Neural plasticity is truly about interrupting the old with the new.

In these daily, monthly and yearly increments, our brains develop the capacity to adapt and flex in the short, medium and long term. This boosts our cognitive capacity to adjust when confronted with other changes in our lives.

Meanwhile, carbohydrates get absorbed faster, triggering inflammation and raising insulin levels – two big enemies of brain health because of how they cause brain cells to die and increase risk for Alzheimer’s.

So, how do you get flexing your brain again? It’s actually quite easy to organise our lives in ways that allow us to consistently create new neural pathways. We obviously can’t change everything about our lives every day, but I don’t think we need to.

Instead, we should be striving to take on a small new cognitive challenge each day, a medium new... See more

Cognitive decline and neurological diseases, including dementia and Alzheimer’s, are by-products of the litany of assaults our brains encounter throughout the course of our lives. Which is why protecting the brain in the first place plays such an important role in increasing your brainspan. Start by getting to know the enemies:

Ultra-processed food:... See more

It can be hard at first to get into the habit of this, so keeping a list of ideas for these daily challenges and then journaling what you will do or have done each day is a good way to track your progress and success.

Once you’ve completed a specific daily cognitive challenge, is it off-limits? Certainly not. In fact, it might be very beneficial to... See more

How do I know? Because as a neurologist at the forefront of research into Alzheimer’s disease, I have worked with people who, by making often small but impactful changes to their lifestyle and nutrition, deploying what my team and I dubbed the ReCODE Protocol (short for reversal of cognitive decline), have managed to slow, stop and, in many cases,... See more

It’s not just illness and disease that can increase inflammation. Poor diet and stress can also trigger an immune response in the brain, which can tip it towards degeneration.

Stress: High-pressure work environments, sleeplessness, difficult relationships, surgical procedures and accidents can all push the nervous system into overdrive, producing... See more

Viruses and inflammation: If you were among the many millions of people who suffered from brain fog during or following a bout of COVID-19, you know how much a pathogen can impact your memory and ability to concentrate.

When researchers in the US reviewed the records of more than 6 million people during the first year of the pandemic, they saw... See more

It used to be widely accepted that our hearts would simply weaken with age, that cancer was a death sentence and that conditions like Type 2 diabetes couldn’t be prevented let alone reversed.

Today we know better. We know there is plenty we can do to strengthen our hearts; that cancer can often be spotted early and treated effectively; that... See more