Brain Foods and 6 Ways to Rewire Your Brain

Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to physically rewire itself, and it has become one of the most misused words in wellness. The good news is that Andrew Huberman and a handful of other guests have spent hours on these podcasts explaining what actually drives it, and most of it is unglamorous and free.

Here are six things they keep repeating about rewiring your brain, plus the specific foods one memory expert points to. Every claim is pulled from a named episode, with the timestamp so you can hear it yourself.

The single point Huberman returns to most is also the least intuitive. Calling it the dirty secret of neuroplasticity, he says no lasting change actually happens during the learning itself. The rewiring occurs later, during sleep and non sleep deep rest.

He puts it even more bluntly elsewhere, stating outright that neuroplasticity does not occur during wakefulness, it occurs during sleep. In his episode on healing from grief he makes the same case, describing the literal rewiring that grieving requires as something that happens in deep sleep and deliberate deep rest.

The practical flip is large. If sleep is where the changes get written, then protecting sleep is not recovery you do around your learning, it is the learning finishing. Skimp on it and the day's practice never fully sets.

If sleep is where rewiring finishes, something has to start it, and Huberman is clear that the trigger feels bad. Agitation and strain, he says, are the required entry point to neuroplasticity, driven by a release of norepinephrine when you struggle.

Neuroscientist Tommy Wood made the same argument to Joe Rogan from a different angle. Learning, he said, is driven by failure. The gap between what your brain predicted and what actually happened is the signal that drives the rewiring.

Huberman ties it together at a live event, calling the agitation and frustration of failing the neurochemical stimulus for change, with the actual rewiring happening later during sleep and rest. The uncomfortable takeaway is that if practice feels smooth and easy, you are probably not triggering much.

One of the most actionable tools in any of these episodes is almost absurdly simple. Huberman cites a study showing that 20 minutes of deliberate deep rest immediately after a bout of intense focus accelerates neuroplasticity.

He went further when he sat down with Tim Ferriss, saying a 20 minute non sleep deep rest protocol after intense learning accelerates neuroplasticity by about 50 percent, pointing to two recent Cell Reports papers as the basis.

You do not need equipment for this. The instruction is to do the hard focused work, then lie down and do nothing demanding for 20 minutes, letting the brain begin consolidating before you pile on the next task.

The food side of the story showed up on Diary of a CEO, where a memory expert offered a concrete grocery list rather than a supplement pitch. The recommended brain foods were avocados, blueberries, broccoli, olive oil, eggs, leafy greens, wild salmon and sardines, turmeric, walnuts and dark chocolate.

It is a spread built around healthy fats, oily fish, colorful plants and a few polyphenol heavy extras, the kind of pattern that keeps recurring whenever brain health comes up.

The same conversation flagged the other lever, and it is not on a plate. Moving your body produces BDNF, described as a kind of fertilizer for the brain that promotes neuroplasticity. Food supplies the raw materials, but exercise is what actively encourages the brain to grow and adapt.

Mo Gawdat gave Diary of a CEO the most memorable frame for how the wiring settles in. He compares neuroplasticity to building muscle, saying every single action and thought literally rewires the brain's hardware, because neurons that fire together wire together.

In a separate appearance he attaches a rough number to it, describing how a pattern becomes permanent after roughly 20 repetitions as the same circuit fires over and over.

The lesson lands hard for habits. Whatever you rehearse, helpful or harmful, is the thing your brain is quietly hardwiring. Repetition is not neutral, it is construction, so the choice is which structure you want to build.

A common myth is that the brain hardens in early adulthood and the window closes. Huberman pushes back on the fatalism while respecting the biology. Neuroplasticity, he says, is most robust from birth to about age 25, but the brain can keep changing well into the 90s through deliberate, focused learning.

He frames the shift around age 25 not as a wall but as a change in mechanism, describing development as one continuous arc that runs the length of a lifespan rather than a childhood phase that ends.

So the older brain is not locked, it simply asks for more. Children can learn through passive exposure, while adults have to bring focused attention and effortful practice to pry the same window open.

What foods are good for brain health?

On Diary of a CEO, the memory expert's list included avocados, blueberries, broccoli, olive oil, eggs, leafy greens, wild salmon and sardines, turmeric, walnuts and dark chocolate, a pattern built around healthy fats, oily fish and colorful plants.

What is the best brain exercise for neuroplasticity?

Huberman's framing is that the exercise is deliberate, focused effort at something hard enough to produce errors, because the gap between prediction and reality is what triggers rewiring. Sleep and deep rest afterward are what lock the change in.

Can adults still rewire their brains?

Yes. Huberman says neuroplasticity is most robust from birth to about age 25, but the brain can keep changing into the 90s through deliberate, focused learning that brings real attention and effort.

Strung together, the experts describe a simple loop. Struggle at something hard enough to frustrate you, feed and move your body to supply the raw materials, repeat the pattern you actually want, then sleep and rest so the brain can write the change. The buzzword is neuroplasticity, but the instructions are plain, and they work at almost any age.