Dr N.K. Venkataramana, Founder-Chairman of Brains Super Speciality Hospital, says his book, The Secret of Brain Wellness, Way Forward to a Healthy Living, Healthy Life a compilation of information about the various functions of the brain, which he describes as the crown jewel in creation and evolution. He notes that despite its importance, very few people truly understand how it functions and its full capabilities.
Understanding Brain Function
Dr Venkatramana believes that very little of the brain’s potential is known and utilised in our lifetimes. Therefore, he decided to compile brain functions in a simple way, based on how the brain works rather than complex scientific terms, to make it understandable for everyone. He titled it “The Secret of Brain Wellness” because understanding the brain’s functions, capabilities, mysteries, and phenomenal abilities fosters respect for it.
He elaborates that once this respect is developed, there is a need to preserve, protect, promote, and nurture the brain to utilise its capabilities fully in life. This, he says, is the wellness aspect, sustaining the brain’s ability by promoting its functionality and avoiding potential damage. A brain in good condition can then be used to navigate life and its challenges effectively.
Dr Venkatramana states that the book includes lifestyle advice, certain practices, and do’s and don’ts to help people understand how to best utilise this incredible gift. He believes this understanding empowers individuals to be recognised as intellectuals, innovators, and human beings in society.
Dr Venkatramana explains that the brain is responsible for all internal needs and external demands, including social obligations and interactions with nature, the universe, and higher levels of connectivity like spirituality. He describes it as a single organ connecting every cell in a bilateral way, giving directions and receiving feedback to ensure optimal performance.
Brain-Body-Mind Connection
Dr Venkatramana emphasises that the brain, body, and mind function as a single entity. Therefore, a healthy body and healthy thinking are necessary for the brain and mind to work optimally. This involves certain physical aspects like eating healthily, engaging in physical exercise, getting proper sleep, maintaining proper activity levels, and adopting a proper lifestyle. He also highlights the importance of healthy thinking and utilising one’s thoughts effectively. Ultimately, he says, thought leads to action, action to experience, and experience to memory, which in turn facilitates learning and the creation of new ideas and innovations. This has allowed humanity to make itself comfortable in the world over time.
However, Dr Venkatramana cautions that this process can also have negative consequences, leading to destruction and damage, as seen in communities, societies, and nations due to wrong perceptions, thinking, and deeds. He believes that the right physical activity, health, way of thinking, and emotions can put things in the right perspective.
Dr Venkatramana notes that emotional health plays a significant role in understanding context and reacting appropriately to achieve the right outcomes. This involves physical lifestyle aspects, mental exercises, and practices like yoga and pranayama. He reiterates that proper sleep is essential for the brain, along with a healthy diet, moderation in certain foods, and regular exercise for both body and brain.
Importance of Understanding and Expression
Dr Venkatramana stresses the importance of comprehensive understanding, good attention, and effective expression. He advises deliberately avoiding negative emotions like jealousy and anger, and comparisons, advocating for universal love to foster good emotions, wellbeing, and understanding, which can resolve discrepancies and promote peace and harmony.
Dr Venkatramana states that social relations significantly affect emotional health, encompassing relationships with family, partners, society, colleagues, and even the government and country. He emphasises that relationships between communities and nations are also crucial. Constructive communication and criticism, fostering collaboration, can be very productive and creative.
However, Dr Venkatramana warns that destructive attitudes, wrong perceptions, and misunderstandings can lead to emotional disturbances like anger, jealousy, comparison, and hatred, which spoil social relations. This can escalate to hatred and a breakdown of collaboration, leading to conflict and mishaps.
Positive and Negative Relationships
Dr Venkatramana suggests that these negative outcomes can be prevented by pausing, thinking, and understanding, as good social relationships can change perceptions and bring happiness, which is fundamental for wellbeing. Happiness leads to positive changes in energy, perception, activity, and thinking, fostering love and affection that can help overlook or resolve minor issues.
Conversely, Dr Venkatramana points out that being in a bad mood or relationship can make every small thing significant, potentially igniting existing tensions and leading to major conflicts. Therefore, nurturing good, healthy, and happy social relationships is crucial, while carefully avoiding bad relationships until issues are resolved is more important than getting caught up in emotional disturbances.
Dr Venkatramana explains that every emotional disturbance can result in a physical reaction, with the brain reacting negatively and affecting systems like the hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal axis. This can lead to the release of hormones like adrenaline, causing hypertension, anger, energy wastage, exhaustion, and destruction.
Furthermore, Dr Venkatramana notes that bad emotions can weaken the immune system, making one susceptible to diseases, and can also contribute to blood clotting, strokes, heart attacks, diabetes, and hypertension through hormonal systems affecting the brain.
On the other hand, Dr Venkatramana states that good social relationships lead to the release of entirely different, positive hormones, promoting relaxation, bliss, and enjoyment. This is more constructive for the body, mind, immune system, and overall physical and mental growth.
Neuron Regeneration
When asked if degenerated mental health improves and if neurons regenerate, Dr Venkatramana clarifies that neurons do regenerate, contrary to earlier beliefs. While the number of neurons might not change significantly, their connections can change throughout life, with new connections constantly forming. Learning new things creates new neural circuits and connections, similar to forming social networks. This process of new circuits forming and old ones being pruned allows the brain to constantly change. He emphasises that maintaining an active brain socially, emotionally, and physically, along with curiosity and continuous learning, keeps the brain agile throughout life.
Regarding neurodegenerative diseases, Dr Venkatramana explains that it depends on the type, with some being progressive due to toxin accumulation in brain cells. Once these cells are destroyed, they may not regain function. He stresses the importance of keeping the brain healthy to prevent such degeneration, aiming for an active and agile brain at any age to ensure it can care for the body and foster good social relations and emotions.
Dr Venkatramana acknowledges the challenge of being exposed to numerous toxins in adulterated food, polluted air, contaminated water, and various other sources, including radiations. He notes that the widespread adulteration makes it difficult to consume good quality products, leading to an increase in diseases, including cancers, which he considers a man-made problem.
Therefore, Dr Venkatramana stresses the need to be aware of this problem and to take care of one’s body, society, and environment to ensure reciprocal protection.
Impact of Ageing on Brain Function
Addressing the impact of ageing on brain function, Dr Venkatramana states that ageing is a significant area of research. As we age, many bodily systems, including the brain, experience a decline in agility and functionality. With advancing age, the number of brain cells, circuits, blood supply to the brain, overall brain activity, and its ability to connect with other cells gradually decrease. However, he believes this can be managed to some extent through a consistently healthy life and lifestyle.
Dr Venkatramana mentions that his book tries to address this by first highlighting the importance of being aware of one’s own body. Despite using our bodies from birth, we are often not truly aware of them beyond external appearance and weight.
He stresses the need to be very aware of and maintain a healthy body, which requires effort from the beginning through good food, sleep, exercise, healthy habits, and avoiding harmful substances.
The second aspect of being healthy, according to Dr Venkatramana, is awareness of one’s speech, as it significantly impacts social relations. Being mindful of how one speaks and expresses themselves, whether about small or big matters, can make a huge difference. He suggests that sometimes it is better to be quiet than to say wrong things and damage relationships.
The third, more challenging exercise is awareness of thought. Dr Venkatramana explains the concept of “mind chatter” or “brain chatter,” the constant internal dialogue about the past, present, and future, which wastes enormous energy. Becoming aware of and suppressing bad thoughts, and modulating thoughts according to essential needs, is a great way to conserve energy and become more focused, which he terms “mindedness” in his book.
Multitasking
Dr Venkatramana clarifies that the brain is designed for single-tasking, but multitasking has become fashionable, especially among youth, who often combine listening to music, watching TV, eating, and typing. He argues that this leads to average performance in everything. Focusing on one thing at a time leads to effective focus, excellent output, and good perfection, aligning with how the brain functions.
The next step is the awareness of being itself. Dr Venkatramana notes that most people live very mechanically, except in situations requiring focus, like driving, which can also become mechanical with distractions. He suggests sustaining awareness in all actions, like focusing solely on driving while driving. This makes every action enjoyable and changes perception, leading to true visualisation rather than just seeing. It also enhances learning from experiences.
Dr Venkatramana believes that living with constant awareness leads to enjoying every bit of life, experiencing true happiness, exploring more, and feeling exhilaration, which is most important.
