Professional Well-Being Newsletter
A weekly nudge designed to help professionals enhance their brain health and mental strength.
Well-being is a journey, not a quick fix
View past newsletters below.
Assessing Burnout
Burnout is a condition that results in exhaustion, cognitive and emotional impairment, psychological distress, and physical symptoms.
Cannabis, Alcohol & Binge Eating
Binge eating may be increased by either cannabis use, alcohol use, or both. The relationship between overconsumption of food and cannabis and/or alcohol use is complex. If you struggle with binge eating, it may be exacerbated by cannabis or alcohol.
Dance with Me
Taking a structured dance program for at least 6 weeks improved psychological and cognitive health, and in some cases outperformed other forms of exercise, in all populations
Sleep & Brain Health
Getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night is likely to help protect your brain from stroke or dementia.
Vitamins & Cognition
A daily multivitamin and mineral supplement is likely protective against cognitive decline.
Exercise & Dopamine
Exercise, anything that raises your heart rate, improves your brain’s reaction time. Dopamine contributes to improved reaction time on cognitive tasks. By increasing dopamine levels, exercise may also improve depression symptoms and minimize age-related dopamine declines.
Meat v. Veggies, The Twin Study
A healthy plant-based diet offers a significant protective cardiometabolic advantage compared with a healthy omnivorous diet.
Exercise & Brain Size
Exercise is neuroprotective because it helps to maintain brain size as we age.
Wintertime Blues
Fresh starts like exercise, healthy food, better sleep, gratitude practice, therapy, and spending time with special people and pets can help with wintertime blues.
Aging, the Hippocampus, and Cognitive Decline
Stress management practices, including exercise and meditation, help protect against the harmful effects of stress hormones on the memory-processing hippocampus.
Impact of Childhood Stress
If you, or a child you know, has suffered from an adverse childhood experience, mental health treatments can help heal the impacts on brain and mental health.
The Caffeine/Alcohol Cycle Impairs Sleep
If you regularly use alcohol in the evening and caffeine in the daytime, you may be experiencing an interaction of these substances that negatively impacts the number of hours you sleep and that harms the quality of your REM sleep cycles.
Reduce Sugar to Protect Brain Health
Because neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease feature the failure to clear debris and toxins from the brain, and high-sugar diets can cause the same malfunction, reducing sugar intake is likely to protect brain health.
Gratitude is Protective Against Stress
A regular gratitude practice can reduce reactions to stressful events and hasten recovery from them.
Reframing Negative Events – Find Silver Linings
With practice, we can use reframing to disempower the challenges life throws at us.
Cognitive Benefits of Coffee
If you enjoy coffee, research indicates that it helps you transition from rest to activity by disengaging your automated default mode network and activating the parts of your brain that help you set and achieve goals.
Eustress v. Distress
Chronic stress causes digestive problems, compromises the immune system, raises blood pressure, and reduces cognitive function.
Magnesium & Brain Health
Magnesium in food can improve brain health and protect cognitive fitness as we age.
Exercise Intensity and Depression
Moderate intensity exercise promotes mental health by decreasing depression symptoms, and it promotes physical health by reducing inflammation in the body.