If you’re in your 40s or 50s, you may be starting to think about how to actively care for your brain so you can stay mentally sharp well into old age. Your 60s are a crucial time for brain health too: The brain starts to shrink in our 30s and 40s, with the shrinking rate increasing significantly by age 60.
As we age, it’s normal for the brain to shrink in size and for neurons to start dying. But there are ways to slow this process. One way to do this is through diet. The MIND diet (a combination of the Mediterranean diet and DASH diet) was created specifically to support brain health and scientific research shows that it’s linked to a lower rate of dementia. The MIND diet emphasizes leafy greens, vegetables, fruit, nuts, berries, beans, fish, poultry and olive oil while minimizing ultra-processed foods, red meat and foods high in sugar.
Certain lifestyle habits are also linked to slowing the rate the brain shrinks and neurons die. Exercising regularly, reading, having stimulating conversations with others, doing crossword puzzles and properly managing stress are all beneficial for brain health.
But sometimes, it’s not just the habits you do that support brain health; it’s what you don’t do. According to brain experts we talked to, there’s one habit in particular they wish everyone would stop doing by 60 to best protect their brain.
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The Habit To Stop By 60 To Protect Your Brain
It can feel productive to multitask. Replying to emails during a virtual work call, listening to a podcast while writing a paper, toggling between 10 different tabs on your browser…But according to brain experts we talked to, attempting to do more than one mentally taxing activity at the same time is bad for brain health.
“When multitasking, we are actually shifting rapidly from one task to another, which requires more mental effort. It also impacts our ability to maintain focus and strains working memory, or our ability to hold information temporarily in our brain while we are using that information. All of this makes us less efficient, increases the likelihood of making errors and is fatiguing,” explains Dr. Greg Cooper, MD, PhD, the director of the Norton Neuroscience Institute Memory Center at Norton Healthcare.
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Dr. Brandon Crawford, DC, FIBFN-CND, a functional neurologist at the NeuroSolution Center of Austin, says this too. “Each time you shift attention, your prefrontal cortex has to disengage from one task, suppress that neural network, activate a different network and reorient to the new task. This switching process burns through glucose and neurotransmitters faster than sustained focus on a single task,” he explains.
Both experts reveal that attempting to do two mentally taxing activities at once has negative impacts, both short-term and long-term. “In the short term, multitasking leads to what we call ‘cognitive fatigue,’” Dr. Crawford says, explaining that when this happens, the prefrontal cortex becomes depleted of the resources it needs to function optimally. “This shows up as difficulty concentrating, increased irritability, poor decision-making and that foggy, mentally exhausted feeling.”
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If you’re multitasking, Dr. Cooper says you’re more likely to make errors, and if you’re trying to learn something new, you won’t be able to do so as well. Both experts say that multitasking can impact mood too, increasing the likelihood of feeling anxious, depressed or overwhelmed. “Your brain interprets the constant switching as a threat, keeping your nervous system in a higher state of arousal than necessary,” Dr. Crawford adds.
Consistently multitasking can be detrimental to brain health long-term too. According to Dr. Crawford, it reduces gray matter in the brain. Gray matter is important because it plays a role in memory, decision-making and emotions. “You’re essentially weakening your brain’s ability to focus and regulate emotions,” he says of what happens if someone consistently multitasks long term.
As mentioned earlier, multitasking can lead to feeling more anxious or overwhelmed. This is likely due to an increase in cortisol, which Dr. Crawford says also negatively impacts brain health long-term. “We see increased cortisol levels in chronic multitaskers, which over time can be neurotoxic, particularly to the hippocampus,” he says.
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What To Do Instead
Instead of attempting to multitask, Dr. Crawford recommends focusing on one task at a time. It may seem like it will take you longer to get through your to-do list, but you’ll end up doing a better job and won’t be as mentally fatigued.
“My recommendation: Start with ‘attention blocks,’ which are 20-minute periods of single-task focus with your phone on airplane mode and all notifications off,” Dr. Crawford says. He explains that when you start to do this, you start undoing the toll multitasking has taken, sharing, “The good news is that the brain can change. If you practice monotasking and gradually rebuild your attention capacity, you can reverse a lot of this damage. But it requires intentional effort and often feels uncomfortable at first because you’re fighting against neural pathways you’ve spent years strengthening.”
Once you start focusing on one task at a time, you’ll likely find that you enjoy it more than trying to knock out several tasks at once. It will be like all the open tabs in your brain will be reduced to one.
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Sources:
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Dr. Greg Cooper, MD, PhD, director of the Norton Neuroscience Institute Memory Center at Norton Healthcare
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Dr. Brandon Crawford, DC, FIBFN-CND, functional neurologist at the NeuroSolution Center of Austin
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Changes That Occur to the Aging Brain: What Happens When We Get Older. Columbia Mailman School of Public Health
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Morris, C.M., Tangney C.C., Wang, Y., et al. MIND diet slows cognitive decline with aging. (2016). Alzheimer’s Dementia
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Neuroanatomy, Gray Matter. StatPearls
This story was originally reported by Parade on Nov 19, 2025, where it first appeared in the Health & Wellness section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.