Brain Health or Mental Health? Rethinking the Routine

Brain health… versus mental health. Is there a difference? And what’s the difference for babies?

At WPLab, we focus on factors that help babies grow up to have healthy brains. We want their little brains to form properly, and we want the brain to be able to function up to its full potential.

This is why as we exit Brain Health Awareness Month (June), we’re diving into the difference between brain health and mental health. They’re related but a bit different.

Brain Health vs Mental Health

WPLab is run by scientists… and we as scientists think of brain health much differently than mental health. We also understand that modern medicine deals with medical problems and current ways to treat those problems. That’s a different way of looking at the big picture, and doesn’t necessarily involve separating out mental health from brain health all of the time.

Some common medical conditions involve both mental health and brain health. But for babies, it’s all about brain health.

From a science perspective, we can think of mental health as the way that our brain processes information. Basically, it’s how we use our brain.  This informs our thinking, affecting our feelings and our actions.

From a science perspective, brain health is dependent on the biology of the brain, not on how we use our brain.

Brain Health for All Ages

As many of us know, social media addiction causes a plethora of problems in teenagers, who now spend, on average, about 5 hours PER DAY on social media. Children living in poverty spend even more time on social media! Too much social media leads to difficulties interacting with living humans, problems with body image, and problems with anger and depression. (read here and here to learn more)

Fortunately, this doesn’t mean that a teenager affected by social media has problems with brain health. They don’t have brain damage from social media consumption. Their brain can be perfectly healthy even if excessive social media is pummeling their mental health! Molly DeFrank wrote a great book about her experiences with “Digital Detox” for teenagers. It only takes a few days away from social media for teenagers to regain pleasant interactions with living humans and to leave the social media-induced anger and depression behind. Their brain still works!

The havoc inflicted on a teenager’s life by excess social media is a classic example of mental health problems caused by unhealthy environmental exposures reinforcing unhealthy thinking patterns. This is a mental health problem, not a brain health problem.

Adults are not immune to similar influences on their mental health either. I’ve seen news addiction derail the lives of several of my friends from the baby-boomer generation. The fear, anger and worry literally dominating their life dissipate after a brief separation from fearmongering news! It takes less than a week. Their brain still works! That’s mental health, not brain health.

Mental Health and Brain Health are Intertwined

With mental health, if we can identify the source of the problem, and if we can deal with that source, then our mental health can be returned. Are we trying to cope with loss, a domineering, never-approving boss, or the perception of helplessness and no control from some other life situation? That’s mental health.

But brain health is something different. That’s biological. Some of my own scientific work on brain health in adults showed that a harmless intestinal worm can have tremendous benefits for brain health. The science underlying this has to do with something that was, in the past, called the “hygiene hypothesis”. We are so clean that our bodies, including our brains, are awash with inflammation. The immune system is, in a way, “bored from a lack of stimulus”, and starts creating inflammation for no good reason. That inflammation can lead to depression and anxiety.

Sometimes our brain health works the same as mental health: If something has gone wrong with our brain health, sometimes we can fix our brain health by finding and dealing with the underlying problem.

Rethinking the Routine

But problems with brain health aren’t always reversible. Autism spectrum disorder is a very common example. We desperately need to identify underlying causes of autism. At WPLab, our focus has been on what causes autism.  With autism, an ounce of prevention is not just worth a pound of cure… prevention may be the only thing of any value.  

From conception to age about 5 years, when the brain (or a part of the fetus that will eventually become part of the brain) is rapidly growing, we are concerned about “brain health”. We want to protect the developing brain from factors that can cause long-term changes that prevent people from reaching their full potential. For example, we know that some chemicals, such as heavy metals and pesticides that have been banned can cause long term changes in the brain. (read evidence here and here)

At WPLab, we have examined evidence about day-to-day exposures that most people believe are safe.  Very strong scientific evidence, what we call “overwhelming evidence” in the scientific literature, tells us that one of our most common routines, something most people think is safe, has profound negative effects on brain development in some babies.

That routine is use of acetaminophen to treat pain or fevers in babies and children. Did you know acetaminophen has never been proven safe for use in children?

Acetaminophen in the US, or paracetamol in Europe, is chemically related to a molecule called benzene, which is toxic and has a variety of very bad neurological effects. Many people in the US know acetaminophen by a particular brand name, Tylenol. 

Using this drug in babies and young children, and maybe even taking that drug during pregnancy, could be a routine we rethink to help the brain health for those we love.

We want to protect brain health at the time when it’s most vulnerable. From conception to about age 5, a time when the brain is growing rapidly.

That’s why, this Brain Health Awareness Month, we encourage families to Rethink the Routine.

Read the research for yourself, and decide what you and your family want to do about the basics of brain health for the young. Then, the best course of action is to make a plan for what to do when your young one has pain or fever.

You can get more information on the research here and you can get free templates to guide your plan of action here.

If you decide on a plan of action based on evidence, then you can respond rationally when an emergency happens. That prevents regret.  

Many thanks to my wife, Susanne Meza-Keuthen, a children’s mental health counselor for the past 24 years, for helping me write this blog!

Learn more about why you might Rethink the Routine.