Key takeaways:
The Framework Behind What We Do at BetterBrain
Our Chief Science Officer Tommy Wood published The Stimulated Mind in March 2026, and we think it's the most complete, accessible guide to dementia prevention that exists right now. A rigorous, science-backed model for understanding what your brain actually needs across a lifetime, written by someone who has spent his career studying exactly this.
At the center of the book is what Tommy calls the 3-S Model: Stimulation, Support (sleep and recovery), and Supply (of energy and nutrients). These aren't three separate suggestions. They're three categories of input the brain depends on, and Tommy's argument is that they reinforce each other in ways most people don't appreciate. They synergize, providing outsized benefits from even simple changes across all three.
BetterBrain is built around exactly this model. The 10 health systems and 11 practices our coaches work through with you are the operational version of what Tommy lays out in the book. Here's a breakdown of each S and one thing you can act on this week.
S1: Stimulation
The first S is the one that surprises people. Tommy's argument is that the brain, like muscle, needs ongoing challenges to maintain its structure. The variable that matters is novelty. Doing the same crossword every day is not stimulation in the sense your brain cares about. Learning a language, picking up a new instrument, or taking a class on something you have no prior context for, are stimulating.
This connects to what researchers call cognitive reserve: the buffer your brain builds through years of varied learning. Cognitive reserve is one of the strongest predictors of who maintains function in their 70s and 80s, even in the presence of pathology like amyloid plaques.
What you can do this week: Pick one thing this month that you don't already know how to do. It doesn't have to be heavy, a new recipe technique, a new fitness class, a new route on your morning walk that requires you to navigate. The brain treats novelty as a signal that it needs to keep adapting.
S2: Support (Sleep and Recovery)
The second S is the one most people know is important and still underestimate. Recovery, especially during sleep, is when the brain adapts and improves.
While you sleep, your brain runs a waste-clearance system that flushes out the proteins that build up during the day, including amyloid, the same protein that accumulates in Alzheimer's disease. Think of it like a dishwasher that only runs at night. Skip enough nights, or get consistently shallow sleep, and the dishes pile up. Disrupted sleep is associated with elevated pTau-217, lower cognitive scores, and higher long-term dementia risk.
Tommy is direct about this in the book: there is no supplement protocol that compensates for chronically poor sleep. And the work has to start with the structure of your sleep itself, meaning how much time you actually spend in the deep and REM stages, not just how many hours you're in bed. You can sleep eight hours and still miss most of the stages where the real restoration happens.
What you can do this week: Protect a consistent wake time. The wake time matters more than the bedtime because it anchors your body's internal clock. Pair it with morning light within 30 minutes of getting up, and you've done more for your sleep quality than most people manage with supplements or sleep trackers alone.
S3: Supply (Energy and Nutrients)
The third S is where a meaningful part of your biomarker picture lives. Your brain runs on a continuous supply of glucose, oxygen, omega-3 fatty acids, B vitamins, and a long list of micronutrients. Deficits in any of these can quietly compromise function for years before they show up as symptoms. When these markers are at optimal levels, they actively protect your brain, often for decades.
The first place to look is diet. What you eat every day is the primary driver of whether your brain gets what it needs. Targeted supplementation comes second, once you know where the gaps actually are.
The biomarkers we look at first in the Blueprint panel are homocysteine, vitamin D, vitamin B12, ferritin, and folate. These are the ones most likely to flag a nutrient supply problem before you feel it. And the fix is usually targeted, not maximal. Most clients don't need fifteen supplements, they need the right two or three, chosen based on what their labs actually show.
What you can do this week: If you haven't had a full brain-health panel in the past year, that's where to start. A nutrient gap rarely shows up in isolation, and the right intervention depends on seeing how everything fits together.
Why All Three Matter Together
The argument the book makes is that the components that support brain health aren't a long list of individual variables, they're an integrated network.
Stimulation without sleep doesn't give the brain time to consolidate. Sleep without nutrient supply leaves the brain trying to do its overnight work without raw materials. Nutrient supply without stimulation gives the brain everything it needs to grow but no reason to.
This is consistent with what BetterBrain's coaches see in practice. Clients who work hard on one of the three but ignore the others tend to plateau. The ones who address all three see the biggest shifts in biomarkers, cognitive scores, and how they actually feel.
The Bottom Line
The Stimulated Mind is the best communication of modern brain science available today, worth reading whether you're at the beginning of thinking about brain health or several years into a protocol.
Working with a BetterBrain coach to address all three Ss, across all 11 practices, is how you turn a framework into measurable results.