What you do in the first hour after you wake up matters more for your brain than anything else you do all day.

I know that sounds like a big claim. But once you understand what’s happening inside your head first thing in the morning, I think you’ll agree, and you’ll want to treat that hour differently starting tomorrow.

Let me explain the science, and then walk you through the exact four-step routine I recommend.

Why the First Hour Matters So Much

While you sleep, your brain runs a kind of cleanup crew called the glymphatic system. It flushes out the cellular waste your neurons produce throughout the day. So the moment you wake up, your brain is at its cleanest and most primed state.

That’s exactly why the first hour of your day carries so much weight. Your brain doesn’t just react to your day; it helps create it. What you feed it in those early minutes, in thoughts and in actions, sets the tone for everything that follows.

Here’s how I recommend using that hour, step by step.

Step 1: Don’t Rush Out of Bed

When you open your eyes, resist the urge to jump up, and whatever you do, don’t reach for your phone yet.

Instead, take a few minutes to think through your life. I like to focus on three sets of thoughts.

First, reconnect with your passions and your long-term goals. Visualize the life you’re working toward and the things that bring you the most joy.

Second, remind yourself that you’re capable of far more than you give yourself credit for. Most of the people you admire got where they are through effort, not luck. You can achieve any goal you set for yourself.

Third, tell yourself that things today will work out in your favor. Picture having a great day. And remind yourself that even when setbacks happen, they often become the first step toward something better.

A couple of minutes of this is enough to shift your whole mindset before your feet even touch the floor.

Step 2: Breathe and Feel Grateful

Still in bed, spend about five minutes on slow breathing or a short meditation.

Use this time to think about all the wonderful things you already have in your life. As you take each deep breath, remind yourself how fortunate you truly are. This isn’t about ignoring your challenges. It’s about setting the emotional tone of your day with energy and enthusiasm instead of stress and rush.

This step matters more than it might seem, and here’s why.

Chronically high levels of the stress hormone cortisol are toxic to your brain. When cortisol stays elevated day after day, it acts almost like a slow poison to the hippocampus, the part of your brain responsible for learning and memory, and the very region that shrinks first in Alzheimer’s disease.

A few minutes of gratitude and calm breathing is one of the simplest ways to keep that stress response in check. You are, quite literally, protecting the part of your brain you rely on to stay sharp and remember your life.

Step 3: Get Up and Move

By now you’ve spent about seven minutes still in bed, and your mind is already in a good place. Now it’s time to actually get up and move.

If you can, do some exercise or yoga every morning. A short run, a bike ride, a swim, or a simple stretching routine gets your neurons firing even if it’s only for 10 to 15 minutes.

If morning exercise isn’t possible for you, use this time for your daily family routines instead, like getting the kids ready for school. Either way, you’re moving your body and your mind into the rhythm of the day. Consistency matters far more here than intensity.

And if you need to check your emails or messages, this is the time. But don’t waste any of your precious morning on social media.

There’s real evidence behind the exercise piece specifically. A 2024 study found that twelve weeks of exercise was associated with significant changes in the hippocampus and improved neuroplasticity, your brain’s ability to learn and adapt. Your muscles aren’t the only thing that gets larger and stronger when you exercise. Your brain does too.

Step 4: Fuel Your Brain

Once you’ve moved your body or handled your morning chores, it’s time to eat.

An ideal breakfast for a sharper brain is built around protein and fiber, with coffee or tea if you like. You can alternate through the week so it never gets boring. One morning, try an omelet with vegetables and a slice of whole-grain toast. Another, oatmeal with blueberries and milk.

Rotate in nuts, berries, olive oil, leafy greens, poultry, or fish when you can. These are staples of the Mediterranean diet, which research shows can slow cognitive decline.

None of this requires a complicated meal plan. It just takes a little intention before you walk out the door.

The Bigger Picture: You Can Shape Your Brain

Having gone through a series of rejuvenating thoughts, some movement, and a healthy breakfast, you head out the door full of energy, ready to take on the world.

Here’s what I most want you to remember. Neuroplasticity is the most remarkable property of the human brain. It means you are not stuck with the brain you have today. You can actively shape and strengthen it, improving both how you experience life right now and how sharp you stay decades from now.

The morning is the single best window each day to prime your brain for the highest levels of neuroplasticity. And the routine itself is not complicated:

Warm up your mind with positive thoughts for two minutes. Add five minutes of deep breathing and gratitude. Move your body for 10 to 15 minutes. Finish with a high-protein, high-fiber breakfast. Then step out of the house full of positive thoughts and energy.

These four simple morning steps will help you have a great day today and stay sharp for years to come.

Dr. Majid Fotuhi is a Harvard- and Johns Hopkins-trained neurologist, bestselling author of The Invincible Brain (USA TODAY Bestseller), and one of the world’s leading experts on brain health and cognitive performance. He has spent more than three decades studying the brain’s capacity for growth and repair. To discover your brain health score and receive a personalized 10-page report, take the free Invincible Brain Assessment at invincible.drfotuhi.com.

📺 Watch the full video on Dr. Fotuhi’s YouTube Channel.

Keep up with Dr. Fotuhi on LinkedIn & Instagram.

What if I told you that eating a donut can do something to your brain that looks a lot like what cocaine does to it?

I know that sounds dramatic. But by the time you finish reading this, I think you’ll see it differently. Because the truth is that sugar isn’t just fattening, it’s actually toxic to your brain. Obesity can shrink your brain at any age. And the new class of weight-loss drugs everyone is talking about may be doing something in the brain that goes well beyond the number on the scale.

Let me walk you through what actually happens when you eat.

The Sugar Spike and the Crash That Follows

When you eat sugar, your blood glucose rises. Your pancreas responds by releasing insulin, a hormone that works like a key, unlocking your cells so glucose can get inside and be turned into energy.

The type of food matters enormously here. Complex carbohydrates like fruits and vegetables cause a slow, gentle rise in blood sugar. But a donut or a bowl of ice cream causes a sharp spike, which triggers a flood of insulin. That surge of insulin then pushes your blood sugar too low, and that crash is what leaves you hungry and craving sugar again an hour later.

Repeat that cycle day after day, and it often leads somewhere you don’t want to go: diabetes and obesity.

Three Ways This Cycle Quietly Damages Your Health

Over time, this pattern of sugar spikes and insulin surges causes three deeper problems.

First, your cells can become resistant to insulin. Sugar starts building up in your blood instead of getting inside your cells where it belongs. This is called insulin resistance, and it’s an early step toward metabolic syndrome and diabetes.

Second, excess sugar binds to proteins throughout your body in a process called glycation. Too much glycation impairs how those proteins function. This is part of why patients with poorly controlled diabetes can lose sensation in their toes, lose their vision, or damage their kidneys to the point of needing dialysis.

Third, high sugar levels generate free radicals and inflammation everywhere — throughout your body and inside your brain.

Why Sugar Is Toxic to Your Brain

This is where it gets personal for me as a neurologist.

In animal studies, high sugar levels reduce the number of dendrites, the branches on your neurons that receive connections from other neurons. Fewer connections mean less communication between brain cells, and that shows up in real life as brain fog and memory loss.

A high-sugar diet also reduces neurogenesis, the birth of new neurons in your hippocampus, which is your brain’s memory center. In other words, sugar makes it harder for your brain to build the very cells you rely on to learn and remember.

And in human studies, obesity is consistently linked to a smaller hippocampus and a higher risk of disease.

Brain Shrinkage Happens at Every Age

Here’s what surprises most people: this isn’t just a concern for older adults.

Brain atrophy linked to excess body fat shows up across every age group. Even children are not spared. When obesity affects a young brain, some of the academic struggles we see in kids may actually be tied to changes in the hippocampus and other brain regions.

There’s also a circulation piece to this story. In people with multiple risk factors, researchers have found lower blood flow throughout the brain, along with lower scores on memory and other brain functions. Less fuel reaching the brain means less capacity to think, focus, and remember.

Why We Eat and Why Willpower Isn’t the Whole Story

So why do we eat in the first place, and what actually controls our eating behavior?

Part of the answer is hormonal. Chemicals in your blood, leptin, insulin, and others, tell your brain when to stop eating, while ghrelin, the “hunger hormone,” tells your brain to eat more.

But eating isn’t only about hunger. Your brain’s reward system, the same circuitry involved in addiction, lights up when you eat, and especially when you eat sugar. Over time, this creates craving and tolerance. You crave sugar constantly, and you need more of it to feel the same satisfaction you once got from less.

Your prefrontal cortex is supposed to act as the brake on all of this, the part of your brain that helps you stop after the first bite. But in obesity, the prefrontal cortex doesn’t work as well, and your willpower around food shrinks along with it.

I want to be clear about what this means: eating too much is not simply a lack of discipline. For many people, it reflects a genuine addiction to food. That’s not an excuse; it’s a starting point for real solutions.

Where Ozempic Fits In

This brings us to the newest piece of the puzzle.

Medications like Ozempic work in three places at once. In the pancreas, they increase insulin and lower a hormone called glucagon. In the stomach, they slow digestion so you feel full faster and for longer. And in the brain, they reduce appetite directly, quieting the cravings that drive addictive eating.

Many patients on these drugs describe something fascinating: a quieting of what’s been called “food noise,” the constant mental chatter about food that runs in the background all day. Researchers are now studying whether these same medications might help with Alzheimer’s prevention, and even with addiction to alcohol, smoking, or other behaviors, since they appear to turn down the brain’s reward and addictive pathways.

But turning down the reward system isn’t free of trade-offs. Some patients report depression, fatigue, or even brain fog. This is still very much an active area of research, and I’ll be watching it closely.

What I Want You to Remember

Your brain is not separate from the food you eat. Every sugar spike and every extra pound leaves a mark on every organ in your body and on your brain.

If you want to stay sharp, the path is clear. Eat healthy food in reasonable portions. Exercise often. When you are fit, your brain simply works better.

People have known the essence of this for centuries: healthy body, healthy mind. What’s different now is that, for the first time, we have the scientific data to understand exactly how it works and how you can use that knowledge to take back control of your eating and protect your brain for decades to come.

Dr. Majid Fotuhi is a Harvard- and Johns Hopkins-trained neurologist, bestselling author of The Invincible Brain (USA TODAY Bestseller), and one of the world’s leading experts on brain health and cognitive performance. He has spent more than three decades studying the brain’s capacity for growth and repair. To discover your brain health score and receive a personalized 10-page report, take the free Invincible Brain Assessment at invincible.drfotuhi.com.

📺 Watch the full video on Dr. Fotuhi’s YouTube Channel.

Keep up with Dr. Fotuhi on LinkedIn & Instagram.

I want to talk to you about the single most important thing you can do for your brain.

In my work as a neurologist, I describe five pillars of brain health: fitness, sleep, nutrition, mindset, and brain training. Each of them matters. Each of them, done well, makes your brain measurably stronger. But they are not equal, and by far the most important pillar of brain health is exercise and fitness.

I know that “exercise is good for you” sounds like advice you have heard a thousand times. What most people have never heard is why, what actually happens inside your brain and your cells when you move your body. Once you understand the biology, exercise stops being a chore on your to-do list and becomes more like a superpower.

Let me walk you through it.

Tiny Factories Power Your Cells, and You Can Build More of Them

Inside every one of your cells are small structures called mitochondria. Think of them as tiny factories that generate ATP, the energy currency of your body. Everything you do requires ATP. Your brain runs on it. So does your heart, your kidneys, your muscles, your skin. Nothing in your body works without the energy these little factories produce.

Here is the part that should concern you: with aging, both the number and the function of your mitochondria decline with every decade of life. It is one of the quiet engines of aging, operating silently in the background, long before you feel any difference.

And here is the part that should excite you: exercise reverses that decline.

When you exercise, you increase the number of mitochondria inside your cells. More factories. More energy. More capacity in every organ of your body, including your brain. If you want to rejuvenate every cell in your body at the most fundamental level, this is how you do it. And the best way to build more mitochondria is to build your fitness stamina.

More Blood Vessels, More Oxygen, More Nutrition

The second thing exercise does is expand your brain’s supply lines.

Physical activity increases the number of capillaries, the small blood vessels that deliver blood throughout your brain, your retina, your skin, and every other organ. More vessels mean more blood flow. More blood flow means more oxygen and more nutrition reaching every cell in your body.

Your brain is one of the most metabolically demanding organs you have. It depends, moment to moment, on a rich and steady supply of oxygen and nutrients. When you exercise regularly, you are literally upgrading the infrastructure that feeds it.

Exercise Grows the Part of Your Brain That Remembers

The third effect is, to me, the most remarkable of all.

Deep inside your temporal lobe sits a structure roughly the size of your thumb called the hippocampus. It is the ground zero for learning and memory in your brain. And when you exercise, you increase the number of neurons and synapses inside your hippocampus.

Let that sink in. Physical movement, walking, swimming, dancing, and playing tennis, causes new brain cells and new connections to form in the exact region that determines how well you learn and remember.

The downstream benefits are exactly what you would expect. People who exercise have a larger hippocampus and a larger cortex. They have better memory. They sleep better and enjoy a better mood. They are far less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease decades later and less likely to suffer heart attacks and strokes along the way.

There are very few things in medicine I would call a no-brainer. Exercise is one of them.

The One Number That Predicts Your Brain’s Future

So what does it actually mean to be “fit”?

Fitness means stamina and endurance. How many flights of stairs can you climb? How far can you walk without stopping? These everyday questions point to something we can measure precisely, a number called VO2 max.

VO2 max is the total amount of oxygen your body can consume at peak exercise, usually measured in milliliters of oxygen per minute per kilogram of body weight. It is the gold-standard measure of cardiovascular fitness and endurance.

And it turns out to be far more than a fitness statistic. People with a higher VO2 max have more mitochondria in their cells, a bigger hippocampus, and a far lower likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease. It is a remarkable measurement, a single number that can tell you, today, what is likely to happen to your brain in the future.

You can measure your VO2 max precisely at a gym or a doctor’s office. But there are also simple ways to estimate it: walk one or two miles, then record your time, your heart rate, and your weight, and calculate your approximate VO2 max. I strongly recommend that you measure it and use that number as your baseline. What gets measured gets improved.

How to Build Your Fitness: The Right Way

If you have not been active, the path forward is simpler than you think. Here is what I tell my patients:

Start slowly. Do not go from nothing to a lot in one week. Begin with walking, and increase the amount of exercise you do on a weekly basis. Gradual, consistent progress is what builds mitochondria and what prevents injury and burnout.

Be persistent and win the first step. Some mornings, you will wake up and not feel like going for a walk. Do not negotiate with that feeling. Just get up and go. Once you have put your shoes on and stepped outside, the rest is easy. The first step is the difficult part; everything after it takes care of itself.

Find the exercise you actually like. If you don’t enjoy the gym, don’t go to the gym, go for a walk. If you don’t like running, play tennis. If you don’t like tennis, take dancing lessons. Do something you genuinely enjoy, because the best exercise is the one you will still be doing three months from now. Remember: the more active you are, the more mitochondria you generate.

My Prescription

Exercise is the most important thing you can do for your brain, and you need to do it every day.

My recommendation is simple: remain active every single day. Walk 5,000 steps or more as much as you can. Get at least three hours of real exercise each week, and make sure it is something you enjoy.

Do this consistently, and you will be doing the best possible service for your brain and your body. You will live longer. And you will stay sharp well into your 80s and 90s.

Dr. Majid Fotuhi is a Harvard- and Johns Hopkins-trained neurologist, bestselling author of The Invincible Brain (USA TODAY Bestseller), and one of the world’s leading experts on brain health and cognitive performance. He has spent more than three decades studying the brain’s capacity for growth and repair. To discover your brain health score and receive a personalized 10-page report, take the free Invincible Brain Assessment at invincible.drfotuhi.com.

📺 Watch the full video on Dr. Fotuhi’s YouTube Channel.

Keep up with Dr. Fotuhi on LinkedIn & Instagram.

If you’ve kept up with your readings – meaning our blogs – you’ll recognize the term “brain shrinkers.” However, if you’re new to our posts and thus have no clue what a brain shrinker is, no worries, I’ll give you the gist. Brain shrinkers – what I’ll refer to as “shrinkers” moving forward – consist of anything that cause your brain to shrink over time. This includes psychological disorders such as depression and anxiety, chronic stress, lifestyle habits such as poor diet choices, lack of physical activity, drug and alcohol abuse, insomnia, so on and so forth. And while I could spend this time discussing why and how each shrinker damages your beautiful brain, I’m not going to do that. Instead, we’re going to talk about the one shrinker that’s most intoxicating. You know the one – booze.

Before you fall down the proverbial rabbit hole and start worrying that I’m going to tell you to stop drinking altogether, wait to hear what I have to say. Frankly, I don’t care about the single glass of wine that you have with dinner a few times a week. Even moderate alcohol consumption, defined by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) as one to two drinks (which can be one or two of  a) 12 oz. beer with 5% alcohol; b) 8 oz. malt liquor with 7% alcohol; c) 5 oz. wine with 12% alcohol; d) 1.5 oz. of 80-proof with 40% alcohol) per evening is not cause for serious concern, although some research has shown that it can increase a woman’s likelihood of developing breast cancer by 0.55% over the course of her lifetime. What I’m most concerned about, however, is a pattern of heavy alcohol use. No, that one night two weeks ago when you drank five or more alcoholic beverages on a single occasion (i.e., binge drinking) does not qualify. However, if you’re a man consuming 15 or more drinks in a week, or a woman consuming eight or more drinks in a week, that’s cause for concern.

Your Body on Alcohol

So, what happens when you drink? Well, as you down your first beer, that liquid gold is absorbed through your stomach lining into your bloodstream, followed by diffusion into your body’s tissues. After 20 minutes, your liver starts to metabolize the alcohol; one ounce every hour. So, if you drink until your blood alcohol content (BAC) reaches the legal limit (0.08), it’ll take about five and a half hours to leave your body. While the amount of time it takes to expel the alcohol from your system does not vary widely from person to person, several factors do effect BAC and the amount of time it takes to reach the legal limit.

Factors that affect absorption and tolerance:

Biological Sex: Dehydrogenase, the enzyme that breaks down alcohol in your tummy, is lower in women than in men. So, if Jill and her buddy Joe drink the same amount in the same amount of time, Jill will have a higher BAC.

Hormones: They impact your body’s ability to process alcohol. Drinking the same amount of alcohol during menstruation will result in higher BAC.

Body Fat/Weight: Women usually have greater percentages of body fat and lower percentages of water compared to their male counterparts. So, even if Ann and Dave weigh the same, Ann will likely achieve a higher BAC at a faster rate.

Your Brain on Alcohol

It takes roughly five minutes for alcohol to reach your brain and 10 minutes for you to notice behavioral/emotional changes. You know that feeling of euphoria that you get within several minutes of starting to drink? Yeah, that’s normal, it happens during the early stages. Subsequent stages of alcohol consumption include depression and disorientation (0.05 BAC), excitement (0.09-0.25), and confusion (0.18-0.3), to name a few; increase in BAC gives rise to new feelings and behaviors.

As I’m sure you know, drinking impacts several regions of the brain. When you’ve reached the “excitement” stage and are experiencing slurred speech, blurred vision, feelings of impulsivity, and loss of fine motor skills, that’s a result of your frontal, occipital, temporal, and parietal lobes being affected. If we’re being technical, what’s really happening is alteration of neuron membranes, enzymes, ion channels, and receptors. What’s important for you to know is that moderate drinking and rare binges won’t have any long-term effects on your brain. As Dr. Fotuhi states in his book “Boost Your Brain,” “drink no alcohol and your brain will experience the usual degradation that happens with age; drink some and you’ll see reduced damage; drink too much and injury to the brain shoots through the roof.”

That brings me to the topic of long-term brain damage. As I’m sure you’ve heard before, alcohol abuse kills brain cells. The areas impacted the most include your cerebellum, cortex, and hippocampus, the areas responsible for hand-eye coordination, balance, decision-making, and general task and cognitive performance. Abuse of alcohol also damages myelin (i.e., the protective coat around the axon of the neuron; the highway that enables chemical messages to get from one neuron to another), which results in severe nerve damage. Some alcoholics may even develop a disorder called Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, a disease that causes vision, coordination, walking, memory, and learning impairments.

Reminders:

–You can drink, just don’t overdo it. One glass of wine with dinner won’t do you any harm, but if you’re a male having more than 15 drinks within a week, or a female having more than eight drinks within a week, that’s way too much.

–Be nice to your liver. Remember, the liver starts to metabolize drinks after one hour. If you drink until your BAC reaches the legal limit, it’ll take around five and a half hours to completely expel it from your body.

–Different factors affect BAC. If you’re a female and you’re drinking with your male friend, remember that you will achieve a higher BAC in a shorter amount of time – blame higher percentage of body fat, hormones, and dehydrogenase levels!

-You drink too much, but you don’t know what your next step should be. Contact the National Drug and Alcohol Treatment Referral Routing Service, available at 1-800-662-HELP. You’re not alone. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

If you want to learn more about the effects of alcohol on the body or brain and how you can improve your brain function, check out Dr. Fotuhi’s Brain Fitness Program at mfotuha.maktechaccessories.com/.

This blog was written by Brianna Sirkis and edited by Dr. Majid Fotuhi.

References:

How Alcohol Impacts the Brain

Alcohol’s Effect on Brain and Behavior

Alcohol and Public Health

This is Your Brain on Alcohol

Factors that Affect How Alcohol is Absorbed and Metabolized

Stress levels are on the rise in America. While stress affects your day-to-day quality of life, it can also create a host of health conditions and impact your brain both structurally and functionally. In order to prevent this damage, it is important to understand the connection between your brain and stress. what stress is actually doing to your brain.

When you experience stress, the brain triggers the release of a hormone called cortisol into your bloodstream. Small amounts of cortisol can help you focus and take action in a high pressure situation; for example, you can function better when you sit down to take a test or when you meet a not-so-friendly bear on your camping trip. However, too much cortisol can shrink the brain, damage your memory capacity, and impair communication between different regions of the brain.

Damage to Memory

In a particularly stressful time of life, you may have more trouble remembering your doctor’s appointment or where you left your car keys. This is because stress directly impacts short term memory and can inhibit your ability to make long term memories. Studies show that even mild exposures to stress before a memory retention test result in worse scores. Research also shows that individuals with higher levels of cortisol had smaller hippocampi – the region of your brain that is critical for learning and memory. This is because stress can kill brain cells and make it harder for new neurons to survive. If you have fewer neurons in your hippocampus, your memory function will decline and over time you will have a higher risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease. Too much stress can erase the benefits of lifestyle factors that have been shown to be helpful for better cognitive performance and longevity (factors such as eating healthier, exercising, learning new skills, and sleeping well).

Damage to Executive Function

Not only does stress make it harder for you to remember the name of the coworker you just met, researchers found that individuals who experience chronic stress, have less gray matter (or brain volume) in their prefrontal cortexes. This region of the brain right behind your eyes is important for tasks such as planning, decision making, problem solving, self-control, and emotion regulation. This could explain why you experience more frequent mood swings, or why making a simple decision may feel more difficult during periods of high stress.

Damage to Communication

High levels of cortisol in the bloodstream, especially for long periods of time, can shrink and impair several areas of the brain. But stress can also change how the different brain regions communicate with each other. New research has found that chronic stress can result in the abnormal overproduction of myelin; a fatty substance that helps speed up the transmission of electrical signals between neurons.

Too much myelin can disrupt the brain’s sensitive balance of communication. Studies found that in people who developed PTSD, excess cortisol from stressful experiences led to an excess of myelin. The excess production of myelin may have strengthened the connection between the part of the brain responsible for learning and memory (the hippocampus) and the part responsible for fight-or-flight responses (the amygdala). A faster connection between these two areas can result in stronger fear responses to a given situation. These findings suggest that increased cortisol may make it more likely for someone to develop depression, PTSD, or other mental disorders because the excess myelin disrupted the brain’s normal communication patterns. This new area of neuroscience research suggests that when it comes to the brain, too much of a good thing – high levels of myelin and stronger connections — can potentially do more harm than good.

While reading this article, you may have felt your own stress levels rise as you learned about the negative impacts of stress. However, because of something called neuroplasticity, the brain has an incredible capacity to bounce back and repair itself. Introducing a few routines in your day-to-day life such as meditation, exercise, and getting the proper amount of sleep can significantly reduce your cortisol levels and protect your brain from the effects of stress. The good news is that a just few simple practices can significantly boost the level of neuroplasticity in your brain and make you feel calmer and happier.

If you’re interested in learning more about improving your brain function and memory, please visit us at www.neurogrow.com.

This blog was written by Lizzie Lewis, and edited by Dr. Majid Fotuhi.

Social media has changed the way we connect with each other and the ways we think about ourselves. The number of people using these platforms skyrocketed in recent years and society is only just beginning to understand its negative effect on body image. While there is no single cause of eating disorders, researchers have found strong links between social media use and the development of eating disorders.

Eating disorders are a major public health issue and can cause serious long-term health problems including heart failure, neurological damage, and gastroparesis. Sadly, data shows that the number of eating disorders cases is on the rise, especially among adolescents. 69% of children now have their own smartphones by the age of 12, and 72% of teens now use social media daily.  Only recently have studies begun to examine how those platforms impact an individual’s self-concept.

Since human beings are inherently social creatures, the lure of social media is clear. While these platforms offer many opportunities for new connections and interactions, they also allows for rampant social comparison. Popular culture promotes a particular type of appearance as “ideal”, which currently centers around thinness. Before social media, people may have seen this standard on TV or in magazines, but now they have the opportunity to actively engage with it in a social context.

Social media has a highly interactive format and encourages connection, not only with friends and peers, but also to various celebrities, models, and brands. It feels far more personal and offers the illusion that the user is less emotionally separated from the people they admire or aspire to emulate. Thus, these platforms have potential to create a deeper emotional impact on their users than they may be aware of.

While there are many positive aspects to these platforms, there is also a potential for significant damage. With its interactive format, social media offers a constant and active space to engage in social comparison. With photo and video editing features, beauty standards become increasingly unrealistic and can easily lead to severe body dissatisfaction. Young people, women especially, have been found to be particularly vulnerable to the effects of social media.

Teens, “tweens” (children aged 8-12), and young adults are in a time characterized by many bodily and developmental changes, all while attempting to figure out who they are. In this stage, they are wired to be more absorbed in their social relationships and they are more likely to internalize feedback they get from their surroundings as they attempt to form their own identity. Additionally, the parts of the brain responsible for reasoning and decision-making are not yet fully developed, which can increase the risk for confusing the perfectly edited photos or videos on social media for actual reality. Not only do these combined factors increase the risk for negative body image, but also the risk of developing anxiety and depression.

When examining this phenomenon, one study found that having even just one social media account was associated with greater thin ideal int

ernalization, body surveillance, and drive for thinness in a large sample of adolescent girls. Additionally, higher numbers of friends or followers and more time spent on social media platforms was correlated with higher level of body dissatisfaction. Other studies found that those who used social media consistently were more likely to have negative body image and engage in disordered eating behaviors such as food restriction and compulsive exercise. Overall, research has consistently shown that there is a strong connection between developing an eating disorder and social media use.

While there are multiple factors that determine whether an individual develops an eating disorder, research shows that use of social media increases the risk, especially in adolescents. This does not mean that you should never use social media. However, it does mean that you should be aware of how it may be affecting your own self-image and self-esteem in order to prevent this damage.

Disordered eating behaviors often go hand in hand with anxiety. If you are feeling unusually stressed out or anxious lately, check out this post to learn how neurofeedback at NeuroGrow Brain Fitness Center can help! To schedule an appointment, click here or email us at info@neurogrow.com.

This blog was written by Lizzie Lewis, and edited by Dr. Majid Fotuhi.