If you zoom out far enough, the brain is an improbable thing. A few kilograms of organic matter, assembled by time and chance, capable of thought, memory, love, and mathematics.
And like all complex systems in nature, it depends on balance, a delicate dance between chaos and control.
We often talk about what influences brain health: sleep, exercise, nutrition, stress. Yet we rarely think about them in terms of what our biology allows us to control.
Sleep, for instance, is essential. Without it, the brain falters. But whether you pay attention to it or not, you will sleep. You may fight it, shorten it, or damage its quality, but eventually your body will take over. Sleep is not optional. It is enforced.
Exercise, on the other hand, is entirely different. It is one of the most powerful tools for brain health, improving blood flow, stimulating new neurons, and keeping the mind alert and adaptable. Yet your body will never force you to do it. Evolution taught us to conserve energy, not spend it. Your biology encourages stillness, saving energy for survival. But here lies something profound: control.
You can choose to move. You can choose to overcome the ancient instinct to rest. That choice, to move, is one of the few levers of brain health you can pull entirely by will.
Then there is stress. Often portrayed as the enemy, but in truth, it is part of life itself. Every living system reacts to challenge. Stress is how the body learns and adapts. In biology, we call this hormesis, the idea that small amounts of stress make us stronger. The problem arises only when stress becomes constant, when the system never returns to balance.
We cannot eliminate stress, and to try would be to deny what it means to be alive. The goal is not a life without stress, but a life that knows how to recover from it.
And that brings us to something often overlooked: harm avoidance. Brain health is not only about what you add, but also about what you remove. Many people harm the brain daily through routine. The greatest culprit is sugar. Not only white sugar, but honey, brown sugar, coconut sugar, all the natural-sounding variations that hide the same molecular danger. Sugar inflames and damages the smallest vessels that feed the brain, disrupting the fragile network that carries oxygen and nutrients.
Then comes the gut. When the gut barrier weakens due to gluten, processed seed oils, or certain preservatives, toxins can enter the bloodstream. Once that barrier fails, another begins to suffer, and what begins in the gut does not stay there. A leaky gut often leads to a vulnerable brain.
So what should one do?
The answer is simple. Do not eat sugar. Move.
These two actions alone will do more for your brain than any elaborate therapy or exotic supplement.
Supplements are valuable, but their name reveals their nature. They supplement. They add to something that already exists. They cannot replace movement or cancel daily harm.
If you want to protect the most complex structure in the known universe, start with what you can control. Move your body. Avoid harm. Let sleep happen naturally. Stress will always come and go, as it should, and through it, you will grow.
And to Bryan Johnson, whose “Don’t Die” project I deeply admire, I would say this. You are right that sleep is vital. But I believe the greatest key to brain health lies not in sleep, which the body will force upon you, but in movement and in the conscious avoidance of harmful compounds. Exercise and clean living are the choices fully within our control. They are the deliberate acts that keep the brain alive, adaptable, and extraordinary.
