While the brain makes up only 2% of your body weight, it is responsible for over 20% of energy expenditure each day.

I’ve spent 15 years studying the brain, and five years as a medical director of a residential memory care facility. I am always reminding people to eat things that feed the brain, not harm it. You want to give your brain the nutrients it needs to heal, repair tissues, fight toxins and create neurotransmitters so that it can stay young, sharp and energized for as long as possible.

That means nutrient-dense, lower-carb foods. Nutrients to provide the building blocks, and lower carbs to help stabilize your blood sugar and even out the roller coaster of spikes and drops that create so many cognition-impairing side effects, including lightheadedness, anxiety, fatigue, irritability and a decrease in focus.

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So if you do one thing to improve your diet to protect the brain, start raising your carb-consciousness and begin swapping out some of the carb-heavy foods you eat most often for lower-carb alternatives.

A healthy amount of carbs to shoot for is around 130 grams per day (about 25% of calories in a 2,000 calorie diet).

But not all carbs offer the same health benefits, so the quality of the carbs you eat is much more important than the number. Consider that eating a higher carb fruit like grapes or watermelon after a high-fat, high-protein snack like greek yogurt will reduce how quickly and how much your blood sugar will go up.

Eat high-fat, high-protein foods first in your meal and save the higher carb options until later. Aim to snack on low-carb options like cucumbers, bell peppers, cheese, coconut yogurt, pecans or walnuts.

Sweets on an empty stomach will raise your blood sugar high and fast, then it will drop. Generally that drop in blood sugar feels bad and makes us act hangry, and over time it leads to diabetes, insulin resistance and cognitive impairment. 

That could look like:

• One piece of avocado toast for breakfast instead of a whole bagel or cereal.
• Soup and salad instead of a sandwich and chips for lunch.
• Swapping your side dish of potatoes or rice for quinoa or cauliflower rice at dinner.
• Berries with a little whipped cream or a few squares of dark chocolate instead of ice cream for dessert.

Don’t get too hung up on counting every gram of carbohydrates you consume, because it can be stressful and overwhelming (which is the opposite of what we want!).

But many times my patients don’t realize how many carbs they’ve been eating. Becoming aware of how many carbohydrates you’re eating in a day will help you eat less of them — after all, you can’t change a habit you don’t know you have.

Just this one change would do a ton of good — including bringing down glucose and insulin levels (and therefore reducing inflammation), and upping consumption of the nutrients that support brain health (protein, vitamins and minerals from vegetables and fats).

Dr. Heather Sandison is a naturopathic doctor specializing in neurocognitive medicine and the founder of Solcere Health Clinic, a brain optimization clinic, and Marama, the first residential memory care facility to have the goal of returning cognitively declined residents to independent living. Her latest book, “Reversing Alzheimer’s” is out now.

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Adapted excerpt from the book: ”REVERSING ALZHEIMER’S,” by Dr. Heather Sandison. Copyright © 2024 by Dr. Heather Sandison. Reprinted courtesy of Harper Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Choosing a phone PIN code that’s easy to remember might be a time-saver. It’s also a potential security risk.

If your phone or another device is lost or stolen, an easily-guessed PIN code makes it easier for someone to unlock the device and access the personal or financial information stored within. The same goes for your ATM PIN, if you lose your debit card.

And the most common four-digit PIN found in data breaches is also a highly guessable one: the simple “1234,” according to a recent Australian Broadcasting Corporation analysis of data from HaveIBeenPwned.com, which which has a database of more than 320 million passwords and PINs aggregated from past leaks.

Some PINs on the report’s list are only slightly more complex. Thirty of the 50 most commonly leaked four-digit PINs start with “19” or “20,” potentially indicating someone’s birth year — relatively simple to decode, if you once posted about your birthday on social media.

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Other common formats include repeating numbers, like “1111” and “0000.” There’s also “1342,” a rearrangement of the most-common PIN, and “2580,” which draws a straight line down the middle of most numerical keypads.

Here are the 50 most common four-digit PIN codes, according to the analysis:

1. 1234
2. 1111
3. 0000
4. 1342
5. 1212
6. 2222
7. 4444
8. 1122
9. 1986
10. 2020
11. 7777
12. 5555
13. 1989
14. 9999
15. 6969
16. 2004
17. 1010
18. 4321
19. 6666
20. 1984
21. 1987
22. 1985
23. 8888
24. 2000
25. 1980
26. 1988
27. 1982
28. 2580
29. 1313
30. 1990
31. 1991
32. 1983
33. 1978
34. 1979
35. 1995
36. 1994
37. 1977
38. 1981
39. 3333
40. 1992
41. 1975
42. 2005
43. 1993
44. 1976
45. 1996
46. 2002
47. 1973
48. 2468
49. 1998
50. 1974

If any of the above PIN codes match your own, you’d be wise to consider changing things up. Your phone and debit card will be more secure if you choose a more obscure PIN, even if it isn’t as easy for you to remember at first.

Data breaches affected more than 1.3 billion people around the world last year, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. The Federal Trade Commission suggests using at least a six-digit PIN for your devices, if possible, and use any available fingerprint or facial scanning technologies for added security.

Some devices might limit the length of your PIN options, so the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency recommends you pick a random and unique PIN, avoiding obvious patterns or sequences with personal connections.

Be careful using the same PIN for multiple devices or accounts, too: If someone correctly guesses one of your PINs, they’ll likely try to use it again if they can.

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Steve Barsh spends his workweeks mentoring startup founders, consulting with artificial intelligence experts and advising organizations like SeatGeek and NASA.

For one to two hours per day, the full-time startup investor also runs his side hustle, a property management company called Parker Chase Properties that manages short-term rentals across five luxury condo units in Park City, Utah, and Deer Valley, Utah.

The side hustle started 26 years ago when Barsh sold a software startup he co-founded called SECA, and together with his wife Amber Salzman, bought a $820,000 three-bedroom condo in Park City. The Philadelphia-based couple used the condo for vacations and rented it out through a property manager for the rest of each year — until Barsh, annoyed at how much he had to pay the property manager, decided to handle bookings himself, he says.

Salzman and Barsh now own four of the five condos managed by Parker Chase, which brought in $1.27 million in revenue — roughly $105,000 per month, on average — on Airbnb, VRBO and travel software platform Hospitable last year, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. (Barsh is an investor in Hospitable, according to the company.)

Barsh pockets 40% to 50% of those bookings as profit, he estimates. He essentially runs the side hustle solo, contracting only with a housekeeping company and, when he’s traveling, a backup property management company, he says.

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Now a full-time Park City resident, Barsh “refined” his guests’ experience over time, he says. He pictured travelers wanting to kick back in leather chairs, drink cold beers from a mini fridge and watch ESPN on a wall-to-wall flat-screen TV — when they weren’t skiing on nearby slopes — and spent to make such luxuries possible, anticipating that the investment would pay off later.

He collects feedback from guests constantly, and refuses to cut corners, he adds. Most of the time, Parker Chase’s positive reviews come from small details, like lint rollers in the laundry room. Once, one of Parker Chase’s regulars told Barsh that she desperately needed a rice cooker, he says. He stopped at Costco and texted her a photo of one on the shelf.

“She was like, ‘Not a crappy American rice maker, a Chinese rice maker,’ and sent me a link to a $390 version,” Barsh says. “It was a no-brainer for me.”

Barsh’s property management side hustle is decidedly upscale — it’s hard to create a luxury experience for guests without spending money first, including the roughly $10 million he and Salzman spent to purchase their four condos, he says. (The funds came from a $4.3 million sale of their initial condo, and money that Salzman, a longtime biotechnology executive, made in a corporate acquisition, Barsh notes.)

Correspondingly, a night at a Parker Chase property is pricier than the average vacation rental: The company’s current availability for March shows a median price of $3,390 per night. The average daily rate for an Airbnb or VRBO listing in Park City is $761, according to an estimate by short-term rental analytics company AirDNA.com.

Barsh pockets more money from Parker Chase than the combined salaries of the average property manager and real estate investor in the U.S., based on data from job search platform ZipRecruiter. He also uses his side hustle to teach his two children how to invest in appreciating assets, and he genuinely enjoys the hospitality aspect of running the business himself, he says.

“Four Seasons, when they hire people, know that they can teach people how to work a front desk, open a front door or clean a room, but they look for people with that hospitality instinct,” says Barsh. “I don’t know what it is in me, but I really enjoy hospitality. I really enjoy when people tell me they’ve had an amazing experience. It just makes me feel good.”

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Chonda Loder was drawn to working in the federal government because it promised stability. She joined the military when she was 17, and more recently has been working for the Department of Veterans Affairs. “It was the security for me,” she tells CNBC Make It, “but it’s a roller coaster right now.”

Loder, 33, is one of over 2 million federal employees who received an email late January from the Trump administration offering “deferred resignations” from workers who quit by Thursday, February 6. The offer states that workers who accept the resignation will no longer have to work but will be paid with benefits until the end of September.

A week of confusion ensued. Federal officials, union leaders and legal experts who questioned the legality of the offer and whether those who take it would actually be able to receive payment warned workers not to accept.

A federal judge in Boston paused the Trump administration’s buyout offer just hours before the deadline. The resignation plan will be on pause until a court hearing Monday, February 10, when the judge will consider arguments by employee unions challenging the legality of the buyout, and by a lawyer for the Trump administration defending the plan.

More than 60,000 people — about 3% of the federal workforce — have accepted.

Loder is one of them. On Wednesday morning, she submitted her resignation from her job she describes as “rewarding” as a purchasing agent with the VA.

The decision came down to needing a flexible and supportive job that will accommodate her role as a mom to two young girls, a kindergartener and 1-year-old, she says. She teleworks from her home outside Bowling Green, Kentucky, and lives 90 miles from her nearest physical office.

It’s not the first time she says she’s experienced job instability. In 2023, she took a contract job serving the Department of Energy that was supposed to last one year but the contract abruptly ended after six months, she says.

More recently, the Trump administration’s announcement calling the end of remote work for federal workers “was an alarm to me,” Loder says.

Overall, she says, “it doesn’t seem like my position is that secure and family-friendly position that it used to be.”

Although Loder has a lot of questions, she says she has only received general FAQ messages from HR. “I haven’t even gotten a response from my resignation email yet, so I don’t know if it’s even been received, if it’s been processed — who knows if we’ll even get paid?” Loder says. “There’s just so much confusion.”

In the meantime, Loder is still doing her job ensuring care for veterans while waiting to hear more from HR. As far as she knows, she’ll stay in her role until the end of the month. She’s not sure how the resignation plan will work for her hospital-focused job “because we do have the care of veterans that we need to make sure gets taken care of. So I have no clue,” she says.

In 2023, she started an LLC and opened her own gym. Her fiancé is self-employed and will enter a busy period in the spring and summer, “so that does help alleviate [things] if I’m not getting paid,” Loder says.

Ultimately, she plans to do “whatever is going to be good for my family.”

Loder still wrestles with her own decision and whether it’s the best for her family and career moving forward. She supports her federal workforce colleagues making tough decisions to stay or go.

Of course, Loder is part of just a small minority of federal workers who have accepted the resignation offer.

One 24-year-old in Washington, DC, who asked to stay anonymous to protect her job security, says she will not be resigning from her government health-care role. “The lack of clarity and the information that we are being given regarding the deferred resignation program is really making it difficult for people to make an informed decision,” she says.

Even so, she worries for her job future given the Trump administration’s plans to drastically reduce federal spending and headcount.

“Every day, I open my computer to a potential new email from [the Office of Personnel Management]. I’m just scared one of these days that email is going to say my position is terminated,” she says. “Millions of us are dealing with it.”

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Whether it’s empty grocery store shelves or restaurant menus tacked with surcharges, the rising cost of eggs is hard to miss.

The national average for a dozen eggs now tops $4, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data — up 65% from a year ago — with prices in some states exceeding $12. In January alone, egg prices jumped 15.2%, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the monthly increase in take-home grocery costs, according to consumer price data released Wednesday.

The recent run up in prices is due to a resurgence of avian flu that killed about 17.2 million egg-laying hens in November and December, accounting for nearly half of all birds killed by the virus in 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

With the egg supply expected to remain tight, prices could rise another 20.3% in 2025, according to a USDA outlook released Jan. 24. For consumers, keeping grocery budgets in check may take extra effort, from shopping around to using coupons and rewards apps.

If you’re looking for the best egg prices, The Krazy Coupon Lady tracks weekly deals at major grocery chains and highlights the lowest prices nationwide. While costs vary by location, the listings give shoppers a general idea of where to find the best deals and how prices are trending.

Trader Joe’s is the “clear winner” when it comes to consistently having the lowest egg prices, Kristin McGrath, a Krazy Coupon Lady shopping expert, tells CNBC Make It. Currently, a dozen eggs sell for $3.49 at the chain, or about $0.29 per egg, according to data from The Krazy Coupon Lady. Prices are based on in-store shopping in cities across the U.S.

Trader Joe’s lower egg prices are likely due to the chain buying directly from suppliers, keeping a smaller, more manageable product selection and relying on private-label goods to avoid brand markups and control costs.

In general, anything around $0.30 per egg is currently a good price, says McGrath.

However, local grocery stores may have even better deals, especially when they run promotions or offer digital coupons, McGrath says. “Some local stores will run a really good deal on eggs just to get people in the store.”

To ensure that you’re getting the best prices in the the long run, here are four tips McGrath recommends:

1. Use store apps to access digital coupons and discounts. Many grocery chains offer weekly deals and app-exclusive savings on essentials like eggs.
2. Join loyalty programs at stores like Kroger, Safeway and Albertsons. These programs often provide rewards points and member-only promotions that can help lower grocery costs over time.
3. Use cash-back apps like Ibotta, which has recently been offering rebates on egg purchases to offset rising costs. “Every Friday in February, Ibotta is running a deal where they give you a cash-back rebate” that covers “the difference in egg prices from a year ago,” says McGrath.
4. Compare prices weekly. “It changes every week as retailers are rolling with the punches and offering different promos to get people in their stores,” says McGrath.

If a local store offers the cheapest prices for eggs, consider shopping earlier in the day to ensure stock isn’t sold out, McGrath adds. Some retailers, including Costco and Trader Joe’s, have even placed individual limits on purchases to discourage hoarding.

And while using store apps adds a few extra steps to the shopping process, the savings can add up in the long run. “It takes extra time, but what other choice do shoppers have?” says McGrath.

As she puts it, couponers are “forged in the fire” of everyday staples “suddenly becoming very expensive.”

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