization and sodium potassium and calcium going in and out of the cells to allow for action potentials and allow for the proper neurological messages to get through. And so when somebody’s sick when they you know have had a lot of inflammation oxidative stress they can have damaged cell membranes, they can have altered ion channels and you know that those need to be fixed before we’re going to get positive neural plasticity to to really take hold neurotransmitters. You know we need good neurotransmitter production and sensitivity. You know we’re not consuming enough amino acids. All of our neurotransmitters have amino acid backbones. Like, for example, we know Trip the fan is a precursor to serotonin. We know phenylalanine is a precursor to dopamine. You know, so they’re all based around, you know, you know, glue tannic acid for glutamate and also for gaba which are neurotransmitters. So we need to have these amino acids if we’re not breaking down proteins effectively, if we don’t have certain nutrients like magnesium vitamin B six, we’re not gonna have the proper amount of neurotransmitters and then we need good sensitivity at the cell membrane. 

And so that’s going to really depend upon cell membrane health the right amount of hormones, you know? So for a lot of people, if they’re, for example, men who are lower testosterone women who are low in progesterone or estrogen that can affect your plastic changes and then dendritic spines which are the health of you know, basically the branching pattern of the neurons. And so all of those things can impact your level of neuroplasticity. And we always say that we have this term that says neurons that fire together wire together. So we can actually link, you know, movement patterns. We can link different thought patterns together by and this is a really powerful thing, neurons that fire together. Wire together. For example, we know stressful circumstances when we have stressful circumstances. We tend to remember those things when we have traumatic events. Why? Because it’s a heightened level of neurological activity because we’re in a deep state of fight or flight and we’re gonna tend to remember those events because of the stress and how it made us feel. Our heart rate changed. 

You know, and so because we thought we were at risk of something that tends to wire into our nervous system and we remember that because again our body were really our neurological structure, a lot of that has to do with survival, right? Trying to survive and so things that you know are that we perceive as a risk. We tend to prioritize and remember those things, certain social interactions you may remember for example, if you meet somebody, you know that you think is famous or that you always looked up to where you always wanted to meet. You know if you were really anticipating that social interaction, you remember a lot more from that social interaction as opposed to somebody that you’ve met, you know 5000 times, you know, one of your friends who you know, you have an interaction with and then you forget about that interaction several weeks later a month later because it wasn’t quite as, you know, there wasn’t quite as much anticipation and excitement about it. So these types of things, you know, again, neurons that fire together, wire together, we can rewire our brain for the better through positive inputs into each of these areas, exercise nutrition are learning activities or daily thoughts, our emotions are, you know, meditation and prayer can play a big role, new experiences, novel experiences can be a really big thing to wire into our nervous system. I know in something called neuro linguistic programming, one of the key strategies is kind of like a foundational strategy for helping create positive neural plastic change that helps you perform better and show up better in life, is to visualize and remember a time in your life where you felt really, really successful, right? It could have been, you know, maybe, you know, you got a good grade in school or you performed well at a sports competition or a let’s say you were in a play and everybody was cheering at your performance or whatever it was, you know, something you did at work, whatever it was. So maybe something that your child said to you, you know, you could think of a lot of different things that may have at some point made you feel successful and proud of yourself and so you remember that and you try to take on in your head, remember all the emotions and just take all of them in all those emotions. Really try to amplify those emotions, you know. 

So you’re right in that moment, you feel so good about the experience, you’re feeling the whole rush of emotions from that experience and then do some sort of gesture with your body, whether it’s like making a fist and you again, you remember that, that thought of how proud you are of yourself, how successful you are in this moment and then you make a fist and then you feel that yourself making that fist right? And then you continually remember this thought, right? You do this practice over and over and over and over again and now you’re linking these emotions of, hey, I’m, I’m successful, I’m proud of myself, I am a success. I am a champion, I’m a winner, I’m an overcomer and you’re linking it to this fist. And the idea is that if you do this continuously and you train your nervous system this way that within a week or two when you just make your fist, you feel this positive rush of emotions and that’s because now those muscles that are involved in making that fist are wired into this neurological network that’s associated with you thinking this really positive upbeat thought that you are successful. 

That this whole experience of emotions that you had from this successful experience and one of the most powerful things you can do for your life when you do that. Because now every single time, like if you’re feeling down, if you’re walking into a presentation or an interaction with somebody, all you have to do is make that fist and then you get that rush of emotions again and so you can literally train these, you can train new healthy behaviors in through this sort of using these neuroplastic this idea of neuroplasticity and interlinking it into something called neuro linguistic programming and programming your brain this way. So I mentioned BDNF brain derived neurotrophic growth factor. Again, key neurochemicals responsible for growth and maintenance of neural connections. It helps your brain adapt and learn. It improves all forms of plasticity and is highly affected. You know, not only by visualization and your stress levels and things like that, but also it’s very much affected by your nutrition. We know sugar reduces BDNF. BDNF levels while fasting. When we get into fat. When we start intermittent fasting we bring down our blood sugar, bring down our insulin, we start burning fat for fuel, our body takes the fatty acids, turns them into ketones in the liver and the ketones now can cross their water soluble smaller molecules and fatty acids. They cross the blood brain barrier, get into the brain and they stimulate the production of BDNF. We know omega three fatty acids taking omega three’s or eating wild caught seafood, wild caught salmon for example will help to upregulate BDNF levels. 

We know that good sleep increases BDNF whereas poor sleep produces the amount of BDNF you can produce, we know that exercise movement exercises. So just getting out and walking or doing aerobic exercise or strength training improves BDNF levels and again, we know chronic stress causes an imbalance or a lowering of reduction in BDNF levels. So we want to keep stress under control. We know blood sugar stability is super critical for healthy brain cells. So BDNF is one of the key compounds along with nerve growth factor NGF for brain regeneration and neural plasticity. So we know low blood sugar and also high insulin or high blood sugar is going to impair your BDNF levels, your nerve growth factor levels. So the key is when we’re eating foods we want to consume foods that only cause a moderate rise of your blood sugar. And it should be for short term in a moderate rise of insulin. We don’t want anything that’s going to cause a rapid rise in blood sugar, a rapid rise of insulin that should be very little rise in blood sugar and insulin and then it should be a stabilization effect that happens within you know, roughly about two hours after your your meal where your blood sugar comes back to about normal about where it was before or pretty close to that and your insulin drops down to where it’s pretty close to baseline as well after about two hours after your meal. Most people are consuming foods that cause massive blood sugar spikes, big insulin releases and then they may either that insulin may drag the blood sugar down below a certain threshold that then causes hypoglycemic reaction where your your blood sugar goes too low and now your brain is starving, it doesn’t have fuel that it needs. And so we start to see neuronal cell death because we’re not getting enough glucose into the cells and we develop hypoglycemic responses where we have mood issues where we have irritability. 

We have a nausea oftentimes cravings, right that the classic kind of hang grief feelings that we get when we’re hypoglycemic, there’s actually a sign that neurons are dying in the brain. So we’re getting Euro exit, toxic changes in the brain and neural death. And so definitely not what we want Now for other people that are developing insulin resistance where their body is producing all this insulin but the body is not responding. And the blood sugar staying high and high blood sugar is really damaging as well because the sugar molecules will bind to proteins and create something called an advanced application end product or an A. G. These advanced locations. End products are like shrapnel going through our bloodstream. They end up creating either a sclerotic sclerotic plaques so they damage the endothelial lining of the blood vessels, creating plaque. They damage all the little capillary beds going into the brain. So they reduce the amount of oxygen that’s getting into the brain. So now we get neuronal cell death as well because of a hypoxic state because the blood vessels are becoming damaged. So blood sugar stability is one of the key foundational things we can do in order to have good positive neural plasticity, good, high high levels of BDNF nerve growth factor and a high level of brain regeneration. 

Other things that damage the brain neurotoxins. Things like mercury lead fluoride, which you know we can find in toothpaste water, you know their fluoridating a lot of our water, a lot of dental products or even getting your teeth fluorinated. I don’t recommend that fluoride is a neurotoxin. We want to avoid that pesticides really bad for the for the brain DDT different pesticides, herbicides, glyphosate really problematic for brain health, aluminum arsenic, excessive alcohol illegal, you know, prescription, you know using a lot of prescription drugs very damaging the brain statin drugs, right? One of the most commonly prescribed medications is extremely damaging for brain cells and it’s going to limit your ability to have brain regeneration if you’re taking one of these cholesterol lowering statin drugs. 

So I definitely don’t recommend those PCBs, polychlorinated biphenyls, Aspartame. So, aspartame, MSG monosodium glutamate, a lot of these kind of flavor enhancers, flame retardants if you’re buying new furniture, new cars, you’re having flame retardants enter into. That’s why you have to take off gas. A lot of these things because the chemicals are very neurotoxic policy cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons which we find from anytime we’re burning something even barbecue, right, the smoke coming out. It’s polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, very damaging for the brain. So we want to do our best to reduce our exposure to those. Another issue is a sedentary lifestyle. We know that when we’re sitting for long periods of time it dramatically reduces BDNF levels and leads to reduced concentration levels. Forgetfulness and confusion. So movement is super critical movement is like a critical nutrient for the brain when we move something called pro preconception happens which is a sensory information process that travels from the muscles that are moving up into our brain and it’s a key stimulus. All brain cells, all nerve cells need regular activation. 

You know, we need times of sleeping for example to detox the brain. But when we’re awake we need activation and movement is a great way to activate and provide this critical new train appropriate reception up into the brain. Of course beyond movement. Just getting regular exercise, going out, doing aerobic exercise or strength training is going to improve the ability of the neurons to uptake oxygen. It’s going to prove their oxygen extraction and their ability to do it’s also going to increase the amount of mitochondria within the neurons. Make the mitochondria more efficient, better at using oxygen for fuel, burning fat for fuel. It’s gonna reduce oxidative stress. We’re going to increase our endogenous levels of antioxidants when we do regular exercise. So a lot of great benefits to moving and also getting regular exercise. So movement would just be low, very low intensity, like just walking, right, just getting up from your desk and walking around your house. That’s a movement. That’s not intense unless you know you’re really you know you’re you’re really atrophied and you’re in really bad physical condition for most people. It’s not intense, not intense enough to create improvements in our oxygen gin extraction and a great huge increase in endogenous antioxidant production. 

However it’s still good. It’s still a really positive thing for the body where we’re going to get the best benefits of course is also adding in exercise right aerobic and or strength training ideally both. Some level of both. If I can only do one I would do strength training. I would do muscle you know weightlifting body you know and just do short rest periods in between sets and that way you’re getting an aerobic benefit. So strength training is really great. We also activate something called Maya Hawkins which help to activate BDNF and nerve growth factor and help reduce inflammation in the brain. So these are hormones that come from our muscle cells that are being used when we’re stimulating them at high intensity and they have a profound effect that reduces inflammation in the brain. So really powerful stuff. We also need to take care of our gut brain access. There’s a bidirectional communication process between the brain and the gut. So the gut is constantly sending signals to the brain. In fact they call the gut, the second brain constantly sending signals to the brain and the brain sending signals down to the gut. And if we have dysbiosis or bad bacterial balance in the gut, if we have problems in the gut it’s going to end up creating more issues in the brain where we may have a leaky blood brain barrier. We call it leaky gut equals leaky brain where we have leaky gut and there’s damaged inflammation in the gut and now large undigested proteins, bacteria, yeast, different things like that are getting into the bloodstream. It also creates a weakening of the blood brain barrier and now we get more inflammation in our brain and obviously a reduction in BDNF and reduction in brain regeneration. So I really got to take good care of our gut as well. So some of our top brain regeneration strategies obviously following blood sugar stabilizing anti inflammatory diet, practicing intermittent fasting and getting into ketosis. 

And I’m gonna talk more about that here soon. Regular movement and exercise, reduce stress. Practice gratitude. We want to prioritize good sleep, support gut health. There’s certain aerobic exercises that I’m gonna go through that are really powerful. We want to reduce our toxic load and then we can do things like using magnesium which is really powerful for helping to support you’re a plastic positive plastic changes in the brain. Use autophagy enhancing herbs to get rid of bad proteins in the neuronal cells and to help up regulate healthy protein formation and then also using mitochondrial support nutrients. So when it comes to diet, one of the first things we can do is get rid of bad fats. Well I talked earlier about the health of the membranes, the membranes and ion channels in the neurons and how the neurons conduct electrical energy. And so a lot of that has to do with the fatty acid makeup of the membranes. We know that bad fats and we’re consuming trans fats and high omega six fats and damaged rancid rancid plant oils, right plant or seed oils. I should say that is really hazardous to membrane health. That creates really weak, poorly functioning cell membranes. 

So we want to get rid of things like canola oil, soybean oil, sunflower, corn oil, safflower oil, grapeseed oil, margarine, cotton seed oil, peanut oil, anything that’s partially hydrogenated vegetable oil or if you see vegetable oil on anything, get rid of that. Those are really toxic to the brain. They shut down your neurodegeneration and they turn on degenerative processes in the brain. Instead. We want a lot of good fats, things like butter, tallow ghee, coconut milk, coconut oil, avocados, or avocado oil, olive oil, extra virgin high polyphony. All extra virgin olive oil. One of my favorite things. Fish oil for the omega threes, eggs, pasture raised eggs, great source of healthy fats, vitamin A vitamin D. Vitamin C, all your fat soluble nutrients to support healthy membrane function. So that’s where we start other anti-inflammatory foods. Grass fed pasture raised meat, poultry and wild game. Why grass fed? Because we know grain fed is gonna have a lot more of the omega six fats and it’s also gonna have a lot more toxins. 

They’re feeding these animals, you know, unless it’s organic, they’re typically feeding them pesticide laid in grains, and also a lot of the grains that they’re feeding them have mycotoxins on them as well, which are both really toxic to the brain, pesticides and mycotoxins. And so when the cows are able to eat grass where the animals are able to eat a lot of grass now they’re getting a lot more omega threes, a lot less toxins. And they are also producing more fat soluble nutrients as well. And more things like conjugated linoleic acid in the meat in the dairy. And so we’re getting those, we’re gonna confer a lot of those benefits. Also greens and wild pasture also has unique adaptogens and unique fido nutrients in it that will also confer into the meat and were able to get a lot of those benefits as well. So really powerful stuff there. Lemons, limes, berries, fruit in general is good but some fruit is a lot higher in sugar and we want to keep that under control or only eat, you know, minimal amounts of it. And then other fruit is very high in nutrients lower in sugar. 

So berries, lemons, and limes are good, good sources there. Now I enjoy things like apple sometimes or pineapple or watermelon. You don’t need a whole lot of it because again it’s higher in sugar but it does have good nutrients. Avocados are fantastic for the brain, very blood sugar stabilizing food and they also have things like magnesium potassium full aid in them. A lot of key nutrients, lutein, zeaxanthin, carotenoid antioxidants that are very supportive of brain health. Most of the fat is monounsaturated which is very healthy for the brain. Also extra virgin organic, extra virgin olive oil. Like I talked about very rich and things like ali oh candles as well as hydroxy tire assault which are powerful polyphenols that have been shown to be very supportive to brain regeneration and really down regulate brain inflammation. So very powerful stuff. Green tea, great thing to be drinking to support brain health. It has it has taken antioxidants that are really powerful for supporting the neurons supporting mitochondrial function, helping reduce oxidative stress. It has elfinin which is naturally calming on the brain. So very supportive. 

They’re non starchy vegetables. So broccoli, cauliflower, kale spinach, you got things like celery cucumbers all can be really, really healthy here, herbs like turmeric and ginger which have powerful compounds that support autophagy brain. So the breakdown of bad proteins in the neurons and also reducing oxidative stress and inflammation in the neurons and supporting stem cell production right? In fact there’s a compound in turmeric called turmerone which has been shown to help support neuronal stem cell production actually which actually can heal. You know it’s like in young embryonic cells in the brain. Right? So getting rid of the senescent or old decaying cells and adding in new young healthy stress resilient cells is super powerful. Some of these herbs really help with that. We know wild caught fish or seafood can be really healthy. So like wild caught salmon, it has asked Xanthan in it which is a powerful antioxidant that supports neurons. It’s also got omega three fatty acids. Long chain omega three E.P.A. and D. H. A. Which are incredibly powerful for cell membrane health. So you get the right amount of you know the right ions moving in and out of the neurons to help form proper you’re a plastic changes in the brain. 

So really powerful stuff. A lot of herbs, basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, garlic, onions, chives, all great coconut oil, coconut fats in general. The M. C. T. S in there. Really great for brain health and reducing inflammation in the brain fermented vegetables can be really really powerful as well. They’ve got probiotics, enzymes, organic acids butyric acid for example which helps reduce inflammation in the brain. So some powerful stuff there a lot of really good things. Obviously the things we want to avoid are going to be refined grains, whole grains, you know just grains in general, you want to get rid of all of our deep fried foods you know your french fries, your pretzels, your donuts, bakery stuff, you know all that kind of stuff. You guys know the stuff we need to get rid of fast food, commercial salad dressings, a lot of them have corn oil, soybean oil, cotton seed oil, peanut oil, you know, we want to make sure we’re getting rid of all of that trans fats, margarine, so we gotta get rid of those things.

Now, intermittent fasting, Plato has this great quote, he says, I fast for greater physical and mental efficiency, intermittent fasting is powerful when we go, we take time between meals, it tells our body that we need to become more efficient. So we start to break down fat and use it for energy rather than relying on sugar in our muscles as well as in our bloodstream and in our liver. So we actually start to dig into our own body fat and use it for energy. Now when it comes to our brain, our brain actually can’t use long chain fatty acids for fuel it actually because they can’t cross the blood brain barrier. So our body then our liver converts these long chain fats into small chain fats. We call those ketones. It converts them into something called beta hydroxybutyrate, which is the main ketone body, we find in the bloodstream and that has been shown to support and enhance the mitochondria within the brain to down regulate inflammation in the brain. It’s actually what we call an epigenetic modulator. We’re able to modulate and balance out you know, certain genetic components or certain genetic expression in the brain that reduces inflammation and oxidative stress turns off degenerative pathways in the brain and turns on brain regenerative capabilities. So intermittent fasting is great. 

A great way to start is just a 12 hour overnight fast, but then we can move it up to 14 hours, 16 hours, 18 hours, you know, and and the way that what I what I typically will recommend is doing a 16~18 hour fast, 2 to 3 days a week, at least. You could do it every day, feel great with that. But doing it at least 2 to 3 days a week and then one day a week doing a 20 to 24 hour fast, meaning you’re bumping it up to where you’re doing like a lunch to lunch fast for example, you eat lunch one day, you fast until lunch the following day. That is a really powerful way to stimulate key tones to bring down inflammation to support brain regeneration. Now in order to do that, first you’ve got to change your diet, you’ve got to get your blood sugar more stable. You really need to be focusing on eating a lot of these higher protein polyphony, all rich foods, healthy fats and getting rid of these sugars and starches and then your body become more fat adapted where you’ll be good at burning fat for fuel and then going longer periods of time between meals is really not that hard because your body is good at creating ketones and ketones give you a natural satiety effect where you no longer have cravings, you feel really good, stable and you don’t have the hypoglycemic responses so you gotta get your body fat adapted while you’re doing that. 

You can do a 12 hour overnight fast and eat three or four meals a day in a 12 hour time period, let’s say from seven am to seven pm after you do that for a few weeks. You should be really good to be able to bump your fast to 14 to 16 hours where you’re eating, let’s say between 10 am and 6pm, three meals. And then from there you may even be able to experiment, go 18 hours from let’s say, eat your meals between 12pm and 6pm or like me, I usually eat between one and seven and I usually do two meals in that time span. Sometimes I’ll have like a third one that’s a little bit smaller in between. If I did like a really intense workout, but you may just be able to do two or three meals in that kind of six hour eating window and then from there you can experiment with doing just one meal and then fasting you know through the night and then fasting all the way till whenever that one meal was. Whether it’s a dinner to dinner, fast breakfast or breakfast or lunch to lunch depending on the time of day that works best for you. And that is an incredibly powerful stimulator of brain regeneration. 

So I highly recommend it. Get a huge boost in brain brain derived neurotrophic factor. You get a huge boost in autopsy where your brain, the neurons are able to break down these old damaged sin S. Isn’t cells and damaged proteins within the cell and clean it up and detoxify and recycle the proteins and create new healthy mitochondria. And we know that ketones when we’re able to get fat adapted and use ketones for fuel source. We produce less free radicals and so they’re a really clean energy source for our brain. And they also cause something called mitochondrial uncoupling where our body basically becomes able to waste certain amounts of energy. And we actually increase mitochondrial efficiency. And we increase the amount of mitochondria within the cells. So we get mitochondrial biogenesis effects and the more healthy mitochondria you have within your cell. The healthier your cell is going to be. That’s what produces all the energy. So we want as much healthy mitochondria within ourselves as possible. Neurons have more mitochondria within our neurons than we have in almost all cells from our body outside of our reproductive organs or test CS and ovaries. And so your average neuron has roughly about 10,000 mitochondria per cell. 

So really, really dense with mitochondria, we want those to be as healthy as possible. So again I mentioned movement, movement is so critical, getting out and just walking, moving around. Not only is it great for BDNF but it also improves circulation. So it brings more oxygen into the brain, stimulates lymphatic drainage. Very good for glymphatic function and getting rid of the older damaged proteins in the brain enhances oxygenation in the brain where stress and tension in the body improves mood and happiness will actually help improve serotonin production and sensitivity in your brain. Dopamine production and sensitivity. Gabba production and sensitivity. So you can have calmness, feel really good control of yourself and feel happy it improves mental clarity and memory as well. So getting out and moving regularly and then also adding in exercise where you’re doing either aerobic or strength training or ideally a little bit of both. And in particular, definitely doing some sort of strength training where you’re working on building lean body tissue, so powerful for your body. Being in a state of gratitude can be I mean being in a in a grateful state is so powerful for neural plasticity and the more grateful that you can be, you will just notice that you have better quality of life in all areas that you’re just a lot healthier because you’re putting out more endorphins, more positive serotonin dopamine, you’re getting better neurotransmitter sensitivity and you’re, you’re also releasing more oxytocin which helps to balance out the negative effects of cortisol and you know, too much cortisol, too much norepinephrine, the stress hormones, it helps balance that out and it helps stimulate brain cell regeneration. 

So when you’re grateful you get more oxytocin, you get more endorphin release, which again cancel out the negative effects of stress that all of us experience at times in life. So gratefulness is so powerful for your body and then great and then getting a good night’s sleep. We know that sleeping is so critical for detoxifying bad proteins in the brain and glymphatic function, you know, really drives up at night. That’s when we again, we drain our brain in the tox fire brain. We know that being a side sleeper actually is that position enhances glymphatic flow. Right, so kind of the field position is the best sleeping position to stimulate brain detoxification and then setting yourself up with good sleep hygiene. So you want to keep your room as dark as possible. You want to have your room. Cool, maybe an overhead fan, use a sleep mask when you’re sleeping. Don’t consume caffeine within eight hours of sleeping. Don’t eat within three hours of sleeping, so don’t eat late at night. Get sun exposure during the day, particularly early in the day. That actually helps set your circadian rhythm, helps set you up for good sleep at night again you want to exercise regularly, that’s super important for lymphatic function and good sleep but not too late. 

So kind of like with eating, you don’t want to eat within three hours of sleep, you don’t want to exercise within three hours of sleeping. You want to avoid bright light after sunset and instead you can wear blue light blocking glasses, you can dim your lights, you want to get yourself out of bright blue light. Okay, so candlelight or orange light bulbs are really good because that is less melatonin inhibiting, whereas bright lights, blue lights deplete or inhibit your melatonin production. You can also wear blue light blocking glasses which are basically orange colored glasses that help block out the damaging effects of blue light and help with optimal melatonin release and you want to wind down at nine p.m. So you shouldn’t have goals after nine p.m. You should be trying to relax your brain and set you up for really good sleep at night. Probiotics can be really beneficial. Probiotics have been shown to help improve BDNF levels and neurotrophic growth factor levels. And so probiotics also help modulate the immune system, protect against infections, support digestive health, allowing you to absorb more nutrients from your food, create less endo toxic debris from the food that you consume and again powerful for brain health neurobic exercises. These are activities that shake up your routine and use your senses in unusual ways. 

So they are, you know, not their novel exercises. So it could be something like brushing your teeth or doing any sort of daily activity like shaving or styling your hair with your non-dominant hand. So if you’re combing your hair with your non dominant hand or brushing your teeth with your non dominant hand, that challenges your brain to have to work harder and to set up new synaptic pathways. And that is a really powerful way to support brain health by having an ongoing chess game. You might do this at home or at the or at your office, leave a chessboard out. So any worker can come along, assess the situation and make a move anonymously. So you can just kind of have a chess game going and you’re just, nobody else is really playing. You’re just kind of go up, you look at the board and then you make a move and then maybe you come back a few hours later and you do it again. So it’s challenging you to think strategically. Strategic thinking is a really powerful stimulator for an aerobic exercises and getting a wide range of different types of whether it’s games or activities that challenge you to think strategically is really powerful stimulus for your brain. You can visit a farmer’s market and look at the different shapes, colors and aromas and taste all the different, all the different visual senses, your smelling, your auditory sense, what you’re listening to, in fact there’s a great book called called How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci and Da Vinci would just look at an object and he would draw it and he would like basically look at all the depths and all the, you know, unique shades of color on whatever object he was looking at. 

Then he would take time and he would just listen and just take in what he was listening to. Birds chirping, you know, different insects, you know, wind rustling and he would just focus on what he was listening to. So he would really focus on heightening his experience with each one of these emotions one at a time. Then he would think about what he was smelling, what he was taking in from a smelling perspective. So we can get positive inputs from all of these different pathways into the brain and we can utilize those. So that’s really powerful. We can also do things like, you know if we walk the same path every day, we can take a new path if we drive the same route to work or to drop our kids off every day. We can take a different route and will actually challenge and shape our brain in a new pathway and that’s called neurobics. We can also do things like for example balance exercises, you know, so just standing on one leg, doing things on one leg can be a really powerful stimulus for neural plasticity. Also cross crawl movements when we’re going like right from our right hand, taking our right hand, touching our left knee, right, bringing our knee up and touching it, left hand touching our left knee. 

So that kind of crawl motion when babies are doing that, they’re actually stimulating the production a lot of different synapses and creating better connectivity in their brain. So actually maturing their brain as they crawl, it’s really powerful and we can actually get improvements even as an adult by doing cross crawl movements by doing kind of cross body movements using the transverse plane and rotating our hips and doing cross body movements is a really powerful way to enhance the connectivity of our brain. So all great things to do. And of course we want to help support our body’s natural detoxification pathways. So we toxins enter through our lungs through the air we breathe through what we put on our skin or what is exposed to our skin and through our digestive system. Then our liver is our primary toxic flying organ. It helps deactivate and prepare toxins for the removal from our body. So a lot of people think we store toxins in our liver we shouldn’t right. We we we we don’t unless we have problems with our liver and we start developing fatty liver and then we’ll store toxins in the fat that’s on our liver. However if the liver is functioning well we keep our blood sugar stable, our insulin levels stable. Following the kind of practices I’ve already talked about. 

Then the liver is able to deactivate toxins and then send them out through our skin through sweating, send them out through our urine, send them out through our colon through excretion and then through the air we breathe through our lungs. That’s how we get rid of toxins. And so we want to make sure that all those pathways are working really really well. And there’s things you can do dry brushing, hydrating your body really really well. Infrared sauna can be powerful. Castor oil packs can be great for helping support detoxification. I mean there’s a lot of different things that we can talk about with that. We don’t have time in today’s presentation. And then if there’s one compound I found to be really critical when it comes to overall brain health. It’s magnesium. I mean I could talk about a lot of things B vitamins are really critical. Bluetooth ion can be really really important omega three fatty acids to Merrick. We talked about a lot of things but magnesium I found that is one of the biggest deficiencies right along with vitamin D and vitamin D is also really important for brain regeneration. 

But magnesium I see to be so critical is really important for blood sugar balance, optimal circulation, getting oxygen extraction, allowing the blood vessels to have the right tone. So we get enough blood flow and oxygen extraction into the cells for cellular energy production for a common balanced nervous system, for relaxed muscles, for bone density, for joints and ligaments, flexibilities. Deep sleep. I mean you know if you’ve ever taken magnesium you know that it makes a difference in these areas. And so I’m a huge advocate of magnesium and the R. D. A. for magnesium for adults is usually between 300 to 420 mg daily. But I typically recommend people get 450~800 plus milligrams of magnesium daily. And so 200-400 is usually good for Children depending on age and body size. But most people do well with a regular magnesium supplement. And I recommend taking it until you get to bowel tolerance where you start to get loose stools and then you back down you take a smaller dose until your bowels come back to being normal. And then you kind of stay at that dose right? 

Most people are gonna need somewhere around 400-600 maybe more milligrams daily. But when you get it right and it makes a huge difference. It makes such a big difference in the way that you think the way that you store memories your sleep quality really almost every area of your life. So get a good form of magnesium. The worst forms are the magnesium oxide, di hydroxy oxide asp irritate and carbonate. The best types of magnesium mallet, glycinate chloride, Taurate, Orotate, citrate and L-Threonate. And when it comes to brain, if you’re looking for the best brain benefits, so that’s gonna mean deep sleep, that’s going to mean mood. So support, you know, reducing anxiety, supporting positive healthy mood, helping keep your nervous system really calm and relaxed. I like magnesium L-Threonate. The best magnesium mallet also works well with that glycinate but Threonate, having that in your routine, really powerful when it comes to overall health of your brain function. And then some great foods and great polyphenol compounds that help support getting rid of senescent old damage, decaying neurons and supporting the breakdown of damaged proteins within the neurons are going to be things like corset in which we get from red onions, cranberries and elderberries ginger which has six shaggy old, which powerful polyphony. 

All that reduces inflammation, supports neuronal autophagy curcumin which is in Turmeric as well as turmerone that’s in the turmeric that I mentioned earlier resveratrol which we find in things like blueberries grapes, red wine, only the red wine only in small moderation and ideally from like a dry farm where you get high amounts of polyphenols lower sugar content. So I like dry farms wine but not drinking it too often, maybe once or twice a week, like a cup once or twice a week, E G C.G. Which we find in green tea, Oolong tea. Dark chocolate. That’s the cat taken antioxidants is where dark chocolate can be really helpful. It’s rich in these Cadigan is green tea as well, Citrus bergamot, which we find in earl gray tea as well as bergamot orange can be really helpful and then card acidic acid which we find in oregano, sage and rosemary. So getting those Mediterranean herbs into your diet really powerful. Now a bonus stimulus could be something like hyperbaric oxygen, especially if you’re really dealing with a lot of brain degenerative um symptoms if you have, you know, early phase, you know, mild cognitive decline. I would definitely recommend going to a center or even renting or buying a hyperbaric oxygen chamber that you can use, which helps push. 

So you basically, you’ve got an oxygen mask on that’s pumping in 100% oxygen and then it’s taking you almost like you’re going underwater, creating this pressure change that allows all this oxygen to diffuse into the plasma and it’s able to actually cross right into the cells. So you get, you have to flood yourselves with oxygen, which powerfully reduces inflammation free radical damage and all the tissues of your body allows everything to heal faster. I have a lot of people use this after surgery to help heal faster for example, but really powerful for your brain. So great brain benefits that come from this and it can be really, really powerful strategy for brain regeneration. So hopefully I know we went through a lot today. Hopefully you guys got a lot out of this training, would love to hear your feedback. This is a really powerful topic, something obviously I’m super excited about and you can learn more. I’ve got a very well detailed article on all of this with scientific studies and everything you need. Just go to drjockers.com, look up brain regeneration for that. Thanks so much and everybody be blessed.