6 Ways to Improve Brain Health as You Age Have you ever walked into a room – and forgot what you went in to get? Ran into someone you haven’t seen lately – and can’t recall their name? Misplaced your glasses or your house keys? As we grow older, our brain’s processing speed slows down causing memory loss and problems with retaining new information. Follow these simple 6 steps to ensure lasting intelligence. 1. Flex Your Intellectual Muscles It may seem almost too obvious to be true, but flexing your intellectual muscles on a regular basis will keep you mentally in shape. Researchers recommend playing mind teaser games, math problems and even crossword puzzles, which require intense focus and stimulate learning, to keep our thinking sharp. Playing games such as Monopoly or trivia games also keeps the mind attentive to details. Remember the old adage, use it or lose it. 2. Eat Brain Food Make sure your body gets plenty of brain food. Where the body goes… the mind follows! Here are a few vitamins and nutrients to activate and enhance your brain health. You may be taking many of them already. Like any form of supplement, the biggest benefit comes when you use them in combination with activity – meditation, mental exercise, and sensory development – than if you expect them to do all the work themselves. B Vitamins. B-Complex supplement that contains all the B’s is usually the best If you have to pick B-6 and B-12 are the most important. Most B vitamins need to be taken on a regular basis, since excess B’s are excreted through the urine. That means a daily supplement or including B-rich foods in your meal plan. Good food sources: whole grains, potatoes, bananas, beans, and molasses. Vitamin B-8. It isn’t considered an essential vitamin (the body produces some of this on its own from glucose) it is not always included even in B-Complex formulas. Check for it separately and make sure it’s in there. For people who regularly exercise the mind and seek to increase awareness to energy it plays an important role. It helps to maintain correct electrical energy and nutrient transfer across cell membranes. For the ‘magnetic sense’ to be at its peak, it has to correctly sense, send and receive electro-magnetic impulses from inside the body and also the energy it interacts with, helps ensure the transmissions function at their best. It helps establish facilitate proper nerve impulse functioning. Magnesium. You will see magnesium in every multivitamin and with good reason: it is important in more than 300 chemical reactions that keep the body running; our magnetic sensory also relies on magnesium to keep the body running. More importantly, women in particular have low dietary intake of magnesium. It’s easy to get so make sure you have it. Good food sources: whole grains, vegetables (especially broccoli, squash, and green leafy vegetables), seeds, and nuts (especially almonds). Other sources include dairy products, meats, chocolate, and coffee. GABA.While GABA is produced in the brain, it is useful to supplement if you are pushing your mental sensory. In the brain it acts as a balancer, maintaining a mental balance between the body and brain in moments of stress or excitement. People familiar with GABA will probably think body building. It helps build muscle mass and increase fat reduction but that’s just a side benefit. Entering into a sensory state, it’s important to keep a clear calm. This is “the zone”. GABA helps maintain that state. To get plenty of the famed brain builder, omega-3 fats, enjoy lots of healthy extra virgin olive oil. Eat walnuts, berries and flax seeds. Enjoy occasionally eggs, fish and seafood, especially muscles, sardines, salmon, some spinach, one among many leafy greens that are shown to support cognitive longevity, and a side of broccoli, known to assist memory function and slow down aging process. Some of you will love coffee. It’s rich in brain-cell-protecting antioxidants. The caffeine in coffee and other sources, such as dark chocolate, stimulates mental focus, alertness and production of dopamine. Depending on your sensitivity, 4 to-5 Cups may be considered a healthy dose. Sweeten with honey, full of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds, and, finally, balance that caffeine with plenty of water. Dehydration negatively affects your whole body, including your brain. 3. Adequate Rest Rest and Sleep well are vital part of living well and thinking clearly. Research shows that there are metabolic functions which only occur while you sleep. The effects of sleep deprivation upon your brain and body imitate closely those of drunkenness. People with sleep deprivation tend not to notice the gradual effect; that is, they’re in denial. Consider sleep a vital nutrient, because it is. Your brain absolutely requires adequate rest for optimal function. 4. Reduce Stress If your life perpetuates stress in your body, it could be killing you slowly. Stress has its proper place in our lives. “Acute stress” can be a normal, healthy response to a valid stressor, such as an explosion, or a bit of urgent news. In that case, it triggers the fight or flight response, heightening awareness and problem solving. But chronic stress happens when an individual experiences stress on a regular basis without healthy relief. It puts us in perpetual fight or flight mode. Unrelieved chronic stress will interfere with memory, learning, decision making and concentration. Ditch deep fried junk food, refined flours and sugars that spike blood sugar and mimic the body’s chemical response to stress. If you must, schedule down time where you’re not being hyper stimulated by ambient noise, stressful movie plots, etc. Go for walks. Enjoy the quietness & clean environments of early mornings. Raise your heart rate with daily exercise.. The pleasure in these activities changes your mind and actually displaces negativity. Down time also makes space for you to think things through, consider new strategies, and can even empower you to make tough changes. Or, consider professional counsel, a wonderful way to gain outside perspective and broaden your own. The key is to be proactive. Do more things that relax you, as if relieving stress were a vitamin or pill. Take it seriously and you will see serious transformation in your body and mind. 5. Laugh a Lot According to scientists, laughter reduces cortisol (the stress hormone) and increases endorphins (feel-good hormones). A study done in 2007 found that “elevated cortisol was associated with poorer cognitive function. Conversely, laughter-induced endorphins improve memory and spatial intelligence. They also cause a normal form of local amnesia, allowing you to forget “extraneous details of a task (allowing focusing on main events) and prevent extinction of a learned task…, genuine spontaneous laughter will give you all of these benefits and more, including strengthened immune system, tension release, stress relief, improved sleep and slower aging. 6. Exercise Is a Major Brain Food Research is revealing that exercise is major brain food. It was believed in the past that the human nervous system was fixed after birth, having no regenerative powers. But since 1990s, scientists have found otherwise, discovering a process called neuro genesis, which means birth of neurons. Yes, technically, our neurons can make babies well into our 80s. In 2008 researchers discovered that regular physical exercise increased the birth of neurons in mice and reversed some of the effects of aging, including cognitive dysfunction. The results raised not a few eyebrows concerning the impact of exercise-induced neuro genesis on prevention and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. It also has anti-depressant effects. Lab tests found that exercise “enhances spatial learning in young and aged minds, increases plasticity in the hippocampus, a key structure for cognitive function and stress-related pathologies such as depression. Just beware, overdoing exercise causes a stress response in the body, and reverses the cognitive benefits. Balance exercise with nutrition, rest, and laughter, and remain brilliant. May Almighty ALLAH Bless You > Always - Javed Mirza mindbodyplusspirit
Posted on: Tue, 03 Dec 2013 13:00:50 +0000
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