About Field Notes: An Upstream Journey to Brain Health
Most brain health newsletters come from doctors, Naturopaths, or self-tracking biohackers. Field Notes offers something different.
I’m Ted Ritter, with 40 years in IT—primarily sales engineering, technical marketing, and industry analysis—focused on cybersecurity startups. My work has always involved making complex technical concepts and solutions understandable to a broad range of people.
What most people don’t know about me is that I have a degree in Neuroscience. And now, with cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s affecting so many families, my interest is more personal — and more urgent. I have skin in the game. Depression and cognitive issues run deep in my family. Over time, I’ll share my own observations on the approaches I’m exploring today to improve my odds down the road. But always with clarity about what’s personal experience and what’s evidence.
So I’m doing what I’ve always done. Seeking research and analysis before they become standard practice. My goal is to translate emerging trends in neuroscience, psychiatry, and brain health into something relevant and useful.
Field Notes is a carefully researched newsletter investigating emerging science around cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s, depression, anxiety, and neurological conditions. It challenges longstanding assumptions by focusing on treatments, research, and theories that target brain processes upstream of today’s standard of care. With each issue, I strive to offer a clear analysis of emerging brain health science and what this might mean for people facing these conditions. The goal isn’t certainty. It’s interpreting emerging evidence clearly based on what we know today. To stay current, I continuously monitor emerging research on the brain and its treatments.
What I believe is the most distinctive section of a Field Note is the Plausibility Paradox (P2). There are so many treatments, supplements, and recommendations that sound totally plausible, especially if you’re on Facebook. However, I’m finding that the more plausible the treatment, the more suspect I am of its true benefits.
If you’re concerned about your own brain health, or watching someone you love navigate cognitive decline — Field Notes is written for you. If you find it valuable, the best thing you can do is share it with someone who needs it.
Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and publication archives.
Field Notes publishes roughly every three weeks, with the occasional bonus issue when something too good to wait for comes across my desk.
— Ted Ritter
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