Insider Secrets From a Top Neurologist

Expert guidance on how to keep your brain healthy as you age, what to do about migraines and why you should always use a handrail

As told to

Dr. Orly Avitzur,

AARP

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Published April 29, 2026

colorful collage illustration of a male neurologist in a suit holding brain scans. Surrounding him are various health symbols, including a brain and spine, a "Brain Cure" supplement bottle, a "No Alcohol" sign, a person walking on a grid with a warning sign, and a hand holding a cup of coffee.

Dr. Harold Weinberg, a neurologist, diagnoses and treats diseases of the brain, spine, muscles and nerves.

Amber Day

Many people think that neurologists only diagnose and treat diseases of the brain. But they also deal with the spine, muscles and nerves throughout the body — including those that provide strength and sensation to our limbs — thus increasing the likelihood that you will cross paths with a neurologist someday.

If that happens, you’d be lucky to find someone like Dr. Harold Weinberg, who brings decades of experience to his role as clinical professor of neurology at NYU Langone Medical Center, where he serves as associate chair for clinical affairs in the department of neurology and division director of general neurology. He also sees patients with a wide range of neurological conditions in the clinic and at the hospital.

Weinberg’s work has earned him recognition in Castle Connolly’s “America’s Top Doctors” and “Top Doctors New York Metro Area” lists; New York Magazine’s “Best Doctors in New York” and the New York Super Doctors’ directory, published annually in The New York Times Magazine. Here, he shares tips for caring for your brain, spine and nerves.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Forgot where you put your keys? Don’t panic

Multiple studies, including a 2023 analysis of data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, have found that people tend to notice that they may be forgetting names and words around age 50. They may also forget where they put their keys, glasses and other everyday objects. This also happens to 20-year-olds, but people worry about it more as they get older and may start paying more attention to it.

If you’re distracted or sleep-deprived, you may not remember something, and minor lapses like that are age-appropriate. If you repeatedly find your keys in the freezer, however, or get lost on the way home from the supermarket, those are signs you may need to see a neurologist. A visit is warranted when memory loss starts to interfere with your daily life, work or social activities.

Stop tilting your head all the way back

When you extend your neck to get that last sip, strain to change an overhead light bulb or lean your head back at the salon to get your hair washed, you may be compressing the nerves in your cervical spine.

According to the Mayo Clinic, more than 85 percent of people older than 60 have degenerative cervical spondylosis, or arthritis of the neck. It’s age-related wear and tear that affects the spinal disks in your neck, and it can often lead to pain, stiffness and nerve compression. This can worsen if you are looking up — or looking down at your smartphone — for a long time, causing weakness in the arms or legs, or even bladder problems. Avoid changing ceiling light bulbs or gazing upward at the sky for too long.

There’s an actual diagnosis called beauty parlor stroke syndrome (BPSS), a rare condition that can be the result of neck hyperextension. When getting your hair washed at a sink, ask for a towel or a pillow to prop up your neck.

Learn to sit without crossing your legs

Crossing your legs can compress the peroneal nerve that runs outside the knee and cause numbness at the top of the foot, or, worse, a foot drop — paralysis or weakness of the muscles that pull up the front of the foot or allow you to walk on your heel. This usually takes several hours to occur, but a daily habit of leg-crossing can lead to a gradual onset of symptoms. One of my patients sat like that on bleachers for a couple of hours on a cold winter day. He felt some numbness and attributed it to the cold. What actually happened was that his position had compressed the nerve for so long that he was never able to bend his foot upward again.

Stop sitting on your wallet and smartphone

When you sit down with a bulky wallet or your smartphone in your back pants pocket, it may shift your hips and spine into abnormal positions, leading to back, neck and shoulder pain. (This can also happen if you spend a lot of time sitting on a hard toilet seat, or a chair without a cushion.) You should avoid compressing your sciatic nerve, the body’s largest nerve, which runs from the lower back down each leg, and the piriformis muscle, which is set deep in the buttock and rotates the hip, helps with leg abduction and stabilizes the pelvis. The added pressure on the sciatic nerve can lead to conditions like sciatica. This can cause pain, tingling and numbness in the lower back, buttocks and leg, all the way down to your foot.

If you get migraines, start keeping track of what you eat

Patients often come in with lists of medicines and foods that they have read are potential triggers for migraines. That doesn’t mean they should automatically avoid these. Consider this analogy: You might develop a rash after eating a salad with multiple ingredients. That doesn’t have to be your last salad! You just have to figure out which ingredient caused the rash by testing each one individually.

Instead, test which, if any, ingredients are triggers by using a migraine journal such as Migraine Buddy, an app that’s available for IOS and Android devices. (Similar apps include Migraine Insight and Migraine Monitor.) For example, I recently had a patient who could not figure out why she was getting a migraine every five or six weeks. But using the journal, she discovered her last two migraines developed shortly after she had gone to a Thai restaurant. Now she needs to test for the specific trigger through elimination.

Don’t try to walk backward as a brain exercise

One popular trend in social media recommends walking backward — called “retro walking” — to improve cognitive function, balance and memory. While there is some evidence of a beneficial effect on cognitive health, I do not recommend it for those over 50. Our ability to balance declines as we age. There are various causes of balance difficulties for people over 50, including neuropathy, inner ear disease and joint issues. If you fall and have osteopenia or osteoporosis, you have an increased risk of fractures. So walk forward, and if you’re looking for an exercise for brain health, consider jumping in place or standing on one foot.

Worried about brain health? Go for a walk

We are all concerned about maintaining brain health. Many of my patients focus on activities that challenge cognitive function, like word puzzles, playing cards and taking lifelong learning courses. However, exercise is perhaps even more important than those activities for brain health. While the amount of exercise varies by age and may be limited by physical conditions, even a short walk — straight ahead! — will contribute to brain health.

illustration of a woman with blonde hair sitting on a wooden chair in a bedroom, leaning forward to stretch her legs. A small white dog sits on an orange rug facing her, and a window in the background shows a dark night sky with stars.

Stretching before bed keeps you limber and relaxed, and is a much better practice than taking a muscle relaxant.

Amber Day

Stretch before bedtime

If you experience leg cramps, stretch each calf 10 times right before going to bed. Place your feet flat on a step, move one back and press down; do it 10 times and then alternate. You can also stretch your calves while seated on a chair or on the floor. It beats taking a muscle relaxant!

An illustration of a man and a woman sitting in bed at night, both looking at their glowing smartphones. Outside the window, a yellow crescent moon is visible in the dark sky.

You won’t solve the world’s problems right before bedtime, so stop doomscrolling.

Amber Day

Stop doomscrolling late at night

Resist the temptation to send emails or texts right before bed or in the middle of the night when you get up to go to the bathroom, because you’ll become hyperalert. If you’re afraid of forgetting something you’ve suddenly realized when you’ve awoken, jot a word or two on a notepad instead. If you have trouble falling back to sleep, listen to a boring audiobook that can time out automatically, or do some cognitive shuffling exercises like thinking of words you can make with each letter in a word. It takes your mind off worrying about what you are going to do the next day, or what’s happened the day before.

One of the secrets to longevity is to hold the handrail

I see so many people on the New York City subways going up and down the stairs without holding on, sometimes looking down at their cellphones! Whenever possible, you should have both arms and hands free of objects when walking. This is important for maintaining balance and reducing the risk of falling. Imagine that you are a rowboat, and one oar is working more than the other. It would be hard to keep your boat in a straight line. Or think of tightrope walkers in the circus. Their arms are usually empty and stretched out to their sides for balance. That’s why a backpack is better for your balance than a bag with a shoulder strap. Backpacks allow a more stable gait pattern. That said, beware of overly heavy loads in your backpack, as they can affect balance by altering leg function and spine position.

Using GPS is OK

You may have read that drivers should stop relying so heavily on GPS apps like Waze, Google Maps or Apple Maps to navigate because they prevent the brain from engaging in active navigation, which can lead to a shrinkage or reduced activity in the hippocampus. A small 2020 study of 50 participants between 19 and 35 did show that using the GPS could affect spatial memory. While that may be true in young adults, for aging adults, we need to consider other factors.

Using GPS can reduce stress and get you where you want to go, sometimes faster and safer. Many of us still remember the pre-GPS era, when you drew a route on a paper map and attempted to follow it as you drove. Not great for a solo driver! Behind that GPS question also lurks the crucial issue of when to stop driving as you age. That is one that you should tackle with your family and neurologist. However, GPS can be a helpful tool that might keep you behind the wheel longer and safer.

illustration of a man with gray hair and red glasses looking skeptically at a "Brain Health Supplement" bottle he is holding. Three yellow question marks float above the bottle against a pink background.

Brain health supplements are not FDA-approved, so manufacturers are responsible for substantiating the safety of their products: a dicey, potentially dangerous, proposition.

Amber Day

Be suspicious of supplements touting brain health benefits

More than a quarter of adults in the United States age 50 and older take at least one supplement for brain health reasons, according to the 2019 AARP Brain Health and Dietary Supplements Survey. But there is reason to be cautious. Supplements are not FDA-approved, so the manufacturer is responsible for substantiating the product’s safety, which can lead to dangerous health implications. For instance, vitamin B6 toxicity can cause numbness and tingling in your feet and sometimes in your hands. Likewise, too much iron is associated with some degenerative neurologic diseases. Fortunately, we can check if you’ve taken too much B6, iron and other supplements through blood test levels. Ask your physician whether a given supplement or dosage is right for you, but realize that some may be bad, even in low amounts. Speaking of ...

Don’t waste your money on Prevagen

Most of you have seen the ad campaign “For Your Brain” on TV or social media, touting the benefits of Prevagen, an over-the-counter dietary supplement marketed to improve memory. Its active ingredient, apoaequorin, is a protein originally derived from jellyfish. Despite the hype, there’s no evidence that Prevagen works. In fact, AARP, in March 2018, filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit stating that the makers of Prevagen, Quincy Bioscience of Madison, Wisconsin, were “deceiving millions of aging Americans” with claims that the supplement can treat age-related memory loss. [AARP’s brief was in support of an enforcement action by the Federal Trade Commission and the State of New York against Quincy Bioscience.] If you’re looking to reduce the likelihood of Alzheimer’s disease, especially in women, there are some encouraging results on the use of omega-3 fatty acids, according to one study by researchers in the United Kingdom who analyzed lipid levels in men and women with and without Alzheimer’s disease.

Just because you have a tremor does not mean you have Parkinson’s

Tremor, or uncontrollable shaking, is far more likely to be due to essential tremor (ET) than Parkinson’s disease. ET affects almost 6 percent of the population over 65, whereas Parkinson’s disease affects only 1 to 2 percent of people over 65. Tremor of the hands and arms is most common, followed by the head and voice (like actress Katharine Hepburn), and legs. The tremor of Parkinson’s disease is mostly characterized as a tremor that occurs at rest, whereas that of essential tremor mostly occurs with motion. There is also a hereditary factor: If you have a first-degree relative with ET, you are five times more likely to develop it.

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Dr. Orly Avitzur is a practicing neurologist in Tarrytown, N.Y., and former president of the American Academy of Neurology. She is the former medical director at Consumer Reports and past editor in chief of Brain & Life magazine. She is working on a medical memoir entitled A Very Good Brain.