Breathe
Breathing is THE most important thing we must do to live, and it is critical for brain health. Normal saturation of oxygen in the blood is 95 to 100%, below 80%, brain damage will occur. Without breath, without air, we would experience permanent brain damage within about 4 minutes and brain death after about 6 minutes. In other words, your brain is super sensitive to oxygen levels.
How we breathe can have a big impact on our physiology. Although most of our autonomic functions (heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, etc.) occur outside our conscious control, respiration or breathing is very much under our control. We can control our autonomic nervous system through our breath rate. Rapid, shallow breathing stimulates the fight or flight or sympathetic nervous system. Slow, deep breathing stimulates the rest or restoration or parasympathetic nervous system.
When the parasympathetic nervous system is more dominant, stress responses are lowered in the body. Cortisol levels drop, circulation to the brain and especially to the frontal parts of the brain improves bringing more nutrients and oxygen to the brain, inflammation levels drop, and focus, memory, mood, cognition, and other brain functions improve, and healing is facilitated.
Check out this video Dr. Yim put together for the 2023 Brain Health Challenge!!