Pointers for a Healthy Brain and Great Mental Health

Mental wellbeing is crucial for happiness!

• Exercise and challenge your brain – don’t be a couch potato
• Nourish your brain with a healthy diet, drink alcohol in moderation
• Enjoy physical activity
• Learn to manage stress and depression
• Relax and sleep well
• Have regular checks for blood pressure, diabetes, heart rate, cholesterol
• Do not smoke or use illegal drugs

Brain Foundation

Learn to manage anxiety, stress and depression

• Anxiety increases heart rate and blood pressure and can lead to stroke
• Acute stress – “flight or fight reaction” – is normal and short-lived.
• The brain produces substances that tell many organs of the body to speed up and perform more effectively, then it returns to normal.
• Some suffer chronic stress – a long-term problem.
• There is increasing evidence that stress actually damages the brain.
• The mechanism for this is thought to be the brain’s response to hormones that increase during periods of stress.
• These stress hormones can actually kill nerve cells in animals and are thought to do the same in humans.
• The steps you take to reduce stress are likely to preserve nerve cells and help maintain mental abilities.
• One of the toughest stresses is depression.
• 5-12% of men and 10-20% of women will suffer major depression at some stage.
• Major depression is not just sadness or grief, it is indescribably painful.
• Depression affects memory and slows brain metabolism.
• Major depression can lead to some degree of brain damage, affecting memory.
• Major depression is a medical emergency