Brain Health

Lifestyle psychiatry includes the 6 pillars of lifestyle medicine, all of which partly contribute to brain health across the lifespan. Brain development and well-being across a lifetime require more than treatment or diagnosis; rather, they involve lifestyle factors that offer continual maintenance and improvement of the mind and body. Chronic inflammation in the brain, spine, and/or other nervous tissue (neuroinflammation) has been linked to a variety of brain-related issues, and close investigation of this process can allow us to understand the ways through which mental health, connectivity, and the gut microbiota interact with the brain. Neuroinflammatory factors significantly impact brain health by influencing a diverse range of neural mechanisms in various psychiatric/neurological disorders. Likewise, social connectivity, resilience, meaning in life, happiness, compassion, and spirituality all have implications for neuroinflammation and impact brain health. The brain gut microbiota axis also fundamentally influences brain health and neuroinflammation. We bring together the concepts of neurological disorder, connectivity, and the brain gut microbiota axis to illustrate the mechanisms and importance of brain health within lifestyle psychiatry.