How The Better Brain Update Made Neuroscience Practical at Scale With beehiiv

Situation:

Dr. Austin Perlmutter is an internal medicine doctor and researcher who kept running into the same ceiling: one-to-one patient care is valuable, but it is not scalable. Meanwhile, the internet kept getting louder. Brain health advice was everywhere, but most of it was either oversimplified, sensational, or disconnected from actual research.

He wanted a way to publish science-backed guidance in a format that allowed nuance. Social media helped him reach people, but it could not carry the “why,” the study context, or the practical translation into real-life decisions. He needed depth, cadence, and a direct line to readers.

That became The Better Brain Update, a newsletter centered on what he calls “lifestyle neuroscience,” translating daily choices into brain health outcomes.

Challenge:

The challenge was not demand. It was delivery.

• Brain health is complex, and quick posts do not explain tradeoffs or uncertainty well.
• Social platforms reward speed and sensationalism, not careful interpretation.
• He wanted to own the audience relationship instead of renting it from algorithms.
• He had used multiple newsletter platforms before and was sensitive to cost and complexity as his readership grew.

He needed a newsletter platform that was reliable, streamlined, and built for sending the right message to the right people without operational drag.

Solution:

Perlmutter chose beehiiv after recommendations from people in his circle and moved The Better Brain Update onto the platform for a simpler, more reliable publishing workflow.

The core value was straightforward: fewer moving parts between “I found something important in the research” and “my audience can use this tomorrow.”

What beehiiv enabled for him:

• A stable, repeatable publishing system: Build the email, target the right audience, schedule, and send with confidence.
• Forms and audience capture: Simple conversion paths that fit how readers discover health content.
• Automation that is actually usable: Segmentation and workflows without heavy setup.
• Reliability at scale: He emphasized trust in deliverability and that “things won’t break.”
• Lower costs: He reported saving roughly 35–40% compared to prior solutions.

In other words, beehiiv reduced platform friction so he could spend more time on the work that matters: reading, synthesizing, and explaining.

Results:

The Better Brain Update grew from a small early reader base into a large-scale publication with 120,000+ subscribers.

More importantly, the newsletter format allowed him to do what social platforms struggle to support:

• publish research-backed guidance with context
• go deeper than a short post could
• keep a consistent cadence of updates
• build direct relationships with readers outside algorithm volatility

On the operational side, he gained a workflow he described as streamlined and reliable, while also reducing platform costs as the newsletter scaled.

The Better Brain Update is a reminder that “accessible” does not have to mean “shallow.”

If your work depends on nuance, trust, and translation, newsletters are still one of the best formats available, because they let you own the relationship and control the pace. beehiiv fit this use case by making the mechanics of publishing simpler, cheaper, and more reliable so the creator can focus on the content.

Start using beehiiv if you want a platform that supports depth, consistent delivery, and direct audience ownership without unnecessary complexity.