Brain Health Optimization Secrets: Part 1

Written by Dr. Mark Atkinson, MBBS, Sens.ai Medical Director

To feel your best and live your best life you need to train your brain and take charge of your state. This is the secret to brain optimization, to feeling your best and living your best life.

In this two-part series, I will focus first on how to ‘train your brain.’

Imagine this: You want to walk down a road towards Optimal Health. You start walking, but something happens, and you decide to turn around after 100 yards and walk in the opposite direction.

This puts you on the path towards Poor Health. You walk for another 200 yards, then decide to walk back towards Optimal Health.

And so it goes. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Much movement, many decisions, going nowhere.

Until you make a decision to make optimal health a priority and build into your daily life consistent routines and habits that keep you heading toward optimal health, you go nowhere.

Over time and without the presence of specific protective habits, brain function will naturally transition from functional to dysfunctional and possibly to disease.

Every day, in every waking moment, you are training your brain.

Your decisions and experiences dynamically reshape the activity and microstructure of your brain.

Tuning into gratitude will shape it in one direction.

Resentment another.

The more we repeat these decisions and create these experiences the more these become default pathways for the brain.

We become what we train.

Given this, it would be wise to ask yourself:

‘Am I consciously making decisions and creating experiences that are moving me and my brain in a direction I want to go?’

As a functional medicine physician and human potential teacher with 25 years of experience helping clients optimize their health, I’ve seen and learnt what is necessary to protect and improve brain health.

What level is your brain at?

An optimally functioning brain and nervous system give rise to a vital, resilient, and adaptive body and mind.

Your mind is clear, your intellect sharp, and your memory great. You shift mental gears easily, effortlessly going from deep focus to relaxed awareness. You direct your attention consciously. You are happy, at ease, and fulfilling your potential. You are present and aware, open and responsive, experiencing inner freedom and flow.

A brain and nervous system that is becoming dysfunctional gives rise to hallmark patterns and characteristics. To name a few - excessive mental chatter, distractibility, low or agitated mood, psychological 'stuckness', the tendency to reactivity and be defensive, blame, irritability, fatigue, brain fog, addictions, compulsions, obsessions, anxiety, low motivation, deteriorating memory, cognitive decline, depression, absence of purpose, ill-health, lack of fulfillment, relationship difficulties.

So what kind of brain training can you do when symptoms of dysfunction are present?

There are two types of brain training:

1) Tech-Assisted Brain Training - Specific neurotechnologies, applied appropriately, in a way personalized to your desired outcomes, accelerate movement toward optimal brain function and health. I call these Tech-Assisted Brain Training.

2) Lifestyle-Assisted Brain Training - Positive lifestyle changes provide the building blocks for brain health. These are foundational.

Focusing on both is optimal.

Tech-Assisted Brain Training

Building on the foundations of a healthy lifestyle, we can use technology to accelerate and amplify our ability to harness the full potential of our brain and us.

Neurofeedback: This is a game-changer for many people. For many years, its use was restricted to clinics and expensive neurofeedback 5 to 7-day intensives. However, more affordable home-use neurofeedback technologies such as Sens.ai have become available.

Its headset and app provide real-time reading of a user’s brainwaves (neuro) and conversion into audio and visual cues back to the user (feedback). The system rewards (more cues) the desired brainwave patterns to reinforce strengthening (training). It works through the process of operant conditioning, a type of training that involves rewarding desired brain wave frequencies.

When repeated over time this rewires brain patterns. Sens.ai allows you to select and train a particular brainwave frequency, which is in turn associated with particular outcomes.

The key with neurofeedback is consistency of use (daily is ideal), personalization of the protocol (based on desired outcomes) and accuracy and fidelity of signal. Check out this article from Paola Tefler, Sens.ai’s CEO for further reading

Coherence training: Anytime you are feeling connected and in tune with another human being or an internal sense of harmony and aliveness, chances are you are in coherence. It’s a trainable state of optimal mind/body functioning in which our physiological systems function more efficiently and our emotional stability, mental clarity and cognitive functioning is enhanced. In coherence, we feel energized and engaged, calm and balanced.

Here is a quick way to access coherence.

Allow your attention to be based in the area of your heart. Allow your eyes and tongue to be soft. Breathe into the count of 5 through the nose and 5 on the out-breath. Repeat for a minute or two. This is what coherence feels like. It's a great way to bring your nervous system back into balance and prime your brain's responsiveness to neurofeedback.

Light Stimulation (photobiomodulation): Light is a powerful stimulator of biological processes. Transcranial photobiomodulation (tPBM) uses light of a particular near-infrared wavelength to activate mitochondrial function within the targeted cells and tissues of the brain. Several studies have found that tPBM can enhance brain cell oxygenation and improve cerebral blood flow, metabolic activity, neurogenesis, and neuroprotection by antioxidant and anti-inflammatory pathway activation.

To learn about Lifestyle-Assisted Brain Training and how positive lifestyle changes provide the building blocks for brain health keep reading this article, visit our blog.?

#sensai #superconcious #Superconsciousness #neuroscience #conciousleadership #leadership #mindfulness #neurofeedback #braintraining?

DISCLAIMER This content is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of such advice or treatment from a personal physician. All readers/viewers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding specific health questions. Neither Dr. Mark Atkinson or Sens.ai the publisher of this content takes responsibility for possible health consequences of any person or persons reading or following the information in this educational content. All viewers of this content, especially those taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, should consult their physicians before beginning any nutrition, supplement or lifestyle program.