Welcome, and thank you for subscribing, or considering subscribing, to BrainHealth.news.
What is BrainHealth.news? And who? Let’s start with who.
I’m Michael Cummings, a software designer, multi-sport athlete, and certified nutritional health coach from Silicon Valley. I’ve created BrainHealth.news to help you improve your neurocognitive health and performance.
I intend to help everyone I can, but my main audience is knowledge work professionals, whose cognitive capacities are the primary basis of their livelihood.
The driving purpose of my human-computer interaction design career has remained simple and consistent over decades: Make people’s lives better, more productive, and less frustrating. Make them feel like they and their time matter. Empower them and ideally make them feel, at least implicitly, like someone cares about them. This is my driving purpose here, too. BrainHealth.news is just the latest expression of it.
Many successful newsletters are faceless, inhuman brands. I’ve decided to take a different approach, to connect with people as a person striving to:
Help you (and myself) achieve as much professional success and personal self-fulfillment as humanly possible
Let science lead and light the way to healthier brains, clearer minds, and a deeper appreciation of life
Not let science blind us to useful pre-scientific wisdom, interesting mysteries beyond our best science, or the awe they can inspire in us
Apply relevant research in ways anyone can put in to practice
How I Use, and Don’t Use, AI
I write the old-fashioned way, by pressing my fingertips into the keys on my keyboard one at a time (as now). I also use AI to help me find research and topics, analyze and verify them, and sometimes even to present (i.e. correct, shorten, organize) the news and science I’ve curated and composed for you.
Replacing the more common “human in the [AI] loop” with my “AI in the [human] loop” process means you’ll find quirks and imperfections in my written compositions. Possibly errors! Please indulge them, and my sincere apology for them, as the small cost of something increasingly rare: biologically generated content.
Image generation will be mixed. I’ll use human-generated images and illustrations wherever it’s affordable. When it’s not, or when machine-generated images can better express an idea, data visualization, or metaphor, I’ll use AI sparingly, with all the taste and relevance I can muster. That’s a promise.
Though more time consuming and effortful than the fully machine generated content now flooding our screens, I’m betting that my human-centered philosophy will gain your trust. And that you prefer imperfect and sometimes vulnerable human-generated content more in this age of AI slop.
How I Got Here
My journey to professional confidence, inner joy and equanimity was not direct or easy. It was long, fraught and riddled with many unknowns and obstacles. Early in life, I just felt different. Creative (music, visual arts, poetry), athletic (cross country running, surfing, water polo, skating) and reasonably intelligent (highly autodidactic). But also highly restless and distractible. Sometimes over-achieving. Other times underachieving. Always an avid reader. Not always an avid student. Always a reflective thinker. Not always a behaved follower. As a child, my behavioral inconsistencies made little sense to the adults around me. And I didn’t uncover the cause, ADHD, until much later in life.
This and other polygenic differences, like it’s close cousin dyslexia, are now covered by the umbrella term "neurodivergence". They’re sometimes a blessing. Other times a curse. And when a curse, the cause was more environmental, more contextual, than mental. A mis-match between the round peg of neurogenetic differences and the square hole of social and institutional expectations. But I didn’t discover that until later in life. So I focused on the the physiological, neurochemical factors I could control, instead. Keeping my mind healthy by keeping my brain healthy by keeping my body healthy. I've been obsessed with improving my mind+body, holistically, my entire life.
I was also pretty lucky. Because my father, who genetically bequeathed me ADHD, was the personification of a high-functioning neurodivergent professional. His thirty-year career as an engineer building particle physics experiments at Sanford (SLAC) is just one of many proofs. His performance enhancing diet and fitness routines were the foundation of his career. And the template for mine.
That multi-generational journey of learning how to help brains, both neurodivergent and neurotypical, to be their best, continues here.
Along the way, I’ve learned this. Our journey is itself a kind of destination. Or as author and entrepreneur Jim Rohn put it:
What you become in the pursuit of your goals is more important than the accomplishment itself.
This is why a central theme, and the tagline, of BrainHealth.news inverts “the pursuit of happiness” to “the happiness of pursuit”.
BrainHealth.news’ approach to helping people remediate and overcome challenges to self-actualization - realizing our full potential - is partly based on Maslow’s hierarchy.
Maslow’s foundation of wellbeing places physiological health at the bottom. His ideal state is self-actualization, pointing upatop his pyramid. BrainHealth.news offers a journey of discovery through the synthesis, sharing, and practical application of relevant science, to improve not only our physical wellness, but our sense of personal wellbeing at each level of Maslow's hierarchy:
Self-Actualization
Purpose, agency and motivation
Flow states and activity immersion experiences
Creativity, imagination, ideation and the role of play
Pursuit of mastery and self-efficacy
Growth mind-set and neuroplasticity
Meditation and self recognition
Esteem
Cognitive performance and endurance
Focus and attention
Self-affirming decision making frameworks
Learning, memory, and skill acquisition
Metacognition and self-regulation
Love & Belonging
Attachment theory and social co-regulation
Community and altruism
Empathy and relational health
Emotional connection, vulnerability and receptivity
Communication, negotiation and conflict resolution
Safety
Home environment
Self-defense
Technology's effect on brain health and task performance
Neurodivergence and contextual performance
Stress management, anxiety remediation
Physiological
Nutrition and hydration for neurocognitive health and performance
Metabolic health and the gut-brain axis
Movement, physical training and recovery
Sleep, neural restoration, neurochemical reset and memory consolidation
Healthspan and maintaining cognitive function throughout life
Last But Not Least, What BrainHealth.news Is Not
Please forgive the disclaimer while understanding its necessity. BrainHealth.news does not provide or guide you in
Mental health or any mental health disorder best treated by a professional counselor or physician
Any substitutes for or alternatives to therapy, medication, or care from a professional counselor or physician
No polls or quizzes provide any diagnosis of any kind. If you suspect a condition, see a professional counselor or physician
Also BrainHealth.news does not
Recommend any products through third-party brand sponsorships, partnerships, or affiliate sales referrals
Display any third-party ads
I’m sure I’ll “monetize” at some point, TBD. But none of the above methods are planned, desired, or expected. I may create and offer products that fully align with the purpose and expectations of this newsletter. But the news letter will remain free, regardless.
So please stay tuned, subscribed, and I’ll keep you posted!