If you’re in your 30s, 40s, or 50s and find yourself needing a second cup of coffee...
Oscar Forrester
Very Big Brain is written by Oscar Forrester, a researcher and writer with a long-standing fascination with how the brain works. Oscar spent several years working in hospital IT, including on infection control systems, and grew up in a household shaped by medicine — his father was a physician and his mother a registered nurse. He is not a clinician himself, and nothing on this site should be taken as medical advice. What he brings instead is a rigorous, source-first approach to research, honed over two decades of writing (he’s authored numerous published books, primarily on software development), and a genuine curiosity about the science of cognition. Mr. Forrester strives to present complex topics in a clear and engaging manner, making it easy for you to understand and apply the knowledge to your daily life.
Short answer: There’s real, if modest, evidence that having plants around can help restore attention after mentally...
Somewhere around your 30th birthday, your pituitary gland quietly starts producing less growth hormone, and it keeps...
Somewhere in your 40s or 50s, a certain baseline vitality tends to quietly fade. You still function...
You did the same leg day you’ve done for years. Same weight, same sets, same reps. But...
Short answer: Yes, but the relationship is more mixed and interesting than “cold makes you slower and...
Yes, fasting genuinely increases growth hormone (HGH) secretion, but the size of the effect depends heavily on...
Short answer: The evidence strongly suggests yes. A major analysis pooling data from nearly 40,000 older adults...
Yes, deep sleep, specifically slow-wave sleep (the deepest stages of non-REM sleep), is the single biggest trigger...
Yes, losing visceral (belly) fat can meaningfully raise growth hormone (HGH) levels, because excess abdominal fat actively...