- Even small things can have a big impact on your noggin.
Considering that your brain activity is what makes you you, you might think it’s a fairly stable organ. But that’s not true at all.
Your brain changes over your life — a lot. And sometimes, even seemingly innocuous small things we do every day physically alter our brains.
Some of them change your brain for the better, while others can cause some serious harm. Here are eight surprising everyday things that cause real physical changes in your brain.
We at Oddee are not doctors; we write about weird stuff. Please do not take anything in this article as medical advice and always consult with your healthcare provider before making lifestyle changes.
1. Working Overtime
We all have to put in extra hours at work from time to time, and doing so in moderation it doesn’t harm your brain (although it might sour your mood). Being constantly overworked, however, does cause physical brain changes.
Korean research has found that logging 52 hours of work or more per week results in the brain growing excess volumes of gray matter. This happens especially in the areas linked to planning, organizing, performing tasks, and managing your emotions.
Now, having more gray matter in these areas isn’t necessarily bad in itself. However, considering that overworking has been solidly linked to mental health disorders and brain damage, we’re ready to bet the changes are not for the best.
2. (Believing You’re) Multitasking
Some people boast about their ability to multitask. If you’re one of them, we have sad news for you — you’re literally incapable of multitasking.
The brain simply cannot multitask. While you may believe you’re focusing on several tasks at once, research has shown that your brain is actually constantly switching its whole focus from one task to another.
Doing this for extended periods damages your brain connections associated with attention span, emotional intelligence, creativity, and organizing information. Essentially, when your brain never has a chance to focus in depth at anything, it forgets how to do it.
3. Sitting
Sitting perfectly still should be a pretty safe activity, right? Wrong — it’s bad for your body and it’s bad for your brain.
According to Harvard research, sitting still for 6.5 hours or more a day causes the brain’s medial temporal lobe (MTL) to become thinner. Considering the MTL is responsible for forming new memories, it’s no surprise that couch potatoes may have trouble remembering things and may even develop dementia.
You really should get up from that chair and do a few squats.
4. Being Sad
We all have sad moments, days, and even weeks. Surprisingly, short periods of grief might actually be good for your brain.
To your brain, being sad is about the same thing as receiving mild brain damage, so it goes into fight-or-flight mode. Consequently, your thinking organ starts trying to repair itself, reinforcing existing brain connections and building new ones.
Things turn negative if your sadness never goes away, perhaps due to a life-shattering loss or chronic depression. In this case, your brain’s panic mode stop being the panic mode, and your brain begins to consider it the new normal.
As such, the stress responses become hardwired, leading to (strangely enough) reduced nerve growth as your pain focuses only on maintaining the regions needed for immediate survival. And that’s partly why chronic depression and grief are so hard to beat — your brain no longer knows how to function without being sad.
5. Drinking Coffee
A cup of joe perks you up in the morning, but do you know why? That’s because caffeine molecules block the adenosine receptors in your brain. Adenosine, just to be clear, is a chemical responsible for making you feel sleepy.
For your brain, however, this isn’t normal, so it starts building more efficient adenosine receptors. This leads to increased caffeine tolerance, which causes you to chug more cups every morning.
Eventually, you reach a situation where your brain is accustomed to adenosine both being blocked and constructing new ways to receive adenosine. And this is what leads to caffeine withdrawal, headaches, sleepiness, and a cranky mood.
6. Google
“Google is damaging your brain,” sounds like something your parents might tell you to get you to pick up a book. But they’re not entirely wrong — Googling to find things out does alter your brain.
Studies have shown that people who constantly rely on Google may start developing issues with long-term memory. This is due to the same reason we mentioned in the entry about multitasking. When your brain never has to commit anything to long-term memory, it stops maintaining the regions related to it and redirects that effort elsewhere.
Additionally, Googling answers to questions has been shown to be habit-forming. Basically, the more you Google, the more likely you are to Google more in the future because your brain stops trying to bother to remember things.
7. Porn
These days, online porn is easier to find that ever. In fact, it’s more difficult to stay away from it. While there’s a lot of conflicting information about porn’s health effects, it seems pretty clear-cut that it can change your brain structure.
Specifically, excessive porn consumption may make it more difficult for you to be satisfied — with anything. A German study found a direct connection between how much porn guys watch and the size of their striatum, or the brain region that forms a major part of its reward system.
The more porn the men watched, the smaller the striatum was. As such, their brains required ever-increasing amounts of stimulus (in every way) for them to release the feel-good chemicals.
8. Exercise
Jogging, lifting weights, or bicycling doesn’t just build your muscles. Exercise also buffs up your brain.
A study conducted by the University of Adelaide showed that the brain’s neuroplasticity increases significantly after just 30 minutes of vigorous exercise. Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to create new connections, which affects memory, learning, and motor skills.
As you exercise, your brain builds new connections and gets swole, just like your body.