Living A Full Life

Brain Fog Be Gone: 12 Harvard-Approved Habits for a Sharper Mind

• Full Life Chiropractic • Season 3 • Episode 36

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Your brain drives everything—your mood, relationships, creativity, and ability to navigate the world with clarity and purpose. Yet most of us take our cognitive health for granted until problems appear. Inspired by World Brain Day, this episode dives into what truly matters for maintaining a vibrant, functioning brain throughout your life, whether you're 30 or 70.

Harvard researchers have identified twelve essential habits that dramatically improve brain health, starting with regular movement and proper nutrition. When we increase our heart rate through exercise, we boost blood flow and cerebrospinal fluid movement, delivering nutrients and removing waste from brain tissues. Similarly, following a Mediterranean-style diet rich in whole foods creates the optimal environment for cognitive function while protecting against inflammation.

Perhaps most surprising is the role social connections play in preserving brain health. A remarkable Harvard study following nearly 800 participants for over 80 years found that meaningful relationships were the primary predictor of a long, healthy, happy life. The isolation many experienced during COVID lockdowns highlighted this reality—not having regular, meaningful human interactions significantly accelerates cognitive decline.

Modern threats to brain health include digital overload from constant device use, environmental toxins like heavy metals and microplastics, electromagnetic field exposure, and processed foods creating chronic inflammation. Fortunately, simple interventions like omega-3 fatty acids (particularly DHA), creatine supplementation, and emerging technologies like properly configured red light therapy have demonstrated promising results for reducing brain fog and improving cognitive clarity.

Don't wait for symptoms to appear before prioritizing your brain health. Start with just one new habit this week, whether it's a daily walk, omega-3 supplement, or digital sunset ritual. Your future self will thank you for the investment you make today in your most precious asset—your mind.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome back to living a full life. I'm Dr Enrico Dolcecori, and this week's episode is inspired by World Brain Day, which just happens to be July 22. We're diving into what it really means to take care of your brain not just prevent disease, but to live fully, think clearly and feel deeply every day, whether you're in your 30s or your 70s. Cognitive health is now work and the good news is small changes add up in a big way. So let's talk about brain health. When we think about the brain, we think about pathology and the things that can go wrong with the brain, and dementia and Alzheimer's is probably the ones that get to the top of the list is probably the ones that get to the top of the list, and for good reason. They affect 55 million people plus worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. So brain fog, memory loss, burnout and attention issues are on the rise. Post-covid specifically, we're seeing a sharp incline in these types of symptoms as the post-COVID era has begun and is in the thick of it since 2020. And brain and nervous system disorders are now one of the leading causes of disability on the entire scale of disability. So we need to talk about it, we need to bring it to the forefront. And, of course, this podcast is here to motivate and help you and your family take the right steps in the right direction to prevent these types of issues long term.

Speaker 1:

Harvard came out with a cool little thing that I read a few days ago and that's what inspired this podcast, and it was like 12 things to help top brain healthy habits you can do on a daily and weekly basis to help your brain health, and I thought it was great we don't really think about these things. I joke as a chiropractor to my patients I'm like you know, if you can see your spine in the mirror, you take way better health of your spine than you do like you, like you do with your teeth or your face or your skin, because you see it every single day. Same thing with smokers if there's a small window in their chest and they can see their lungs every day, they wouldn't smoke for sure because you'd see it. But when we don't see it, like what's happening to our brain, what's happening to our organs on the inside, it's easy to take them for granted. So here's the top 10, harvard did the top 12 things you can do to help maintain a healthy brain lifestyle.

Speaker 1:

And number one on the list was move your body. Exercise increases blood flow to everything in the body, especially the brain. Increasing that heart rate pumps more blood into the brain, helping it pump more blood out of the brain, which brings nutrition and waste products out more efficiently, which is absolutely fantastic. There's a lot more to it than just the blood. Exercising helps move cerebral spinal fluid great as well which also flushes the nervous system and keeps it clear as well. So a lot of great things that happen with exercise. It's probably the most recorded physiological data to brain health as far as cognitive reflexes agility. That happens with people who regularly exercise and move their body. Their brains just work faster and better. So that's great. That's a great one. I don't think we're rocking your world with that info today as number one.

Speaker 1:

But number two is eat healthy, and I've done what. Are we on to episode 200 yet? I don't know how many episodes we've done so far, but move your body and eat healthy probably show up in 99% of all the podcasts because they're the foundation to all health. So no matter what organ we pick to talk about, moving your body and eating healthy play a huge role in here, and again the Mediterranean style diets show strong links to memory and good mood and we talked about diets many times and what the Mediterranean diet is versus other diets. The Mediterranean diet is another way of saying whole food diet, but you got to think about that part of the world and what they have there. That might be a little bit different Drier climate, great growing seasons, so the vegetables are huge there and the oils are really good there. They use seed oil, they use olive oil, they use plant oils, fresh, not processed. These things are all in the diet with lower meat absorption but high-protein diet because they eat a lot of lentils, beans and they're getting their protein through the vegetarian diet and then they supplement meat on the side to help get there. So the Mediterranean diet falls at the top where the whole diet, whole food diet, goes to the top as far as eating healthy for brain health and overall health.

Speaker 1:

Number three sleep. We have to sleep well. Deep sleep clears toxins from the brain. It's where we repair and heal is through our sleep. So poor sleep leads to poor healing and over time that can pile up and lead to brain fog and cognitive decline as far as brain function goes.

Speaker 1:

Challenge your mind. We've always talked about this like new skills, puzzles, languages, sudoku when it was really popular came out and said how great it is for the brain and actually some studies showed it to be a great little puzzle or game you can play that activates different parts of the brain as far as memory, addition, math and different parts of the brain's motor skills and memory skills, which is absolutely fantastic. And little puzzles like that to help languages as well. Learning a new language or trying to learn a new language or even a new sentence in a new language can really light up different parts of the brain, and that's the whole thing. Think of your brain as like this mansion this is how I got through med school, right Thinking of like cartoons on physiology in my mind. So your brain's like this mansion. It's got 25 rooms, 19 bathrooms, two lobbies, two elevators, two pools in the back, like this huge mansion, right.

Speaker 1:

And as we age, the nest starts to shrink. You had five kids and the people start to leave. And this mansion all the lights in the room don't have to be on all the time anymore and as we turn off the lights and we forget about certain rooms, they don't function the way they used to. They actually stop functioning. And that's the same thing with our brain as we age and we stop using different parts of our brain. Maybe we were highly involved in math and physics in college and as those years disappeared afterwards and we got into some other you know, accounting or health sciences or something else in our life and we got away from the mathematical brain and we're more in the analytical brain, these things shift there as well. Maybe we were super active in college. We played a couple of sports, and now we don't do anything. As life goes on, we turn off the lights to the rooms and over time they get dusty, they get spider webs and they don't work like they used to. Same thing with the brain we have to use it or we lose it.

Speaker 1:

As far as challenge challenging the brain, so doing a puzzle every now and then is great. Reading a hard copy not off of a screen, but reading actual paperback book or newspaper is great. Just changing it from the brain, the textile, flipping the pages and then listening to podcasts, audio versus visual, different things like that that light up different parts of your brain are absolutely great. And exercise does that as well. From cardiovascular to heavy lifting, to everything in between you light up different parts of your brain as well. Staying social Now I'm glad Harvard put this in the top 12, because the isolation really accelerates cognitive decline.

Speaker 1:

We've seen this over studies over the last hundred years. Harvard had another cool study that I was reading a couple weeks ago about following 796 participants for 80 plus years since 1936. They started a study and they followed men 796 men and every year or two they would follow up with them with a physical exam, blood work and an inquiry, so they would fill out a questionnaire about how life's going. And up until now, just recently, 2025, they have 23 of them left that are living into their 90s and what they found is they published a report saying you know what were the factors to a long, healthy, happy life? And the last 23 participants are answering very similar to all the questions. And guess what number one was for them?

Speaker 1:

Staying social, the people, the quality of people in their life, not the amount, not the quantity. Having those meaningful relationships was there. So isolation in 2020 really taught us a lot, and World War II created isolation. Probably the Vietnam War created isolation around the world, but COVID for sure. It forced us into our homes and that isolation and for some of us that didn't have family members and we lived alone, that was probably a huge hit to the cognitive health. So that was there too. So social connections, quality social connections, people who you're looking forward to spending some time with, whether it's 10 minutes for a coffee, a couple hours for dinner or just hanging out meaningful connections with meaningful people, and then, you know, isolation. Significantly increasing and accelerating cognitive decline was a huge part of this. I think this one is probably the most relevant and documented piece of cognitive health, of showing the decline and what happened. A lot of these people are not alive anymore In the Harvard study. One of them was John F Kennedy, the future president of the United States. He was in this study as well and he was participating in it. So very interesting read that was. That was cool.

Speaker 1:

Manage stress we have to manage it. We don't have to just say that's life, but when we get overwhelmed, having the tools, the cognitive tools, to manage stress, stress creates chronic cortisol which shrinks the hippocampus area of the brain. The hippocampus area of the brain is a central relay center, especially coordinating memory. We see this with dementia, decline and Alzheimer's is the hippocampus gets attacked, it shrinks and cortisol unfortunately attacks that area more. It doesn't really attack it. It affects that area more than other parts of the brain. So cortisol is a tough hormone in the body. It's there for a reason to keep us on guard, to protect ourselves. But living our life like the lion is coming for us all the time. That chronic stress is just a hard way to live and it's hard on the entire body. So we have to have mechanisms to help manage stress.

Speaker 1:

This is where psychology, even maybe psychiatry, can come into play, and mental health counseling to help give you and build tools to help manage your stress, if anything else. So I'm a huge fan of that as well. It just has great positive outcomes. It changes mood, gives you control and naturally decreases stress because you have the tools to adapt to it. Saying you know whatever it is, what it is or it's in God's hands, that's great faith-based default to things. But is it truly decreasing your stress? If it is, if it truly is, if you truly walk, like my pastor does, down the street being like God's got this. I'm jealous at how confident he is in that, which is absolutely fantastic. But for me sometimes it's just stress just overrides that and it's not enough. So having some tools of like giving yourself a breather, watching something comical to just change your mood, turning off the screens two hours before bed and just giving yourself dead time, whatever these things are to stress are huge or really important. So that was number six.

Speaker 1:

Number seven avoid smoking and limit alcohol. This is now a consensus across all scientific journals and boards when it comes to the brain, it just it doesn't, doesn't do anything good for the brain. The slight things that we talk about with alcohol that have some positive effects on our physiology have nothing to do with the brain. That have some positive effects on our physiology have nothing to do with the brain. What they do with the, with the Reversitol and the tannins from red red wines, and these things have shown to have some cardiovascular benefits for circulation and blood circulation. Okay, let's not run away with this and drink bottles of red wine, but it has no benefit for the brain, actually hurts the brain. So that's pretty straightforward.

Speaker 1:

Protect your head. Concussions, believe it or not, increased dementia risk. Concussions are direct traumas to the brain tissue. So hitting your head bounces this brain tissue inside of the skull, off of the walls of the skull and it can bounce back and forth a couple times. This can be car accidents, sports injuries, heading headers in football, uh sorry, in soccer, um, direct hits, punching, boxing, mma all these things that we do and take direct blows to the head can lead permanent damage to the brain and that's what leads us with cognitive decline there as well. So protect your head. So concussions properly, getting these assessed as quickly as possible. Your children playing sports you you're watching it looked like a head on head hit in the football practice there and you could hear those helmets smash. Probably play that day or the next day.

Speaker 1:

You want to be going to someone who knows about concussions. Not all primary care physicians do know about this. I find more urgent care doctors are much more aware with the neuro testing immediately. So going to an urgent care is number one. Chiropractors that are neuro based, that know the full prognosis there and the first thing they do is take out the pen light and they're pointing their fingers to get the eye movement going. They know a little bit about that. But having someone that you know sports, sports chiropractors, sports athletic therapists, sports physical therapists they have a little bit of a background in there and they can diagnose it right immediately. And if it is, there's some things you can do immediately to help heal that tissue as fast as possible.

Speaker 1:

The healing phase is within a few days of the concussion. Afterwards we're left with doing exercises to help concussion symptoms to get back, to recalibrate the nervous system and then long-term post-concussion syndrome can leave you with a lot of issues, which is no fun at all. So concussions can't forget about the direct stresses. Some are sports and are chosen, some are accidents. We slip and fall, we slip on the ice, we hit our head, we walk into the garage, bump, hit ourselves off the cupboard, whatever it is. We got to sometimes get those things checked, especially if you feel any symptoms afterwards, and protect our head.

Speaker 1:

Wear your helmets when you ride your bike. Wear your helmets when you're roller skating. Wear your helmets when you're on the scooter. I think in my neighborhood I see a lot of the kids wearing their helmets, which is great, but there's a few that don't and just I'm like oof, that's going to be tough if you take a blow.

Speaker 1:

Monitor blood pressure and sugar. So vascular health equals brain health. We have to monitor our blood pressure and our glucose and A1C. Those two have direct links to brain health as well. Blood pressure, not to be absolutely blunt about this, but a high blood pressure can increase the risk of vessels breaking inside of the cranium and around the brain, which can be aneurysms, strokes and hemorrhages that's the word that was escaping me there. Any direct vascular injury to the brain can lead to permanent brain damage. So that's why blood pressure is really important to monitor as well.

Speaker 1:

Protect your hearing. Hearing loss is linked to brain shrinkage because once we lose one of the major sensories of our body, of the five senses, shuts down an entire part of a brain. I found that fascinating because I forgot about that Same thing with vision. I mean, if we're losing our vision, some of these things are not controllable, but others are controllable, like our hearing, protecting our hearing. Wearing the headphones to protect from loud noises at sporting events, at concerts, bringing the earplugs I know it sounds counterintuitive. I paid money to listen to this band play music, but have you been to one of these things A lot? If you go to those a lot, or you play or you work with heavy machinery a lot bobcats, jackhammers, loud nail guns, these types of things wearing the earplugs is a great idea to protect your hearing long-term, especially if it's part of your career and not listening to your, you know, headphones on really loud blasting the music in the car and on the headphones protect your hearing.

Speaker 1:

Nurture purpose and passion. These last two are more thought provoking For those who are the top 10. Now we got 11 and 12 from the Harvard study. Nurture purpose and passion. A sense of meaning boosts cognitive resilience. So nurture purpose and passion, that thing that lights you a little bit. You know, the thing that gets you excited. For some people it's golf, some people it's sports, some people it's, uh, reading. Some people it's art, some people it's photography, some people it's painting. The thing that just fuels you, that makes you happy when you sit there, you're, you're happy to do the task. And the task could take 30 minutes. It can be golf. It could take four and a half hours, it could take whatever it is going for hikes, going for bikes, whatever it's going for a swim. That, that little passion.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes you watch people get all geared up and then they go to the rock climbing center and they rock climb and they do that like twice a week or they I'm just thinking of odd mountain climbing ice. There was like ice climbing out in canada when I was there people climb waterfalls that were frozen. I'm like, oh well, that's a death sentence. But they look, but they absolutely loved this. The skiers, the snowboarders, the atv-ers, the, the bmxers, the you know, they love the toys and you just see the passion when they find someone else that knows about the machines or knows about the equipment and they talk about it. You just see them light up and I shake my head because I'm like I'm not getting on that snowmobile, that's not me, but they just loved it and they could talk about the snowmobiles and the treads and the motors and all this stuff and they absolutely loved it. That's it.

Speaker 1:

Nurture your purpose and passion, whatever it is. There's no judgment on it. If you love snowmobiles, you love snowmobiles. If you love rock climbing, you love rock climbing. If you love golf, you love golf. Paddleboarding, whatever it is, sitting down, doing puzzles, playing games, whatever it may be. That lights that passion and purpose. We need that that keeps our brain lit.

Speaker 1:

And then keep learning. I mean, it sounds obvious, but keep learning. Lifelong learning builds cognitive reserves. Um, and learning doesn't have to be academia, doesn't have to be signing up for online courses all the time into your 70s, uh, but just learning reading. Like you know, I I give myself a hard time. Like man, I don't learn like I used to back in college. No, I mean, I don't have full-time learning certificate to just keep learning but I do read health publications, health journals, dive into the why, the what, how and when, and I find that that's good enough to keep me learning and moving forward all the time, which I love to do as well. So there is some motivation for you guys.

Speaker 1:

On the top 12 things to keep brain health Now. Modern threats to brain health, let's. There's three big things that are going on right now that are different probably in the last 10, 12 years, and that's the chronic digital overload. Kids and people, even adults, are spending seven plus hours on their device, on their cell phone, and this digital overload is just fragmenting a whole bunch of our thought processes as well and society as well. Social skills are being fragmented as well. Toxins are heavier now than ever.

Speaker 1:

We got to talk about these toxins. Heavy metals, pesticides and microplastics are everywhere. Because of the way we live our lives, the clothing we wear, the way we wash it, put it in the dryer, those microplastics get everywhere. They get into our body. Pesticides we got to really rinse our fruit and produce on this, or pick organic or non-sprayed things, because the accumulation of pesticides really hurts. Then if we eat like that and we apply pesticides around our home now we're just surrounded with these toxins all the time. Now we're just surrounded with these toxins all the time. Glyphosate's going up the list as one of the most toxic substances in our life right now because of all the chronic things it's being led to, as far as chronic fatigue syndrome, hyperthyroid, hypothyroid issues. It's attacking the endocrine systems and heavy metals can build up in the body as well. So getting tested for these every five years or so, seeing where your levels are, doing proper detoxes and pulling those metals as much as possible out of the body, is absolutely fantastic to do every few years to get this stuff out.

Speaker 1:

Emf exposure Some people still think this is a tin foil hat thing, but the EMF exposure is not as controversial as it was, but it's connected to sleep and mental focus. Too much of this Wi-Fi signal, emf from electronics can cause a lot of issues, and processed foods are just chronic inflammation creators. That's what they are, and if we have these things on a daily basis, we are going to continue to build chronic inflammation all the time and we're stuck in an inflammatory state and that's why our joints hurt and that's why we wake up stiff all the time and that's what ends up happening. And you don't hear this in 20-year-olds. You hear this in 40-plus-year-olds waking up stiff and not being able to move. It's because it's been 15, 20, 25 years of you consistently consuming processed foods and that's it. It's really that, because if you were eating an organic, healthy lifestyle the whole time, I don't really see a lot of stiff people and that's just inside source on those things. So chronic digital overload, keep an eye on your toxins, reduce EMF exposure and watch the processed food intakes.

Speaker 1:

Now some supplements that we can add Right now, right here on this podcast, safe for almost everyone, to just make sure they're doing on a daily basis omega-3 fatty acids. I'm surprised at how many people just don't focus on the EPA and DHA omega-3s. It's really important. When we talk about the brain, believe it or not, dha is more important. So in our office we have DHA and EPA two-to-one ratios depending on who we're giving it to. So all kids get a high dose DHA because it's great for brain development. All adults get EPA focused two-to-one or three-to-one ratio, because it's great for all the anti-inflammatory properties in there.

Speaker 1:

However, if you are focusing on your brain health and you're like, well, I have chronic fatigue or I have cognitive decline or I have you know, I feel like I have a little bit of memory loss or brain fog. Well, omega-3 DHA, two to one might be better for you. It's not pediatric dose, it's just what we give. Based to 1 might be better for you. It's not a pediatric dose, it's just what we give based on age. It might be a better switch for you for 6 to 12 months taking that one and seeing how it affects your cognitive reply. That might be great.

Speaker 1:

Creatine Creatine is not just about muscles and hydration. It's great for memory and cognition. It's been shown for years, decades on there about maybe it has a better memory and cognition outcome than it does muscle outcome, so that is absolutely wonderful as well. Magnesium L-theornate Bacopa Minori is one of them, and Lion's Mane, um all been shown to have some benefits there. As you can see, I went through those ones fast. The top two is your omega-3 and your creatine. Definitely look at those two Um and even optional devices that you can use to help with your brain.

Speaker 1:

Red light therapy. Um, it's come out fast and furious in the last 10 years. Red light, but it was cryotherapy for a little bit for like muscle repair and injury and it was a hot thing. They were popping up everywhere and all of a sudden, like overnight, it just flipped to red light therapy and now red lights ever. You get these pads on amazon and they're all crap, by the way. If you buy those little home home pads, you get little to minimal effect on them, just because, unless they're expensive, because these diodes are expensive. So if you get a pad that has red light on it, make sure it's just not a little light bulb, make sure you're getting the LED, red light and the proper wavelength.

Speaker 1:

But red light therapy we have one of the top beds in the country in our office because we run a medical office and the biggest feedback I've been getting, aside from like some skin conditions, like psoriasis, people are saying their vertigo, their dizziness and their cognition is better, they feel less foggy and it's happening with the 50 plus crowd. It's like almost like a side effect that I'm hearing all the time. Women are using it more than men, but I'm getting that response from the women saying I just the brain fog feels, I just feel so much clearer with after red light and looking into the studies, yes, it's one of those things that they've actually starting to treat people with brain fog and cognition decline and memory loss with red light therapy and following the outcomes. The research isn't solid yet because they're following these populations, but that is pretty cool. Muse headbands, brain trap devices these little things are all helped to help build cognition, and the tech and the future of cognitive health is there.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot of things AI powered apps that are coming out, brain-computer interface experiments, wearable devices that focus on your HRV and stress levels, and digital detox coaching that you just follow. Programs for 10 days, 14 days, 30 days are becoming a new wellness niche that you can take a look at. These things are safe because they're mainly about nutrition and supplements that you can take a look at. These things are safe because they're mainly about nutrition and supplements. So the health of your brain drives everything your mood, your relationships, creativity. Don't wait for symptoms to show up. Start nurturing your brain today.

Speaker 1:

Pick one new habit to add this week and tell someone you love to do the same thing. If you love this, we're going to have a little brain health PDF checklist. Just go to Full Life Chiropractic's social media pages and you'll see the checklist there. You can get it there. Or, if you follow us in any way, shape or form, email us at info at fulllifetampacom and we'll send you the little PDF checklist and then you can have that put it on the fridge.

Speaker 1:

Do that habit for what? 28 days? We talked about this. Then you don't need the checklist anymore because it becomes part of your habits every day where you check your mental health each day, make sure you're taking the supplements, making sure you're doing the digital detox, and every couple of years you're asking for a vitamin panel to see if you are deficient or if you have heavy metal buildup. That's why having a functional med doctor certified in internal medicine is great, because you can have access to them. You can email them after a couple of years and be like hey, it's me again. I was wondering if I could get sent for another heavy metal test and they can send you and for a couple hundred bucks you get that test and you can see what's going on and if something's high, you can help detox from that. These are little things you can take control of in keeping your brain health at a priority in your life. Have a happy and healthy week. Take care and stay well.

People on this episode

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Dr. Enrico Dolcecore

Host
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Dr. Christine Hafer

Co-host