Best foods that boost your brain and memory

Your brain is the control center of your body, which makes it a pretty big deal.

It keeps your heart beating and lungs breathing and allows you to move, feel and think.

That’s why it’s advisable to keep the brain in its optimal working condition.

It is overlooked that foods you eat impact your brain’s health and can improve mental tasks, specifically memory and concentration.

Here’s a list of different foods that positively affect brain function.

  1. Nuts: Studies have shown that eating nuts can improve markers of heart health, and having a healthy heart is linked to having a healthy brain .
  2. Coffee: The two key components in coffee caffeine and antioxidants help your brain. Drinking coffee over the long term is also linked to a reduced risk of neurological diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s
  3. Oranges: You can get the recommended daily dose of Vitamin C from one orange, and Vitamin C has a huge role in preventing mental decline.
  4. Eggs: Packed with several nutrients that benefit the brain such as Vitamins B6, B12, Choline and Folate.

you can help support your brain health and boost your alertness, memory and mood by strategically including these foods in your diet.

Alcohol and your brain

While a couple of glasses of wine can aid in easing the mind after a long day, new research shows that it may actually help clean the mind as well. New studies shows that low levels of alcohol consumption reduce inflammation and helps the brain flush out toxins, including those associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

It is almost common sense that high doses of alcohol can damage the brain, as well us other organs in the body, but in recent studies we have shown for the first time that low doses of alcohol are potentially beneficial to brain health.

The research focuses on the glymphatic system which is the brain’s unique cleaning process that was first described by Dr. Nedergaard. They showed how cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) is pumped into brain tissue and flushes away waste, including the proteins beta amyloid and tau that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Subsequent research has shown that the glymphatic system is more active while we sleep, can be damaged by stroke and trauma, and improves with exercise.

The new study, which was conducted with mice. The mice that were exposed to low levels of alcohol consumption, given approximately 2 ½ drinks per day (relative to their size), actually showed less inflammation in the brain and their glymphatic system was more efficient in moving CSF through the brain and removing waste, compared to control mice who were not exposed to alcohol. The low dose animals’ performance in the cognitive and motor tests was identical to the controls.