12 brain facts that will change how you look after your mind
Your brain is 2% of your body weight but uses 20% of your total energy. It is the most expensive organ you own and it never shuts off.
Here are 12 neuro-facts that will tickle your brain:
1. Your brain cells shrink by 60% while you sleep. On purpose. This opens channels for cerebrospinal fluid to flush out metabolic waste. It is basically a power wash that only runs during deep sleep. Skip the deep sleep, skip the wash. Wake up foggy.
2. You make 40,000 to 50,000 eye movements per day. Every glance, every word you read, every time someone walks past. If the system coordinating those movements is even slightly off, the energy cost over a full day is enormous. That afternoon crash might not be what you ate. It might be what your eyes have been doing all day.
3. 80% of your brain's neurons live in your cerebellum. 69 billion out of 86 billion. Crammed into 10% of your brain's mass. And it does not just handle balance. It coordinates thinking, memory, emotional regulation, timing, and sequencing. Nobody talks about it. Nobody tests it.
5. A hot bath before bed is not indulgence. It is thermoregulation. Your core temperature needs to drop 1 to 3°F to initiate deep sleep. A hot bath causes vasodilation which actually speeds up cooling. The paradox: heating yourself makes you cool down faster.
6. Your brain has a backup fuel system that most people never turn on. When glucose delivery fails, ketones can cross the blood brain barrier and feed neurons directly. MCT oil (or plain coconut oil) converts to ketones in the liver and provides brain fuel within minutes. PET imaging showed it doubled brain ketone uptake in Alzheimer's patients without affecting glucose use.
7. A single 30 minute session of moderate cardio increases BDNF (your brain's growth factor) by 200 to 300%. One session. And a year of regular walking increased hippocampal volume by 2%, which is equivalent to reversing 1 to 2 years of age related brain shrinkage.
8. Your prefrontal cortex is the first brain region to go offline under stress. It handles decision making, working memory, and executive function. This is why you can still drive a car when you are exhausted but cannot compose an email. Simple tasks survive.
Complex tasks collapse first.
9. If you have persistent pain AND brain fog, that is not a coincidence. Pain competes for the same prefrontal cortex resources as thinking. Treating the pain may improve your cognition more than any supplement ever will.
10. There is a nerve running from your gut to your brain called the vagus nerve. 80% of its signals go
UP, not down. Your gut is not just digesting food. It is sending a constant status report to your brain. Bad gut = bad report = fog.
11. Hashimoto's antibodies (TPO) specifically attack cerebellar tissue. Your thyroid levels can be completely "normal" while your immune system is quietly damaging the brain structure that coordinates 80% of your neurons. Normal blood work does not mean normal brain.
12. Measurable brain changes from targeted stimulation have been documented within 5 days. Not months. Days. Your brain is not fixed hardware. It rewires constantly. The question is whether it is rewiring toward clarity or toward fog.
