Welcome to Radical Brain Health

The relentless pursuit of peak brain fitness

I grew up with two seriously mentally ill parents. The driving force of my life was this: to never let my brain fail, given the heavy genetic odds against me.

In medical school, I didn’t know which specialty to pursue, but the only thing I knew was this: I would never become a psychiatrist. My lifelong experience with the mental disorders of my parents had taught me there was no quick fix. In fact, there seemed to be no long-term fix either.

But when I became an emergency physician, I inadvertently functioned like a frontline psychiatrist — the person responding to acute brain crises from all sectors of the population, 24/7. As a humanitarian doctor, I also had a front seat to the unfolding and ongoing brain crises across the globe. It was at the same time, that despite my best efforts, my own brain began to fail on me – until I figured out a way to reclaim my own brain health.

What is Brain Health

Our brain is everything— our experience of the world, our sense of self, and the command center through which every thought, feeling, and action takes place. The status of our brain functioning on any given day can be influenced by our inherited genetics, sunlight, nutrition, sleep, fitness capacity, social interactions, grief, addictions, social media habits – just to name a few.

Brain Health is the state of your brain’s ongoing ability to function, adapt, and thrive. It’s the seamless orchestration of nerve cells, neural connections, and firing patterns that keep your body alive (breathing, heartbeat, sleep-wake cycles) while also enabling the higher-order capacities that make life meaningful (attention, memory, movement, creativity, empathy, and joy).

Unlike mental health or cognitive health alone, brain health is an umbrella concept. It encompasses the absence of disease, the presence of cognitive flexibility and emotional balance, as well as the capacity for neuroplasticity: the brain’s lifelong ability to rewire, recover, and grow stronger through experience.

To put it simply:

· Mental health is how you feel and relate to others.

· Cognitive health is how you think and remember.

Brain health is the shared foundation beneath both mental and cognitive health – think of it like the biological platform that enables optimization of both. The WHO defines it as the state of brain functioning across cognitive, sensory, social-emotional, behavioural and motor domains, allowing a person to realize their full potential over the life course, irrespective of the presence or absence of disorders.

Why I’m Pivoting from Rise After Silence to Radical Brain Health

When I first launched Rise After Silence, it was an act of reclamation—a way to break the silence around trauma, telling the truth about recovery, and making visible what so many of us endure quietly. It connected me with thousands of people who had lived through private violence, institutional betrayal, and burnout. People who were searching for healing that felt both human and scientific.

Over time, I realized that the next evolution of this work wasn’t only about survival or even storytelling—it was about the brain itself.

Enter Radical Brain Health

Radical Brain Health explores how we boldly move from surviving to thriving—through science, storytelling, and self-leadership. It’s about translating cutting-edge neuroscience into clear, actionable tools for energy, focus, and emotional resilience.

Rise After Silence is going to continue as a sub-section underneath this new framework of Radical Brain Health, where I still have a line-up of survivor-centered stories and reflections on finding one’s voice after trauma that I’m excited to share in time.

What You Can Expect

In this next chapter of my writing and creative journey, you’ll still find the same voice and honesty—but now paired with deeper explorations of how the brain and body heal. I’m actively researching many topics on Brain Health, including, but not limited to:

The Genetics & Epigenetics of Brain Health

The Energy Equation: Controversies around the Mitochondrial Mind hypothesis, and how cellular metabolism shapes mood, focus, and fatigue

The Cortisol Paradox: Good versus ‘bad’ stress, what stress really does to our brains and what we can do about it

Trauma and Memory: Why the brain learns to survive before it learns to heal

The Vascular Brain: How inflammation, blood flow, and hormones affect cognition

Move to Rewire: Exercise as neuroplasticity in action

Detox Your Brain: Dopamine, digital overstimulation, and rebalancing reward circuits

The Gut–Brain Axis: Nutrition, hydration, and metabolic precision

Rest & Regulation: Sleep, boundaries, and the polyvagal reset

Cognitive Longevity: Hormones, aging, and the truth about “menopause brain”

Radical Healing: Creativity, play, and flow as natural neuro-regulators

Radical Connection: Relationships, nature, and the social brain

Radical Spirit: Meaning, hope, and the neurobiology of purpose

I hope to share some of what I have been learning through essays, tools, and reflections. Kind of like an ER doctor’s guide to what we need for peak brain fitness. If something on my wishlist above jumps out to you as your favourite, please do let me know.

The Core Message

At its heart, Radical Brain Health is about learning how the mind can recover its strength—and how we can reclaim vitality, clarity, and purpose from within. I hope it will be a space for understanding, renewal, and growth: a place to learn what it truly means to thrive.

Thank you to everyone who has followed Rise After Silence. Your readership and encouragement has made this next chapter possible.

I hope you’ll stay with me as we explore what comes after survival: the science and art of working towards our best brain health.

xo

Dr. Anne