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A good blood supply is good for your brain. Blood carries oxygen and other nutrients to feed hungry brain cells. Your blood also delivers messages about the body so the brain can do its job better. Find out more about the relationship between your blood and the brain and how to increase blood flow to the brain to keep your mind sharp.
The brain only makes up 2% of your body weight. But, as the most complex organ in the body, it requires about 20%—or a fifth—of the blood flow in your body.
Your brain needs essential oxygen and nutrients supplied by the blood to function. The blood also “cleans” the brain. It passes through to collect wastes and flush out toxins.
You might think of your brain as the one calling the shots, making demands for the blood to come “fill up the gas tanks” and provide fuel for neurons when they need it. But, research indicates that it’s more of a give-and-take relationship:
“When it comes to the brain, blood also seems to be more than a traveling storyteller. In some cases, the blood may be writing the script,” according to Science News.
Christopher Moore, a principal investigator in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, supports this idea. He developed the Hemo-Neural Hypothesis after observing that dilating or constricting the size of blood cells consequently changed the behaviors of neighboring neurons.
This could mean that the blood makes decisions for the brain and has control over what brain cells do. The blood doesn’t just provide a delivery service. It has a powerful influence over the brain, too.
The brain and blood work together. And, like any healthy relationship, communication is key. Supporting conversations between the blood and brain helps the brain do its job to manage the body. At the same time, healthy circulation provides your brain with all the nutrients it needs to keep things running.
Increasing blood flow improves the relationship between your blood and brain cells. Blood brings more energy to power the brain. Just like adding more fuel makes a fire burn brighter, increasing blood flow boosts brainpower for things like memory, thinking, and creativity.
When you increase blood flow, you boost brain power for things like:
You’ve heard the phrase “get your creative juices flowing”. Or, how artists reach the “flow state” when a task seems effortless and natural. That language says a lot about the connection between blood flow and creativity.
Creativity is your brain’s ability to use your imagination to come up with original ideas. It provides an outlet to express yourself, like writing a poem, cooking a new recipe, or painting a work of art.
Creativity goes beyond visual and performing arts. It’s about making connections—so your brain can take seemingly unrelated ideas, bring them together, and make them totally original.
A study from Neuroimage studied creatives, like celebrated scientists, inventors, and artists, and found that they have a higher than average cerebral blood flow.
When you get the blood flowing to the brain, you tap into your creative power.
Even if you don’t consider yourself a “creative person”, creativity can help with a lot of important tasks. When you fuel creative thinking processes with healthy blood flow, you can improve performance at work or in school. It can inspire you to see the big picture when planning a project.
Creativity can help with problem-solving, so you can look at a situation from different angles and find a solution. It also helps clarify your thoughts and emotions to build self-awareness and better relationships. It also supports personal well-being, as a way to process emotions and express yourself.
Our memory plays a big role in our lives. It helps with day-to-day tasks, like where you put your keys or to turn the oven off so you don’t burn the house down. Memory helps us learn and adapt from previous experiences. Thanks to memory, we can learn new information and become better at skills over time.
Memory also keeps us safe. It helps us avoid danger, like never touching a hot stove again or suspicious situations to avoid. It also helps us bond with others, to build trust and connection in our closest relationships.
We owe all this to a small seahorse-shaped structure in the brain called the hippocampus—the memory control center. (The name comes from Ancient Greek, híppos meaning “horse” and kámpos meaning “sea animal”). A study published in Brain found that you can improve your memory and overall cognitive performance when you increase blood flow to the hippocampus specifically.
When you increase blood flow to the brain, you protect your memory.
Blood flow doesn’t just benefit healthy brains. It could also point to potential therapies for people with declining memory caused by age or Alzheimer’s disease. Improved blood flow to the brain has shown restoration of cognitive performance and spatial- and working-memory tasks.
Researchers from the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) also studied the flow of blood to the hippocampus. A study observed a mix of healthy participants and those suffering from diseases of the brain blood vessels. Both groups showed improvement in memory and overall cognitive performance after increasing the blood supply to the hippocampus.
It works both ways: diseases of the blood also damage the brain and memory.
Conditions in the blood cells can cause vascular dementia—a decline in memory, thinking, and behavior resulting from changes in the blood vessels in the brain. Diseases, like high blood pressure, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and hypertension, that affect the blood can also impact brain function.
Problems with blood flow are associated with all five major forms of dementia: Alzheimer’s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies, frontotemporal dementia, vascular dementia, and mixed dementias. Research in Nature Communications named low blood flow as the #1 brain imaging predictor of Alzheimer’s disease.
What happens when you lose conversations between the blood and brain?
Many disorders that impact memory see a decline in the communication between brain cells and the blood. Brain imaging has revealed a connection between low blood flow and the following:
Brain and blood health go hand-in-hand. Because of the strong connection between blood health and the brain, keeping your blood healthy can protect you against memory loss and other disorders that impact the brain.
