In our hectic schedule, we manage to squeeze in time for a workout, make a pre-emptive visit to the doctor’s office to avoid medical conditions. However, we often forget about our incredibly sophisticated organ, our very own mystical brain .
Let’s get started with habits that you can adopt in daily life to nourish, train, and elevate your brain abilities. These techniques will also help you in averting neurodegenerative diseases like dementia.
Old school Crosswords or Wordle craze both are saviors when it comes to sharpening cognition ability. Five minutes of puzzles and riddles can be a good break from your mundane routine and also improve visual-spatial reasoning. Put your smartphone to good use and find the app that works for you and your family, Lumosity, Elevate, Guess the Riddle and NYT are my favorites. These apps may not be FTC certified or prescribed by the Doctor, but they are a sure fun way to improve focus and decision making.
Changing gears to the right food for brain health. Anything that spells berry is likely to have a bioactive compound to improve brain function. Start somewhere, blueberry, raspberry, blackberry, or strawberry, introduce them to your breakfast, add them to your salad or dessert. You will be glad you did. Nature has not just shaped walnuts to look like a brain but also infused omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants, and Vitamin E for nourishing your brain, so add Nuts to your diet. Proper hydration helps brain cells communicate with each other and delivers nutrients to the brain, so don’t forget to water your brain.
Practice mindfulness, it could be meditation, painting, singing, writing, or reading. Anything that makes your brain channel attention and focuses on one thing and forgets noise around you is good for the brain. As you pick up stress from a complex business environment, take self-care time to practice mindfulness activities it will immensely help with self-regulation and resilience. Empirical evidence proves that mindfulness practices like meditation promote cortical plasticity and lead to increased grey matter
Find an excuse to exercise, a healthy brain is not desk-bound, regular exercise helps the overall body function and also improves blood circulation in the brain. If you enjoy Yoga, there are poses like Sirsasana that have a similar effect, if you have access to modern inversion tables they have the same effect of delivering oxygen and nutrients and making the brain function better. Struggling to include exercise in your daily schedule, start with five minutes walk, take stairs instead of the elevator and ditch your sedentary chair. Where there is a will there is a way if not, an excuse.
Just like any other muscle in the body, you have to train your brain to be limitless, keep challenging left and right brain hemispheres by picking new skills. It could start as simple as brushing teeth with your left hand or checking yourself to always open doorknobs with a non-dominant hand. Eat right, Practice mindfulness, and Exercise. Hope you can adopt some or all of these techniques in your daily lives, share your experiences, brainy practices, and comments in the section below