4 Things to Support Brain Health and Function for Recovery
Are you in recovery from from substance use / mental health / behavioral disorders? Are you trying to heal from the chronic stress-related impacts of secondhand drinking? All four of these conditions negatively affect the health and function of the brain. And it is our brain that controls everything we think, feel, say and do.
There are four important things – beyond the more typical recovery tools, like therapy or peer support programs – you can do to improve your brain’s health and function and further your overall recovery. They are eating nutrient rich foods; regular aerobic exercise; sleep and mindfulness practices. And here’s why they work.
Nutrition for Brain Health and Function for Recovery
Think of nutrition as “food” for “thought.”
Unlike other body organs, the brain is incapable of making and storing glucose, which is its sole fuel source. No fuel, no brain activity. The brain requires a daily dose of about twenty percent of the body’s glucose supply – a staggering amount given the brain is only two percent of the body’s total weight.(79) The brain gets its glucose supply from the carbohydrates in the foods we eat, which are broken down and transported to the brain via the bloodstream. For optimum brain health, however, it can’t be any old carbohydrates, like those in candy or sugar-packed soft drinks. The brain needs complex carbohydrates, such as those found in whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.
Protein, available in lean meats, poultry, fish, beans, eggs, and milk products, are also vitally important.
Another important outcome of eating nutrient-rich foods is their help with neurotransmitters, those chemical messengers that convert and carry the electrical signal from one neuron to the next. These are made up of vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. Thus, eating nutrient-rich foods can help with repairing and building neurotransmitters and thereby improving the electro-chemical signaling processes damaged by toxic stress.
Healthy fats, like omega-3 fatty acids found in tuna and salmon, are important for building the neuron’s cell membrane. And it goes on and on from there. Suffice it to say, nutrient-rich foods are astoundingly important to brain health – something better understood as a result of this new brain research. But if you are not inclined to learn the nitty-gritty about nutrition, and let’s face it, who has the time when grappling with a loved one’s substance use disorder and/or treatment, consider following the U.S.D.A.’s MyPlate.gov guidelines. Just know you don’t have to follow any particular diet or eating plan, nor completely give up the “good stuff” – ice cream, cookies, or sour dough bread with lots of butter. Just indulge in those foods occasionally.
Regular Aerobic Exercise Helps With Recovery
Using a hiking metaphor: In order to change the brain and therefore a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, they have to let the old, well-worn neural network pathways grow over while they slash and tread a whole new series of neural network pathways. Or, to use a traffic metaphor, a person has to take a different highway to detour around a road closure.
Aerobic exercise helps with brain health which helps with recovery.
For the family member or friend experiencing toxic stress consequences (or the person with an alcohol use disorder or anyone else wishing to improve their brain health), aerobic exercise can be a brain-saver. It increases levels of serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine (those all-important neurotransmitters) and rebuilds the connections between the billions of neurons in the brain.(80) It increases levels of an important neurotrophine, BDNF, which nourishes our brain cells “like fertilizer” and allows “new information to stick as a memory.”(81)
Aerobic exercise pumps blood and oxygen to the brain at a faster than normal rate. (Remember: oxygen and glucose are the two things the brain needs to survive.) Aerobic exercise helps the brain and body get rid of all that unexpended “stuff ” triggered by the fight-or-flight /stress response system but never used to run or fight.
The further benefits of aerobic exercise are equally interesting, but in the hopes of not overwhelming you, suffice it to say, it is critical to brain health. How much does it take? An average of 30 minutes/day of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, five days a week, is a baseline. It needs to be aerobic, however – meaning any kind of exercise that gets your heart rate up. My favorite kind of exercise is dancing – and it doesn’t take a drive to the gym. I have several play lists for all kinds of moods but with a beat that gets me up and dancing around my house. Other aerobic exercise activities include brisk walking, running, riding a bike, and swimming – whatever makes your blood pump faster.
Additional types of exercise are also important to pursue. Strength training, for example, helps with muscle, balance, and ease of movement.
Sleep is as Important as Nutrition and Exercise
Sleep provides a third kind of critical support for brain health. And, generally all concerned get very little of what is known as “good sleep.” This is the kind that’s not routinely aided by sleep aids or routinely interrupted by anxiety and worry over all of this.
It takes about 6.5 to 8 hours of uninterrupted, peaceful sleep to give the brain what it needs, namely “down time,” not to be confused with idle time. Believe it or not, the brain remains incredibly active during sleep. Sleep allows the brain to repair neurons, re-balance neurotransmitter levels, and sort, process, and log into memory that day’s activities.
Mindfulness Activities Help Reduce Secondhand Drinking-Related Stress
By the time a loved one enters (or is seriously contemplating) treatment, all concerned – family members, friends, the person with a serious alcohol use disorder – are consumed 24/7 with thoughts related to the alcoholism and/or secondhand drinking impacts. Mindfulness can help you settle your mind long enough to register what you’re trying to do differently or to stop yourself once you’ve gone down the reactionary path laid out by old brain maps. As you can imagine, mindfulness activities must start out in very small increments. To not think about anything related to all of the problems related to your loved one’s drinking for an hour is impossible at first. To not think about the situation for three to five minutes is doable. And actually, taking three to five minutes to engage in a thought- calming process helps people understand that they can let go a little. This “letting go” helps a person see that when they stop putting their focus on their loved one’s alcoholism/alcohol abuse and its effects, it does not lead to the worst-case scenario(s) they’ve imagined would happen.
As you become comfortable with three to five minutes of engaging in mindfulness, you can move it to 10 and then 20 minutes and however long you want to go after that. Mindfulness activities include just about anything that requires your focused attention, such as doing yoga, exercising (and keeping your thoughts focused on the physical activity and not on texting or talking on the phone), or a walk (and making yourself notice the colors and sounds around you). Mindfulness activities could also involve meditating, engaging in spiritual practices, having fun, or learning something entirely new. Mindfulness is about forging a new neural pathway to give your brain a different place from which to think, feel, say, and do.
Mindfulness takes practice, but as mentioned above, you can start with just three to five minute increments at a time. One of my absolute favorite all-time Youtube videos to explain a simple mindfulness practice (works for kids and adults) is Just Breathe by Julie Bayer Salzman & Josh Salzman.
Oh…and don’t forget to drink water. Lots of water. I’ll spare you the science. Just know it’s good for the brain!
For More Information and Citations
Please check out my latest book, 10th Anniversary Edition If You Loved Me, You’d Stop!, The above information and citations can be found on pages 139-142 of that book.
As always, feel free to send me an email to lisaf@BreakingTheCycles.com to schedule a phone call to address specific questions.
Lisa Frederiksen
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