Is your brain in shape?
Posted On: July 12, 2008
Did you know that your brain starts to decline as early as your twenties? In fact, this decline affects your work, skills and quality of life each year thereafter. But doing simple 'exercises' can help slow and in some cases reverse the effects that getting 'older' has on our brain.
By now most of us know that getting healthy and staying in shape helps improve our quality of life in so many ways but we don’t really pay much attention to what’s going on between our ears.
Our brain controls every single possible function in our body and if you believe in the supernatural, things outside the body. For this topic though I’ll stay with what’s going on ‘inside’.
That we know of the brain is responsible for motor function, memory, voluntary and involuntary muscle function as well as reasoning and interpreting all the internal and external feedback via our central nervous system.
With all that going on it’s not surprising that it starts to get ‘worn down’ after 20 years. So it makes sense for us to look after it, right? How? Simple, just like the muscles we use for exercise if we don’t ‘use’ it we ‘lose’ it.
Now in our ultra modern society where everything is literally done for us there seems to be little for our brain to actually do in the way of reasoning, problem solving, etc which then results in the brain declining in some if not most of these areas.
Here’s a few things that you can do to help ‘train’ your brain (REF: www.brainready.com):
Do it differently - By doing routine every day tasks slightly different from the norm you challenge your brain making it work by learning something new
Cross training with mental exercises - Simply put, making your brain do a wide variety of mental exercises such as puzzles, logic and reasoning exercises, math, word and language associations, creativity and memory recall exercises help exercise all areas of your brain. Even if you do as little as 10 minutes a day!
Learn a musical instrument - Far from being a “right brain-only” activity, learning to play and write music or learning a new instrument engages everything from memory to logic to physical coordination to creativity, and in ways that only musical performance can do.
Learn a foreign language - When learning a truly foreign, unfamiliar language – such as an English-speaking person learning Japanese or Mandarin Chinese, one’s brain is forced to utilize multiple areas and skills ranging from storage and retrieval to auditory and language center connections to almost everything in between, including speed of processing.
Read out loud - Think about it: when you read out loud, your brain is forced to do a surprisingly complex array of activities spanning multiple areas. You have to scan slightly ahead in order to prepare your processing and speech for delivery, perform real-time analysis on the upcoming material to determine proper pitch/tone/inflection, decipher pronunciation of complex or unknown words and meanings, and more – all while already articulating what you’ve already read into actual speech!
Add some of these ‘brainfoods’ and drinks into your diet - wild salmon, blueberries, turmeric root spice, organic 100% cocoa, and naturally caffeinated antioxidant-packed drinks (in moderation and only if you don’t have contraindications) such as Yerba Mate, real Japanese Matcha green tea (and other green or white teas), and espresso coffee. All of these “brainfoods” have been found to help with everything from cutting the risk of stroke, dementia, Alzheimer’s and other brain problems as well as help with overall cognitive function
Sweat it out - Numerous studies show that regular physical exercise is essential for not just optimal brain health, but to help ward off mental (and physical) diseases, depression, and slow down the cognitive decline caused by aging
If you want to find out more or get regular information on keeping your brain healthy checkout www.brainready.com
Train Smart! (how appropriate!)