brain-wellness

Wishing you a Happy New Decade (and sharing eight brain wellness tips to make it possible)

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Ready for a Hap­py New Year  and Hap­py New Decade?

Here’s a spe­cial edi­tion of the Sharp­Brains month­ly e‑newsletter fea­tur­ing the lat­est on brain health and men­tal well-being — we hope you enjoy these tips and advice about what to do, and what not to, to pro­mote brain well­ness in 2020 and beyond:

Prac­tice Breath­ing & Com­pas­sion: Three evi­dence-based ways to devel­op a resilient mind

… and a Sport you love: Play sports (smart­ly) for a qui­eter brain

Chal­lenge your friends, often: For bet­ter mem­o­ry and think­ing skills at age 70, play cards and board games from age 11

… for exam­ple by solv­ing big prob­lems togeth­er: Mind­strong Health recruits slew of Sil­i­con Val­ley talent

When in trou­ble, con­sid­er ther­a­py before meds: To treat depres­sion, ther­a­py alone works bet­ter than ther­a­py com­bined with antidepressants

… your might even be able to access it pri­vate­ly, online: First Dig­i­tal Health For­mu­la­ry by Express Scripts includes CBT-based pro­grams to treat depres­sion, anx­i­ety and insomnia

Final­ly, beware “brain-boost­ing” sup­ple­ments, and don’t jump on direct-to-con­sumer tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion (tDCS) unless you under­stand Pros and Cons

… but always keep your mind open to awe and to new ways to tease your brain, see the world around us and even shape it!

 

Wishing you a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year and New Decade,

 

The SharpBrains Team

 

UW Medicine creates new Institute for Brain Health Solutions focused on cognitive aging, brain wellness and mental health

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$50 mil­lion gift is foun­da­tion for brain dis­or­ders research (UW press release):

“UW Med­i­cine is cre­at­ing the Gar­vey Insti­tute for Brain Health Solu­tions to devel­op effec­tive new treat­ments for brain dis­or­ders, such as depres­sion, post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der, addic­tion and Alzheimer’s dis­ease. The foun­da­tion­al $50 mil­lion gift to estab­lish the insti­tute was made by local phil­an­thropists Lynn and Mike Gar­vey [Read more…] about UW Med­i­cine cre­ates new Insti­tute for Brain Health Solu­tions focused on cog­ni­tive aging, brain well­ness and men­tal health

The Future of Brain Health & Wellness as seen by Joy Ventures, Total Brain, Vielight, Arrowsmith, Peak, CABHI and NeurotechX

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Dur­ing Expo Day at the 2019 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (May 7–9th), select­ed Sum­mit Spon­sors and Part­ners had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case their most promis­ing brain health & well­ness ini­tia­tives and solu­tions. We hope you enjoy their slid­edecks below! (and please remem­ber that the full record­ings are avail­able for pur­chase here)

8.30am. Dr. Hag­it Alon, VP Sci­en­tif­ic Affairs of Joy Ven­tures,  pre­sent­ed their “Neu­ro-Well­ness” phi­los­o­phy and approach to invest in sci­en­tif­ic research and in entrepreneurs: 

 

9.15am. Mar­cel Legrand, Chief Rev­enue Offi­cer of Total Brain, pro­vid­ed an overview of their new plat­form to bet­ter assess, under­stand and improve brain capacities:

 

10am. Dr. Lew Lim, Founder & CEO of Vielight, explored the lat­est on pho­to­bio­mod­u­la­tion and brain stimulation: 

 

11am. Deb­bie Gilmore, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of The Arrow­smith Pro­gram, dis­cussed plans to bet­ter equip 100+ schools help­ing stu­dents with spe­cial needs: 

 

11.45am. Xavier Louis, CEO of Peak, out­lined their plans to bring to mar­ket engag­ing, self-serve and evi­dence-based dig­i­tal therapeutics:

 

12.30pm. Mel Barsky, Direc­tor at Cen­tre for Aging + Brain Health Inno­va­tion (CABHI), announced a new call for inno­va­tion where CABHI will be fund­ing nov­el ideas from point-of-care work­ers that can help to improve brain health in old­er adults:

 

1.15pm. Syd­ney Swaine-Simon, Co-Founder of Neu­rotechX, intro­duced new learn­ing resources and their grow­ing com­mu­ni­ty of neu­rotech experts, entre­pre­neurs, and enthusiasts: 

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Best practices to navigate and implement the emerging brain health toolkit

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Two well-rec­og­nized prac­ti­tion­ers, at UMass and Wal­ter Reed, described their respec­tive well­ness and rehab ini­tia­tives, focus­ing on [Read more…] about Best prac­tices to nav­i­gate and imple­ment the emerg­ing brain health toolkit

Internet-driven innovation drives new digital health market, social change

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human-brain-as-a-central-processingBrain Health And Well­ness Inno­va­tion Dri­ves New Dig­i­tal Health Mar­ket, Social Change (Young Upstarts):

“Tech­nol­o­gy has com­plete­ly changed the prac­tice of med­i­cine, pro­vid­ing incred­i­ble imag­ing tech­niques and data that now play a key role in treat­ing injuries and ill­ness­es. Sophis­ti­cat­ed tools give researchers amaz­ing new insights that advance our under­stand­ing of human anato­my, includ­ing the brain. Stan­dard treat­ments for vir­tu­al­ly every seri­ous injury and ill­ness have been utter­ly trans­formed over the past 50 years due to tech­ni­cal advances. How­ev­er, these advances have added great­ly to the cost of research and treat­ment, and that’s par­tic­u­lar­ly true when it comes to the brain… One solu­tion to this chal­lenge lies in tech­nol­o­gy that is already glob­al­ly per­va­sive and rel­a­tive­ly inex­pen­sive to deploy: the Inter­net. Read arti­cle »

CES 2013: Combining brains and digital health in the workplace

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The Brain: On the Front­line of Dig­i­tal Health in the Work­place (Huff­in­g­ton Post):

“…It is esti­mat­ed that some two bil­lion world­wide, one-third of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion, suf­fer from brain-based health and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty chal­lenges with a relat­ed cost bur­den of more than $2 tril­lion. The broad scope of this mar­ket is empha­sized fur­ther when con­sid­er­a­tion is giv­en to [Read more…] about CES 2013: Com­bin­ing brains and dig­i­tal health in the workplace