My grandma Mary often jokes that she’d forget her head if it wasn’t “screwed on”. At 81, she’s the same age as Joe Biden, and does not suffer from a cognitive disorder. However, it’s a phrase that has chimed with my millennial self with startling frequency lately as I’ve struggled to recall details of conversations and forgotten to reply to texts.
Forgetfulness is not something one can exclusively associate with older people: although President Biden’s power of recall is a study that has become especially acute of late. Research shows that growing numbers of younger people are suffering from impaired cognition, brain fatigue, distraction and memory problems, as our brains overdose on notifications and the culture of multitasking, which makes it seem implausible to ever fully switch off.
“Brains today are behaving as if they’re wading through treacle rather than air,” says Dr Sabine Donnai, a physician and founder of Viavi, a personalised health longevity service that offers brain mapping and cognitive tests. Overstimulation and chronic stress cause inflammatory responses in the brain. And the symptoms of overstimulation are “getting worse and worse”. She’s keen to stress the difference between a foggy brain and a forgetful one: in the former, the memory still exists, it’s just harder to retrieve. She estimates some 70 to 80 per cent of Viavi’s brain-mapped customers are suffering from inflammatory frazzle.
To combat this, many companies, from supplements to health spas, have made the brain, and specifically the prefrontal cortex – responsible for focus, attention and decision-making – their primary focus. Luxury wellness empire SHA, with resorts in Mexico and Spain, has created a seven-day Leader’s Performance programme that includes cognitive testing via an electrode-embedded helmet (from €6,000). Meanwhile, Dr David Spiegel, a psychiatrist and associate chair of psychiatry at Stanford University, offers self-hypnosis therapy via his app Reveri: at $24.99 a month, he says 93 per cent of members felt improved focus after just one interactive session.
I met Spiegel at a clinic in Mayfair, London, where he has agreed to try his hypnotherapy technique on me. He instructs me to roll my eyes into the back of my head and envisage broad skies, open lakes and other places where I might feel calm. He asks me where I am, how I feel, encourages me to envisage myself in a particular panicked scenario – and then verbally reassure my imagined self out loud.
Hypnosis is “the oldest Western conception of psychotherapy”, says Spiegel, who says that during hypnosis, the brainwave drops to a frequency of 4-14Hz. (Ordinarily, it’s 14-40Hz.) It’s different to meditation, which is focused around “being” rather than “doing”. “With hypnosis, you find a state of highly focused attention, which gives you more control of your mind and helps you be more effective and serene,” says Spiegel. After my session I felt as though I’d had a massage or an afternoon nap; the next day, I was more productive, less distracted and felt as if I had more time.
Other solutions are more mainstream. MasterClass was originally popular for its creative lectures – think Christina Aguilera on how to “elevate your stage presence” or Annie Leibovitz on photography. But in June, it released a three-part Brain Health series offering tips and tricks to boost cognition: it’s already become one of MasterClass’s most popular series of 2024. Dr Romila Mushtaq, a mindfulness expert and keynote speaker, published The Busy Brain Cure this year. Her “eight-week plan to find focus, calm anxiety and sleep again” has gone on to become a bestseller on Amazon and Audible. (Anyone can self-test their own weariness on busybraincure.com.)
Spiegel says that technology is without doubt the driving cause of our cognitive decline. “We’re scrolling rather than thinking or feeling,” says Spiegel, and a multi-tasking culture means we are less present than ever before. “We walk around looking at our phones, we use the commute to catch up on emails or play a game, we walk in the park on the phone to a friend, we watch TV and scroll Instagram and TikTok,” says Donnai, who says that overstimulation and stress shows up on brain tests much like a heartrate on an ECG.
Our nervous system is over-activated, putting our minds “in a constant state of high vigilance”, adds Donnai. It’s like fight or flight mode, where the mind loses the ability to process or retain peripheral details. Apps such as TikTok also feed shortened attention spans, providing rapid dopamine hits to the brain which becomes accustomed to being constantly satiated.
Tech reliance means we don’t have to actually bother remembering things either. Birthdays can be recalled via Facebook; iCal tells us our day’s agenda. Typing, rather than handwriting, is also problematic, especially for younger generations who rarely learn using a pen: Donnai says we are 40 per cent less likely to retain information if the brain doesn’t have to physically create letters on a page.
So what can we do? A key takeaway of Mushtaq’s book is sleep. Brains, she writes, are “wired and tired” – a disrupted circadian rhythm creates neuro-inflammation, and prevents the brain flushing out waste toxins overnight, which instead build up like plaque, creating a fog. She suggests a digital detox 30 to 60 minutes before bed, and finding other calming rituals to replace screen time.
Natural sleep aids can help: magnesium powders and sleep drinks are currently trending and often infused with lavender or calming ashwagandha. “Sleep is very important to convert short term to long term memory,” says Dr Bruno Ribeiro, head of the cognitive development and brain health unit of SHA. “If we don’t sleep enough, over time we become impaired.”
Some claim that supplements can also bolster brain function. Heights, launched in 2020, has an in-house team of neuroscientists and uses ingredients informed by more than 700 clinical studies – each dose of its Vitals supplement contains 20 nutrients, including blueberry extract, to feed and flush out the mind “like a car wash”, according to co-founder Dan Murray-Serter. Costing £40 a month on subscription, it can take up to three months to see results, according to Murray-Serter. Entrepreneur Steven Bartlett – known for his The Diary of a CEO book and podcast – is a fan.
The supplements market is flooded with other, targeted options. Healf, an e-store for all things wellness, has a dedicated Mind section that sells shots from Ketone-IQ which claim to enhance focus, and adaptogenic lion’s mane dairy-free lattes, to combat procrastination. In the past six months, sales across the Mind category have outperformed both Eat and Move. Such is the array, it makes the choices quite bamboozling. If in doubt, Donnai suggests simply taking omega 3 and Vitamin D3. “I’ve never mapped a brain that isn’t deficient in both,” she says. Mushtaq advises taking both before bed, instead of with breakfast, to boost absorption.
Eating good fats such as avocado oil and olive oil, and anti-inflammatory foods is also recommended: the MasterClass series dedicates a section of each episode to recipe suggestions, with oils, turmeric, blueberries and cherries high on shopping lists. The brain, says Donnai, is a fatty organ: it needs to be nourished with healthy fats. It’s not exactly rocket science.
Predictably, however, the best thing you can do is cut your screen time. I’ve turned off all notifications on WhatsApp, email and Instagram and found it helpful to avoid the sinkhole of spam. I drink a sleep cocoa from Ten PM, listen to a sleep story via Calm and also wear an Ōura ring; I’ve found even an extra 20 minutes of shut-eye bolsters my morning metrics and subsequent focus. As for my grandma, she opts for an old copy of Reader’s Digest and (confusingly) a cup of black coffee. Is she over-caffeinated? Sure. Overstimulated? Forget it.