As we grow older, our minds become slower and less efficient than they were in our youth. This drastic downward turn may begin as early as when you’re 45 years of age. While there are a great many things you can do to keep your body in shape, such as exercising more and eating right, keeping your brain’s health is a different kettle of fish.
There’s no need to panic just yet, though— there are plenty of steps you can take to keep your brain’s health, too. Stimulating the brain with interesting and creative activities allows you to take care of your mind without too much stress.
Learning a new language, painting, practicing a musical instrument are all stimulating activities. But also a regular practice of some online games, in which providers can be found on sites like https://www.gamble.xyz/, that include poker and blackjack can manage to sharpen your mental skills day after day.
You can also take the following measures to sharpen your brain.
Feed your Brain
Foodies will love this one—your stomach is another effective way to a better brain. You may have read about antioxidants being great for fighting cancer. What you may not realize is that eating foods that contain these antioxidants may also be good for your brains.
Free radicals can potentially break down your brain’s neurons. Some beans, fruits and vegetables, spices, and whole-grain nuts are packed with antioxidants. Overall good nutrition is, however, more important.
In addition to staying physically active, you should eat healthy to avoid conditions like obesity, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and high cholesterol, which can all be tough on your brain.
Exercise your Brain
Like we mentioned before, our brains start slowing down as we grow older. Before, it used to be thought that this process couldn’t be helped. Recent studies, however, prove that you can train your mind to stay younger and work faster.
There are virtually unlimited activities that will challenge and excite you, as well as to keep your brain’s health. Doing jigsaw puzzles, playing Ping-Pong, learning the tango or a new language, building a kit aeroplane, mastering bonsai technique, taking accordion lessons, discovering the subtleties of beer-brewing, and a lot more.
Keep Calm
You may be running all sorts of scenarios in your mind on how you can take on one or more of the activities we’ve mentioned earlier before your brain withers away. Just stop, take a deep breath, and relax.
Challenging your brain is vital, but so is avoiding loading it with avoidable pressure. A popular University of Washington research paper asserts that stress and trauma are bad for your brain cells.
The negative effects can affect your cognitive skills, such as memory and learning, which subsequently limits your quality of life.
All Work and No Play…
One of the most extreme examples that demonstrate the mental benefits of staying calm is the positive results of sleep. When you’re working on a complex problem, whether it be a differential calculus problem or which career choice to make, it pays massive dividends to sleep on it.
Research on people who slept on a video game puzzle suggested that those who stayed awake were less likely to solve the problem. Researchers theorize that your brain is vastly more capable of synthesizing complex information.
Stay Physically Active
Quick question—what’s the single most factor that can maintain your brain’s ability to function in top form? Chaos theory? Chess? Working through differential calculus, you say? Actually, the best way to keep your mind healthy is to keep your body healthy. As you age, your brain cells lose tree-like branches called synapses.
Over time, the mind will lose its heft. Recent studies, however, suggest that regular exercise will reduce the rate of mental decline. In some cases, exercise may even restore memory.
Another University of Illinois study concluded that fit people have sharper minds. People who are out of shape and get back into shape also tend to regain their mental vigour.
Laughter is Still the Best Medicine
Humour stimulates the generation of the feel-good hormone, dopamine. Laughter is not only pleasurable to the brain, but it can also actually be a bit addictive. But can laughing make you smarter? The jury is still out on that one. Initial studies and results are, however, quite encouraging.
For example, one study of people who watched funny videos scored better than those who sat with absolutely no distractions at a short memory retention test. Not only that, the group that watched funny videos had less of the stress hormone, cortisol.
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