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Monday, 11 June 2012

20 Easy Ways to Keep Your Mind Sharp

20 Easy Ways to Keep Your Mind SharpWe all want to keep our minds sharp and fresh. By working to keep your mind sharp, you can improve your attitude. Nothing angers a person more than not being able to remember important things or events. By having a sharp mind you can figure situations out more effectively and make wiser decisions. There are numerous ways to keep your mind sharp while keeping a good, well-rounded attitude.

01. Exercise:
Physical activity strengthens the brain. Exercise benefits your brain cells. The blood vessels inside the brain dilate and increase blood flow, if you engage in regular physical activity. The practice helps elimin toxins and allows the flow of oxygen and other nutrients to the brain to strengthen brain cells.
02. Tease your brain:
Whether crossword puzzles, sudokus and other brain teasers actually keep your brain in shape, has not been well-established. However, lack of education is a strong predictor of cognitive decline. The more you’ve tried to learn, the better you’ll be at mental sit-ups in old age. The key may be tackling something new; the challenge of the unknown is likely more beneficial than putting together the same jigsaw puzzle over and over again.
03. Healthy breakfast:
Start your day with a healthy breakfast. Skipping breakfast affects the intellectual capital and the performance of the home, school or workplace. In order to minimize the meal during the day mostly live raw fruits and vegetables, and fruit juices. This helps to detoxify and nourish the brain of the essential nutrients and antioxidants to protect your brain a daily free radical attacks.
04. Do something:
Scientists are starting to think that regular aerobic exercise may be the single most important thing you can do for the long-term health of your brain. While the heart and lungs respond loudly to a sprint on the treadmill, the brain is quietly getting fitter with each step, too. For mental fitness, aim for at least 30 minutes of physical activity every other day.
05. Increase water intake:
Given that the brain is about 80 percent water, the first rule of brain nutrition adequate water to hydrate your brain. Even mild dehydration can increase the stress hormones, which can damage the brain over time. Drink at least 84 ounces of water a day. This is the best, if the fluid is not contaminated with the artificial sweeteners, sugar, caffeine, or alcohol. Use the herbal, decaffeinated tea bags, such as raspberry or strawberry flavor, and make unsweetened iced tea. The green tea is good for the brain, as it contains chemicals that enhance mental alertness and relaxation.
06. Eat, eat, eat:
Too much or too little energy throws a kink in the brain’s delicate machinery. A low glycemic diet — high fiber, with moderate amounts of fat and protein — is broken down more slowly in the body than high glycemic foods, such as sweets and white starches. A steady pace of digestion in the gut gives a more reliable flow of energy to the brain, likely optimizing the organ’s long-term health and performance.
07. Keep journals and notebooks:
All the smart people describe their own ideas, thoughts and observations. Allows you to burn things, your brain knows that the value of ideas. How do I pay? By providing more ideas and better ideas. Writing things creates a feedback loop that makes you smarter. You objectify your thoughts down on paper and that helps them think of a more efficient way. This is a great way to improve your brainpower.
08. Watch that diet:
While overindulging can make the brain sluggish and lead to long-term detriments to your brain, too few calories can also impair brain function. Extreme dieting can cause some diehards to feel stretches of calm — a feeling that may underlie the addiction of anorexia — but many studies have also linked dieting with distraction, confusion and memory impairment.
09. Think positively:
Positive thinking allows you to access the higherthinking abilities. When the positive and good feeling, your mind is functioning smoothly. Ask yourself, emotion-leading question, I am grateful that we now? And who does not love and who loves me?
10. Take care of your body:
Largely preventable diseases — such as Type II diabetes, obesity and hypertension — all affect your brain, too. System-wide health concerns have been linked to an increased risk of cognitive decline and memory impairments. Keeping your circulatory system in working order, by, say, avoiding cigarettes and saturated fat, lessens the onslaught of age-related damage to the brain.

11. Make sure you have enough sleep:
You rejuvenate the brain in the bed. Research at the University of California suggests that if you are already awake 21 hours, equivalent to the skills that someone who is legally drunk. Sleep allows your brain to process new memories, new skills and practice to solve the problems. Therefore, a good night’s sleep is essential to increase the intellectual capital. How many hours of sleep means a good nights sleep will change for individuals, but the 6 to 8 hours of sleep is usually considered sufficient.
12. Enjoy your coffee:
Growing evidence suggests a caffeine habit may protect the brain. According to large longitudinal studies, two to four perk-me-ups a day may stave off normal cognitive decline and decrease the incidence of Alzheimer’s by 30 to 60 percent. It is unclear whether the benefits come from caffeine or the antioxidants found in coffee and tea, but that latte may improve cognition this afternoon and several decades from now.
13. Creative visualization:
Use the power of creative visualization. Creative Visualization is a technique that involves the transformation of intellectual energy and to improve the life of the individual who uses the technique. Use your brains intellectual energy to improve your life, because the imagination is incredibly powerful and if used correctly, will improve your life by what you really want. Creative visualization can be used to accelerate learning, improve memory and motivation, and of course, improve your brain!
14. Eat fish:
Some theories credit the introduction of fish into the human diet with the evolution of our tremendous cognitive prowess. Essential fatty acids, such as Omega 3s, are critical to brain function and are proving beneficial for treating such brain-sapping ailments as depression. Studies on the efficacy of Omega 3 supplements, however, have had mixed results, so get doses from food sources, such as flax seeds, fatty fish and grass-fed animals.
15. Develop creativity and intuition:
Empowers the creativity of thinking. Rough calculation can be done by computer now, but people will ensure that the creative thought that shapes our world. Intuition is an important part of intellectual capital. Einstein and others have relied heavily on their intuitive hunches.
16. Chill out:
Stress takes a toll on the brain by washing harmful chemicals over the hippocampus and other brain areas involved in memory. Some scientists suspect that living a balanced lifestyle and pursuing relaxing activities such as yoga, socializing and crafting may delay memory impairment by reducing stress.
17. Make a brainpower plan:
This is about twenty to thirty days of repetition to create new habits, many psychologists will tell. This means that when you create a plan for better brainpower, be sure you plan to use this new technique for problem solving, or eat in the new brain foods for at least three weeks. You can use many of the brain boosters here and immediate results, but new habits that will give you the best brains.
18. Skip the supplements:
Supplements have been getting a bad rap recently, with even the familiar multivitamin now looking like a waste of money — or worse. Brain pills, such as ginkgo and melatonin, likely belong in the trash as well. Despite their “natural” origins, they are not free of potential side effects, such as high blood pressure, digestion trouble, fertility problems and depression. And among healthy individuals, ginkgo offers no brain benefits beyond that of a placebo. (In some cases, the placebo worked better.)
19. Find everyday mental challenges:
Get into the habit of attempting a crossword or Sudoku most days. One study found that people who complete a crossword four times a week seemed to have 47 per cent lowered risk of dementia.
20. Enjoy family and friends:
Make time most days to enjoy the company of friends and family. In a study of older people at the University of California, those with most emotional support from a strong social network were more likely to retain memory, abstract thinking and language skills — even if those relationships were testing!

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