HealthyCoderz

Learning new skills and hobbies adds variety and makes the days more fun and interesting. Research also shows it benefits the brain. Learning new skills helps grow more neural pathways by increasing the density of myelin, a protective white matter in the brain. The denser the myelin, the better the brain functions. Improvements include thinking faster, better long and short term memory and comprehension. Decreased myelin has been linked to health issues like alzheimers, dementia and multiple sclerosis. Learning a new language is a popular recommendation. I learned French in school, took a little German, but never learned Spanish. I installed a free language learning app on my phone called Duolingo and now spend five minutes a day after dinner learning Spanish. Over time, it adds up. There are a lot of websites that offer free online courses. Some are even from top universities like Harvard and Stanford . Some of these websites include Coursera , Udemy , edx , lynda . freeCodeCamp has...

The food you eat probably has the greatest impact on your health, mental/brain health than anything else. The body requires vitamins and minerals in order to function properly. The majority of these nutrients come from food. If you feed your body sugar and processed foods full of chemicals you can't even pronounce, your body and brain will function far below what it is capable of. I know this because I've done it myself. My diet isn't perfect. I like to bake and eat chips and dip and Ben & Jerry's ice cream, but now I do it sparingly with portion control. In my 20's I had a terrible diet. I had brain fog. I was always tired. I had mono. I constantly had white spots on my tonsils. Breakfast was a bowl of cheerios and milk. Cheerios have a glycemic index of 74, not a good idea for someone on their way to having gestational and prediabetes. Not to mention the glyphosate they contain. The food you eat affects how you feel. It also affects your mood. It probably cont...

Drinking water throughout the day is another easy and important activity to improve brain health. The body is over 60% water. The brain is over 73% water. Dehydration can cause mood swings, fatigue, headaches, brain fog, trouble concentrating, memory loss and irritability. I read a book years ago called Water: For Health, for Healing, for Life: You're Not Sick, You're Thirsty! by F. Batmanghelidj MD that talks about how not getting enough water can contribute to many illnesses including asthma and allergies. Drinking enough water helps you sleep better. Better sleep leads to a better performing brain. Drinking water helps with weight loss as it fills you up without adding extra calories. Drinking water helps the kidneys and liver flush out toxins. Being dehydrated can lead to kidney stones. Removing toxins is always beneficial to the brain. Drinking water is also good for the muscles and healthy skin. Muscles pull glucose from the blood, so better working muscles will improve ...

Sleep is one of the most important things you can do to improve your brain health. As a software developer, if I can't sleep or get fewer hours of sleep than normal, I have a harder time focusing, getting in the flow and coming up with good solutions to whatever task I might be working on. It's just a lot harder to get through the day. As you sleep, cerebrospinal fluid flows through the brain and cleans it of toxins. It removes amyloid beta and tau proteins. These are plaques that can build up over time and are associated with Alzheimer's and dementia. Lack of sleep is associated with increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol, increased insulin production and increased cravings for junk/sugary foods. Lack of sleep is also associated with weight gain. The average amount of sleep to aim for is between 7 and 8 hours per night. I usually shoot for between 7 and 7 1/2hours. Less than that leads to headaches. More than that, I have a hard time fitting into my schedule. In o...

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