Key takeaways:
Our Chief Science Officer, Dr. Tommy Wood, joined Andrew Huberman on the Huberman Lab podcast to talk about how to keep learning and stay sharp at any age.
The episode, titled Accelerate Learning & Increase Cognitive Capacity, is incredibly informative, and we're excited to share our main takeaways. If you only take one thing away, make it this: your brain keeps adapting to whatever you ask of it, at 40 and at 75, and everything below is a way of asking a little more.
Plus two big updates from BetterBrain below!
Content Corner
Aging itself is not the driver of decline. Your brain keeps what you use and prunes what you stop using, so much of what we call decline comes from no longer giving the brain new, challenging inputs. Encouragingly, mental processing speed tends to hold steady until around 60.
Do things that are new, hard, and ideally social. Crosswords and sudoku are more relaxing than challenging. To actually build capacity, pick something that stretches you and mixes movement, thinking, and other people. Dancing has the best evidence, ballroom and square dancing especially, followed by ball sports, martial arts, and learning a language. Part of the trick is getting comfortable being a beginner, because the discomfort of making mistakes is what drives the learning.
You do not need to be in flow. Real learning, and even peak performance, often happens in what athletes call a clutch state, where it still feels like hard work. Do it in focused blocks, since hard mental work is really only sustainable in 20 to 30 minute chunks, and protect them from distraction. Even a phone in the room carries a cost.
Exercise is two brain tools in one. A short 20 to 30 minute jog or strength session right before mental work sharpens learning in the moment. Over time, harder aerobic work like intervals builds the hippocampus and memory, while resistance training builds the brain's white matter and decision-making. Do both.
Feed the brain, then test rather than guess. Whole-food patterns like the Mediterranean and MIND diets have the best evidence, and it is overall quality, not any single food, that matters. For supplements, Tommy's advice is to test your levels rather than guess, because the standard normal range is not the same as the optimal one. His clearest example: omega-3 and B vitamins only work when you have both, which is exactly why we measure homocysteine and other brain-specific biomarkers in Blueprint rather than blanket-recommend. Creatine and a basic omega-3 and B-vitamin stack have modest, real support, and our picks like Advanced DHA, Thorne Creatine, and MethylAssist are all in the Picks library.
Some of the biggest protections are indirect. Blood pressure, cholesterol, hearing, and metabolic health all shape long-term brain health, and avoiding serious illness matters because cognition tends to step down after a big sickness. One finding worth watching: the shingles vaccine has been linked to lower dementia risk across several large studies.
If you want to go deeper
Tommy also just published a book: The Stimulated Mind: Future-Proof Your Brain from Dementia and Stay Sharp at Any Age. It covers the same ground as the episode in more depth, built around his 3-S model of challenging the brain, feeding it, and letting it recover.
What's New at BetterBrain
HSA/FSA savings and Referral code benefits
Two exciting updates this week!
We've just launched a new referral system that benefits both you and whoever you're referring, which makes improving brain health even more accessible for you and your loved ones. Now, when you refer a friend or loved one, they will get Blueprint Essential Labs, 50+ biomarkers, for just $39, and once they sign up you will get a $50 credit toward your next Picks order.
As a reminder, Picks is our curated marketplace for all your brain health needs including science-backed supplements, tools, and services. Your personal referral link lives in your BetterBrain dashboard, with more details on how to share your code.
We're also happy to announce thatBetterBrain Picks is now HSA/FSA eligible. We partnered with TrueMed to handle the medical-necessity review, which means you can finally put pre-tax dollars toward the supplements on your plan. That is roughly 30% or more in effective savings, your 15% subscription discount still applies on top, and one approval covers a full year of purchases. Very few supplement companies can offer this. Details are on the HSA/FSA page.
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