Everyone loses brain cells – it’s just a part of life. The great thing is that losing some brain cells every once and awhile isn’t going to cause any significant problems. Additionally, most people don’t understand that their brain also has the power to repair itself and grow new brain cells through a process called neurogensis. Even if you are a heavy drug user or abuser, there is still hope for you to repair your brain and get back on track. However, it is still interesting to learn about some substances, injuries, diseases, illnesses, and other crazy actions that can kill brain cells.
We have about 100 billion brain cells (neurons), and about ten times that many, or one trillion, support cells (glia) that help the neurons. We’ll just concentrate on the neurons themselves. The brain weighs about 3 pounds, and after age 20, you lose about a gram of brain mass per year. 3 pounds is about 1.4 kilograms. So if the brain weighs 1.4 kilos (1400 grams) and there are about 100 billion neurons, that comes to about 70,000,000 (70 million) neurons per gram. Now we could stop here and say that we lose 70 million neurons a year, or about 190,000 per day or more!
