Lets talk about the brain. If you are or have ever been a client of mine, you know how much emphasis I put on the brain: how it works, how it heals, what is good for it, what isn’t good for it, etc. Understanding the brain, in my opinion, is essential to mental health and wellness. If we don’t understand why the brain does what it does and how it does what it does, then we are essentially trying to drive a vehicle of some kind without any knowledge of how to do so. For example, I can’t fly a plane. If you put me in a plane, I will undoubtedly crash said plane if I ever even figure out how to get it in the air, which is also doubtful. However, I can drive a car (not a stick shift) and I feel very confident that I will drive this car safely. I can also drive vehicles that work similarly to my car, which means I don’t have to have complete knowledge of the vehicle in order to drive it, I just need a good working knowledge. This is how I think about the knowledge we have about our brains. Clearly, unless you’re a highly trained Neurologist, you’re likely not going to know everything there is to know about the brain. However, it doesn’t take being a Neurologist in order to study and learn some really good and helpful information about the brain.
So, lets get started. I’m pooling some good information from different medical websites in order to give you some of the best information. Please see the end of this blog for the references.
Sixty percent of the human brain is made of fat. Not only does that make it the fattiest organ in the human body, but these fatty acids are crucial for your brain’s performance. Make sure you’re fueling it appropriately with healthy, brain-boosting nutrients.
Your brain isn't fully formed until age 25. Brain development begins from the back of the brain and works its way to the front. Therefore, your frontal lobes, which control planning and reasoning, are the last to strengthen and structure connections.
Your brain’s storage capacity is considered virtually unlimited. Research suggests the human brain consists of about 86 billion neurons. Each neuron forms connections to other neurons, which could add up to 1 quadrillion (1,000 trillion) connections. Over time, these neurons can combine, increasing storage capacity. However, in Alzheimer’s disease, for example, many neurons can become damaged and stop working, particularly affecting memory.
Brain information travels up to an impressive 268 miles per hour. When a neuron is stimulated, it generates an electrical impulse that travels from cell to cell. A disruption in this regular processing can cause an epileptic seizure.
On average, your spinal cord stops growing at 4 years old. Your spinal cord, which consists of a bundle of nervous tissue and support cells, is responsible for sending messages from your brain throughout your body.
The spinal cord is the main source of communication between the body and the brain. ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, causes the neurons in the brain and spinal cord to die, impacting controlled muscle movement. Another disease that affects both the brain and the spinal cord is multiple sclerosis (MS). In MS, the immune system attacks the protective layer that covers nerve fibers, causing communication problems between the brain and the body.
The human brain weighs 3 pounds. (That’s about as much as a half-gallon of milk.) However, size does not always imply intelligence. Men tend to have larger brains than women.
A piece of brain tissue the size of a grain of sand contains 100,000 neurons and 1 billion synapses. However, damage to neurons can have great impact. During a stroke, for example, blood is not able to get oxygen to the brain. As a result, brain cells can die, and abilities in that particular area of the brain can be lost. Similarly, Parkinson’s disease occurs when the cells of a part of your brain called the substantia nigra start to die.
The human brain can generate about 23 watts of power (enough to power a lightbulb). All that power calls for some much-needed rest. Adequate sleep helps maintain the pathways in your brain. Additionally, sleep deprivation can increase the build-up of a protein in your brain that is linked to Alzheimer’s disease.
Multitasking is impossible. When we think we’re multitasking, we’re actually context-switching. That is, we’re quickly switching back-and-forth between different tasks, rather than doing them at the same time. The book Brain Rules explains how detrimental “multitasking” can be: Research shows your error rate goes up 50 percent and it takes you twice as long to do things.
About 75% of the brain is made up of water. This means that dehydration, even as small as 2%, can have a negative effect on brain functions. Dehydration and a loss of sodium and electrolytes can cause acute changes in memory and attention. To prevent any loss of body or brain function, take steps to keep your body properly hydrated.
Headaches are caused by a chemical reaction. Chemical activity in your brain, the nerves or blood vessels surrounding your skull, or the muscles of your head and neck (or some combination of these factors) can play a role in primary headaches. Serotonin is a chemical necessary for communication between nerve cells. When serotonin or estrogen levels change, the result for some is a headache or migraine. Serotonin levels may affect both sexes, while fluctuating estrogen levels affect women only.
It is a myth that humans only use 10% of our brain. We actually use all of it. We’re even using more than 10 percent when we sleep. Although it’s true that at any given moment all of the brain’s regions are not concurrently firing, brain researchers using imaging technology have shown that, like the body’s muscles, most are continually active over a 24-hour period.
Cholesterol is key to learning and memory. The brain has a higher cholesterol content than any other organ. In fact, about 25% of the body’s cholesterol resides within the brain. The brain is highly dependent on cholesterol, but its cholesterol metabolism is unique. Because the blood-brain barrier prevents brain cells from taking up cholesterol from the blood, the brain must produce its own cholesterol. The brain’s cholesterol is much more stable than the cholesterol in other organs, but when it breaks down, it is recycled into new cholesterol right in the brain.
Dreams are believed to be a combination of imagination, physiological factors, and neurological factors. The limbic system in the mid-brain deals with emotions in both waking and dreaming and includes the amygdala, which is mostly associated with fear and is especially active during dreams. Dreams are proof that your brain is working even when you are sleeping. The average human has about 4-7 dreams per night.
Short term memory lasts about 20-30 seconds. This has to do with your brain’s capacity for holding small amounts of information in the active mind. The brain keeps this information in an available state for easy access, but only does so for about a minute and a half. Most people hold memory for numbers around 7 seconds, and memory for letters around 9 seconds. In addition, the brain can store up to 7 digits in its working memory. That is why the telephone numbers in the United States are 7 digits long. Learn more about Memory Disorders.
A brain freeze is really a warning signal. Officially called a sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia, a brain freeze happens when you eat or drink something that’s too cold. It chills the blood vessels and arteries in the very back of the throat, including the ones that take blood to your brain. These constrict when they’re cold and open back up when they’re warm again, causing the pain in your forehead. This is your brain telling you to stop what you are doing to prevent unwanted changes due to temperature.
The brain can’t feel pain. There are no pain receptors in the brain itself. But the meninges (coverings around the brain), periosteum (coverings on the bones), and the scalp all have pain receptors. Surgery can be done on the brain and technically the brain does not feel that pain.
Alcohol effects your brain in ways that include blurred vision, slurred speaking, an unsteady walk, and more. These usually disappear once you become sober again. However, if you drink often for long periods of time, there is evidence that alcohol can affect your brain permanently and not reverse once you become sober again. Long term effects include memory issues and some reduced cognitive function.
Your brain is a random thought generator. In 2005, the National Science Foundation published an article regarding research about human thoughts per day. The average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 95% are exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before and about 80% are negative.
Your brain uses 20% of the oxygen and blood in your body. Your brain needs a constant supply of oxygen. As little as five minutes without oxygen can cause some brain cells to die, leading to severe brain damage. Also, the harder you think, the more oxygen and fuel your brain will use from your blood – up to 50%. Every minute, 750-1,000 milliliters of blood flows through the brain. This is enough to fill a bottle of wine or liter bottle of soda.
Exercise is just as good for your brain as it is for your body. Aerobic exercise raises your heart rate and increases blood flow to your brain. As your increased breathing pumps more oxygen into your bloodstream, more oxygen is delivered to your brain. This leads to neurogenesis—or the production of neurons—in certain parts of your brain that control memory and thinking. Neurogenesis increases brain volume, and this cognitive reserve is believed to help buffer against the effects of dementia. It has been noted that exercise promotes the production of neurotrophins, leading to greater brain plasticity, and therefore, better memory and learning. In addition to neurotrophins, exercise also results in an increase in neurotransmitters in the brain, specifically serotonin and norepinephrine, which boost information processing and mood.
The visual areas of the brain are in the back. The part of your brain responsible for vision, the occipital lobe, is located in the back. This is why if you get banged in the back of your head, you will see stars. The left side of your brain controls the vision on your right side, and vice versa. Your brain also processes sound on the opposite sides of the head.
Reading out loud uses different brain circuits than reading silently. Reading aloud promotes brain development. Children first learn to read by speaking words out loud. Once that knowledge is established, then they learn to read to themselves. It’s indeed one of the strange facts about the brain because we usually teach our children to read and talk politely. But to promote brain development in your child, you should read and talk aloud in front of them.
Sleep is imperative. Your body and brain require rest in order to function properly. Judgement, memory, and reaction time can all be impaired when someone does not have enough sleep. This is due to the fact that sleep deprivation kills brain cells. Proper sleep is also essential for memory retention. During sleep, the brain accumulates all the memories from the day. Feeling tired? Go ahead and yawn. Yawning cools down the brain, research suggests. Sleep deprivation raises brain temperature.
In general, men’s brains are 10% bigger than women’s, even after taking into account larger body size. However, the hippocampus, the part of the brain most strongly linked to memory, is typically larger in women.
Albert Einstein’s brain weighed 2.71 pounds (1,230 grams) — 10% smaller than the average of 3 pounds (1,360 grams). However, the neuron density of his brain was greater than average.
Neanderthal brains were 10% larger than our Homo sapiens brains.
Human brains have gotten significantly smaller over the past 20,000 years. The lost volume is equivalent to the size of a tennis ball.
The hippocampus, the part of the brain considered the “memory center,” is significantly larger in London cab drivers. This is due to the mental workout they get while navigating the 25,000 streets of London.
Chronic stress and depression are rampant in modern life. Either can cause measurable brain shrinkage.
The modern diet is low in omega-3 essential fatty acids. Low levels of omega-3s result in brain shrinkage equivalent to two years of structural brain aging.
Since the late 1800s, the average IQ have gone down 1.6 points per decade for a total of 13.35 points.
Unexpectedly, millennials (anyone born between 1981 and 1996) are more forgetful than baby boomers. They are more likely to forget what day it is or where they put their keys than their parents.
Brain cells will cannibalize themselves as a last ditch source of energy to ward off starvation. So, in very real ways, dieting, especially low-fat diets, can force your brain to literally eat itself.
Over 140 proteins in the brain are negatively impacted by exposure to electromagnetic frequencies, the kind emitted by your cell phone and other electronic devices.
Relying on GPS to navigate destroys your innate sense of direction, a skill that took our ancestors thousands of years to develop. When areas of the brain involved in navigation are no longer used, those neural connections fade away via a process known as synaptic pruning.
The brains of introverts and extroverts are measurably different. MRIs reveal that the dopamine reward network is more active in the brains of extroverts while introverts’ brains have more gray matter.
There are approximately 200 known cognitive biases and distortions that cause you to think and act irrationally.
Memories are shockingly unreliable and change over time. Emotions, motivation, cues, context, and frequency of use can all affect how accurately we remember something. This includes “flashbulb memories” which occur during traumatic events.
Of the thousands of thoughts a person has every day, it’s estimated that 70% of this mental chatter is negative — self-critical, pessimistic, and fearful.
Ninety-five percent of your decisions take place in your subconscious mind.
A blood-brain barrier protects the brain by preventing many foreign substances in the vascular system from reaching the brain. But the barrier doesn’t work perfectly and many substances sneak through, some faster than others. Nicotine rushes into the brain in a mere 7 seconds. Alcohol, on the other hand, takes 6 minutes.
Our brains crave mental stimulation, sometimes to a fault. Hilariously, men especially would rather give themselves electric shocks than sit quietly in a room with only their thoughts.
The brain in your head isn’t your only brain. There’s a “second brain” in your intestines that contains 100 million neurons. Gut bacteria are responsible for making over 30 neurotransmitters, including 95% of the body’s serotonin, the so-called “happy molecule.”
I know these are a lot of different facts about the brain, but I wanted to include as many as I could to show just how complex and crazy the brain is! There’s so much about our brains that we don’t know about.
For example, so many people don’t realize that our guts are responsible for 95% of our body’s serotonin. We think it’s just a “chemical in the brain” and taking a medication will fix it all. But just imagine what would happen if people who focused on their gut health and really worked to balance out their guts. I can only wonder just how much serotonin a healthy gut would produce, and then I can only imagine what that might do for the brain.
Did you notice that 95% of our decisions take place in our subconscious mind? That means that many of the things we suppress and stuff down, such as thoughts, emotions and trauma, will actually influence and/or make our decisions for us. So even when we like to think we aren’t affected by something or we don’t need therapy for something, those somethings are still making a huge impact on our lives.
70% of our “mental chatter” is negative. 70%! It’s really no wonder we have so many anxious and depressed people these days, right? The issue is that we fall under the belief that we are just victims to our brains, that we aren’t able to change how our brain thinks and what it thinks. But I challenge this belief, because as you’ve read from all of these facts, the brain is extremely intelligent. It is capable of things we can’t even fathom. The latest research shows that the brain’s memory capacity is in the petabyte range. A petabyte is a quadrillion, or 1015, bytes. Astoundingly, this is about the same amount needed to store the entire internet! The human brain is capable of 1016 processes per second, which makes it far more powerful than any existing computer. It has been discovered that our brains have the capacity to change throughout our lifetimes due to a property known as brain plasticity. The brain can continue to form new brain cells via a process known as neurogenesis. This means that our brains are capable of changing, of adapting, of forming new brain cells and learning new things. So, for us to say that we can’t change our thoughts is simply untrue and based in a lack of knowledge about how our brains work and what they are truly capable of.
Don’t misunderstand me. I know it’s difficult to challenge and change the way we think. I know emotions cloud our ability to think in certain ways. However, it isn’t impossible and if we put in the work towards it, it will be worth it in the end.
The brain is the 2nd fastest healing organ next to the skin. To underestimate our brains is such a mistake…one that we all make from time to time. I hope as you read this you will begin giving your brain more credit and possibly see how your own lack of brain knowledge might be hindering you from truly healing, changing and living.
Until Next Time!
April
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