Even if you tend to wake up feeling a little groggy, what you eat for breakfast can boost your brain health and provide enough energy to get you through the morning.
“Luckily, we actually have a lot of data that drives what we think about when it comes to brain health,” Dr. Mona Bahouth, assistant professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine, tells TODAY.com.
For her, that starts with water. “I always like to start the day with a big glass of water,” she explains. “It just gets you off to a good start, avoids dehydration and allows blood flow to the brain.”
Dr. Laura Stein also starts her day with water and a banana before her morning workout and a more formal breakfast.
From there, Bahouth and Stein, like all the experts TODAY.com spoke to, generally follow the principles of the Mediterranean diet. This nutrition plan emphasizes fresh fruits and veggies, legumes, whole grains and lean protein (particularly fish) as well as healthy fats, like those found in nuts and avocado. The diet also uses olive oil as the main cooking fat and limits highly processed foods.
The Mediterranean diet, the DASH diet and the MIND diet all follow similar guidelines and research suggests following these plans may reduce your risk for stroke and dementia.
“As a stroke doctor, I think of health really being about maintaining healthy flow to the brain and preventing stroke over the course of one’s life,” says Stein, assistant professor of neurology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
“There are choices that we can make every single day in terms of what we eat that benefit not only our short-term health, but also our long-term health trajectories,” she tells TODAY.com.
What neurologists eat for breakfast:
Oatmeal with berries
Stein’s breakfast is oatmeal made with rolled oats, water and a bit of skim milk, but no sugar. “They can be prepared relatively quickly and are not quite as processed as most instant oats,” she says.
Then she usually adds fresh berries…
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