Do Try This At Home: The 12-Week Brain Fitness Program

12 Weeks To Measurably Boost Your Brain

This is Dr. Majid Fotuhi. From humble beginnings (being smuggled out of Iran in 1980 to avoid death in the war), he went on (after teaching himself English, French, and German, hedging his bets as he didn’t know for sure where life would lead him) to get his MD from Harvard Medical School and his PhD in neuroscience from Johns Hopkins University. Since then, he’s had a decades-long illustrious career in neurology and neurophysiology.

What does he want us to know?

The Brain Fitness Program

This is not, by the way, something he’s selling. Rather, it was a landmark 12-week study in which 127 people aged 60–80, of which 63% female, all with a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment, underwent an interventional trial—in other words, a 12-week brain fitness course.

After it, 84% of the participants showed statistically significant improvements in cognitive function.

Not only that, but of those who underwent MRI testing before and after (not possible for everyone due to practical limitations), 71% showed either no further deterioration of the hippocampus, or actual growth above the baseline volume of the hippocampus (that’s good, and it means functionally the memory center of the brain has been rejuvenated).

You can read a little more about the study here:

A Personalized 12-week “Brain Fitness Program” for Improving Cognitive Function and Increasing the Volume of Hippocampus in Elderly with Mild Cognitive Impairment

As for what the program consisted of, and what Dr. Fotuhi thus recommends for everyone…

Cognitive stimulation

This is critical, so we’re going to spend most time on this one—the others we can give just a quick note and a pointer.

In the study this came in several forms and had the benefit of neurofeedback technology, but he says we can replicate most of the effects by simply doing something cognitively stimulating. Whatever challenges your brain is good, but for maximum effect, it should involve the language faculties of the brain, since these are what tend to get hit most by age-related cognitive decline, and are also what tends to have the biggest impact on life when lost.

If you lose your keys, that’s an inconvenience, but if you can’t communicate what is distressing you, or understand what someone is explaining to you, that’s many times worse—and that kind of thing is a common reality for many people with dementia.

To keep the lights brightly lit in that part of the brain: language-learning is good, at whatever level suits you personally. In other words: there’s a difference between entry-level Duolingo Spanish, and critically analysing Rumi’s poetry in the original Persian, so go with whatever is challenging and/but accessible for you—just like you wouldn’t go to the gym for the first time and try to deadlift 500lbs, but you also probably wouldn’t do curls with the same 1lb weights every day for 10 years.

In other words: progressive overloading is key, for the brain as well as for muscles. Start easy, but if you’re breezing through everything, it’s time to step it up.

If for some reason you’re really set against the idea of learning another language, though, check out:

Reading As A Cognitive Exercise ← there are specific tips here for ensuring your reading is (and remains) cognitively beneficial

Mediterranean diet

Shocking nobody, this is once again recommended. You might like to check out the brain-healthy “MIND” tweak to it, here:

Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet ← it’s the fourth one

Omega-3 supplementation

Nothing complicated here. The brain needs a healthy balance of these fatty acids to function properly, and most people have an incorrect balance (too little omega-3 for the omega-6 present):

What Omega-3 Fatty Acids Really Do For Us ← scroll to “against cognitive decline”

Increasing fitness

There’s a good rule of thumb: what’s healthy for your heart, is healthy for your brain. This is because, like every other organ in your body, the brain does not function well without good circulation bringing plenty of oxygen and nutrients, which means good cardiovascular health is necessary. The brain is extra sensitive to this because it’s a demanding organ in terms of how much stuff it needs delivering via blood, and also because of the (necessary; we’d die quickly and horribly without it) impediment of the blood-brain barrier, and the possibility of beta-amyloid plaques and similar woes (they will build up if circulation isn’t good).

How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk ← number two on the list here

Practising mindfulness medication

This is also straightforward, but not to be underestimated or skipped over:

No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness

Want to step it up? Check out:

Meditation Games That You’ll Actually Enjoy

Lastly…

Dr. Fotuhi wants us to consider looking after our brain the same way we look after our teeth. No, he doesn’t want us to brush our brain, but he does want us to take small measurable actions multiple times per day, every day.

You can’t just spend the day doing nothing but brushing your teeth for the entirety of January the 1st and then expect them to be healthy for the rest of the year; it doesn’t work like that—and it doesn’t work like that for the brain, either.

So, make the habits, and keep them going

Take care!