Introduction:
Our brains are remarkable organs, giving us the abilities to think, create, feel emotions, store memories, and direct our bodies. However, the brain is also highly vulnerable to damage and decline from unhealthy lifestyle habits and behaviors. Even habits that seem harmless on the surface can take a major toll on our brain health, cognitive skills, and performance over time.
The good news is that by increasing our awareness of brain-harming habits and making simple lifestyle changes, we can support optimal brain function well into old age. In this extensive post, I will highlight 11 science-backed daily habits that are secretly damaging our brains and provide practical solutions to offset the risks.
1. Living a Sedentary Lifestyle:
With our modern conveniences and desk jobs, it’s all too easy to live an inactive lifestyle. But research reveals that staying sedentary for long periods each day can significantly raise your risk of obesity, anxiety, depression, cancer, heart disease, and neurodegeneration. Sitting for prolonged periods restricts blood flow to the brain and impairs the release of key neurotransmitters like dopamine.
Dopamine is your brain’s “motivation molecule”, essential for drive, focus, learning, and motor control. Physical activity is a powerful way to stimulate dopamine circulation throughout the day. In fact, studies confirm that exercising for just 30 minutes daily can benefit brain structure and cognition. Challenging your body helps generate new brain cells and synaptic connections.
Start adding more movement to your daily routine by taking walking breaks, pacing during phone calls, using a standing desk, or scheduling 30 minutes to exercise. Choose an enjoyable physical activity like cycling or martial arts so it’s sustainable. Just avoid being sedentary for hours at a stretch. Your brain needs regular movement to function at its peak!
2. Listening to Music at High Volumes:
Many of us enjoy listening to upbeat music loudly to get pumped up or immersed in the full experience. However, studies show that listening to music at excessive volumes can contribute to long-term hearing problems like tinnitus or deafness. Even worse, it can lead to neurological conditions like dementia or Alzheimer’s disease later in life.
According to research, loud music brings high-intensity sound right into the delicate inner ear, causing damage over time. Our ears and auditory systems evolved to detect subtle sounds at moderate volumes, not constant extremely loud noise. Exposure to noise louder than 85 decibels for extended periods can impair brain structures like the auditory cortex.
Beyond hearing loss, loud music reduces blood flow to the brain, restricting oxygen and nutrient delivery. Researchers believe oxidative stress and inflammation from loud noises contribute to neurological decline as well. The solution? Avoid cranking up the volume so high when using headphones or speakers. Set your listening volume to a moderate, comfortable level and take regular breaks to give your ears a rest. If those around you can hear your music, it’s definitely too loud. Also, swap headphones for speakers when possible to avoid directing sound right into your ears.
3. Constant Multitasking:
In our busy modern lives, we’ve come to believe that multitasking helps us accomplish more in less time. But neuroscience research reveals that our brains cannot actually multitask – we just switch attention between tasks rapidly. According to MIT neuroscientist Earl Miller, the brain doesn’t process tasks simultaneously.
Instead, multitasking forces your brain to switch contexts repeatedly. This process is called a “context switch”, and it takes up to 20 minutes for your brain to fully recover after each switch. So if you shift your focus between writing an email, texting a friend, and reading an article every couple of minutes, your brain will drain a huge amount of energy and struggle to concentrate on any one task effectively.
The solution? Schedule daily deep work sessions where you focus intently on one complex, high-value task for 1-3 hours without distractions. Whether it’s writing, coding, strategizing, or creating, deep work allows you to fully immerse your brain in one context, leading to greater productivity and performance. Set aside a few deep work blocks in your daily or weekly routine to strengthen your brain’s concentration capacities.
4. Sitting for Prolonged Periods:
In today’s desk-bound work culture, sitting for upward of 8 hours per day has become the norm. But mounting research reveals that excessive sitting for long, uninterrupted periods can shrink structures in your brain critical for memory formation.
Studies utilizing brain scans show that excess sitting is linked to reduced thickness in the medial temporal lobe, which contains the hippocampus. Loss of hippocampal volume is tied to impaired spatial memory and navigation abilities. Sitting immobilizes your body, reducing blood flow and dopamine circulation to keep your brain nourished, active, and engaged.
Set a timer or reminder to get up and move for a few minutes at least once an hour when you need to work. Gentle pacing, walking meetings, shoulder rolls, and light stretches are simple ways to avoid prolonged sitting. Having a fidget tool like a stress ball can also encourage movement while sitting. Your brain will function better with regular circulation boosts!
5. Overstimulation from Notifications:
Thanks to our endless pinging, buzzing devices, we have conditioned our brains to constantly seek fresh content and inputs. But all these notifications, alerts, emails, and interruptions overstimulate our brains, making it nearly impossible to focus or think deeply.
Glenn Wilson, a renowned psychologist, found that interruptions lasting just 2-3 minutes can cause a drastic 10-point plummet in IQ. Our brains desperately need quiet, screen-free blocks of time to synthesize information and recover. Otherwise, we trap them in a state of perpetual distraction and shallow thinking.
Protect your brain by going on “technology fasts” periodically. Turn off notifications for 1-2 hours and set your devices aside to allow uninterrupted focus. You can also enable Do Not Disturb modes on your gadgets before bed or during deep work sessions. Don’t worry – the world won’t end if you miss a few pings. But your brain will certainly benefit from the peace.
6. Irregular Sleep Patterns:
In our fast-paced 24/7 society, disrupted and insufficient sleep have almost become norms. Yet, accumulating research confirms that inconsistent sleep and sleep deprivation literally shrink the brain over time while raising risks for cognitive decline, mental health issues, stroke, and neurodegeneration.
Skipping deep sleep prevents your brain from adequately clearing waste and toxins accumulated during the day. This causes impaired cognitive function and memory issues. Sleep deprivation also elevates cortisol, which kills off brain cells when chronically elevated. Prioritize sleep for your brain’s sake by keeping a consistent bedtime and wake time. Make your bedroom cool, dark, and comfortable. Avoid screens and heavy meals before bed as well. Your brain needs 7-9 hours of quality sleep nightly to perform at its best.
7. Too Much Screen Time:
Today, many of us spend the bulk of our leisure time staring at screens, whether it’s browsing social media, gaming, Netflix binging, or scrolling the web. But a growing body of research confirms that all this screen time overstimulates our brains, reduces our capabilities, and damages mental health.
Psychotherapist Tom Kirsteins warns that excessive recreational screen time desensitizes our brains’ reward pathways linked to motivation and goal achievement. It trains your brain to seek constant stimulation, making it harder to focus on important but mundane tasks. Excessive screen time before bed also impairs sleep quality.
Try setting a screen time limit for yourself each day and using your devices in black and white mode. This removes the stimulating colors that hold your attention. You can also schedule screen-free blocks of time for reading, socializing, exercising, mealtimes or nature walks. Your brain needs these screen breaks to recharge.
8. Dehydration:
Our brains are over 70% water, relying on adequate hydration to function optimally. Yet, the majority of people today walk around in a state of chronic mild dehydration, which can impair cognition, memory, focus, and decision making skills.
When dehydrated, your blood volume drops, reducing blood supply to the brain. Dehydration also disrupts optimal levels of electrolytes in the brain needed for nerve transmission and causes inflammation. Carry a water bottle everywhere you go and take frequent small sips. You can also set reminders to drink water on your phone. Staying well hydrated provides your brain the water and nutrients it requires to thrive.
9. Covering Your Head When Sleeping:
Many of us fall into the habit of pulling the blanket completely over our heads when sleeping to block out light and create a cozy, enclosed space. However, covering your head severely restricts airflow, causing you to re-breathe stale air high in carbon dioxide and low in oxygen all night long.
Rebreathing air repeatedly decreases oxygen supply to your brain which requires plenty of oxygen each night to restore itself and consolidate memories from the day. One study found that oxygen saturation fell by up to 10% under covered heads compared to uncovered. If you want to block light, use a comfortable eye mask instead of the blanket so air can still circulate freely.
10. Watching Adult Content:
With limitless adult content at our fingertips today, pornography consumption has reached staggering rates. However, multiple studies reveal that regularly watching porn shrinks critical structures in your brain.
Watching porn floods the brain with intense dopamine spikes, which can damage dopamine receptors. It also shrinks the brain’s gray matter volume, lowering executive function related to focus, organization, and impulse control. Excess pornography use has even been linked to compulsive behavior and addiction due to these brain changes.
If you watch porn frequently, cut back or quit to allow your brain to restore healthier sensitivities and reward processing. Fill your schedule with enriching activities and prioritize other life goals over watching porn. Your brain deserves more meaningful rewards.
11. Smoking Cigarettes:
Despite declining smoking rates, over 30 million adults in the U.S. still smoke cigarettes regularly, putting their brains at serious risk. Smoking constricts blood vessels while increasing inflammation and oxidative stress. This shrinks your brain’s outer cerebral cortex over time, impairing cognition.
Research utilizing brain imaging found that heavy smokers had significantly thinner gray matter in several regions compared to non-smokers. These areas are linked to motivation, decision making, emotional regulation, visual perception, and more.
Additionally, chemicals in cigarette smoke kill off brain cells and connections daily. If you currently smoke, work on quitting by reading educational books like Allen Carr’s “Easy Way to Stop Smoking”. Your brain will thank you.
Conclusion:
The key takeaway is that our lifestyle choices and daily habits dramatically impact our brain health. Many common habits that seem harmless actually diminish our brain structure, function, and performance insidiously over time. By raising our awareness of brain-harming behaviors and implementing more supportive habits, we can all keep our amazing brains healthy and thriving for decades to come!
What daily habits will you try optimizing first to nourish your brain? Consistent small changes add up to create lifelong benefits. Our brains allow us to live rich lives, forge relationships, and marvel at the beauty around us. Make it a priority to care for yours.
