As a fact of life, aging is inevitable, but we don’t have to let nature take its course with no remorse. The brain besides being the thinker of your mind, it’s the controller of all bodily functions. It rules the beating of your heart, the breathing of your lungs, and the up-keeping of all your organs.
To ensure the richness of your life in the golden age, it’s essential you keep your brain sharp and in its peak state. Thankfully, there are simple things you can do today to boost your brain health. In this article are 4 simple and easy ways to help boost your brain health and keep your mind sharp.
1. Eat a Diet Rich in Omega-3 Fatty Acids
A healthy diet is not just for people who want to lose weight and transform their bodies and health. The foods you eat and base your diet on have a major effect on your brain health. It can improve everything from concentration, and memory to learning abilities.
Fatty fish is particularly known for its benefits on brain power. Fish oil known as omega-3 fatty acids build brain and nerve cells, which are essential for cognition. They slow aging-related mental decline and help prevent memory loss.
This doesn’t come as a surprise since fat makes up about 60% of your brain. Half of these are omega-3 fatty acids, just as much as omega brings benefits, deficiency can lead to negative impacts.
According to research, omega 3s deficiency can lead to learning impairments and depression, which makes it more important why fatty marine omega 3s are essential in keeping your brain sharp. So make sure you add foods such as salmon and tuna into your diet twice a week.
2. Exercise Your Brain
You don’t just lose muscles as you age, your brain can atrophy too if you don’t exercise your mind, furthermore the brain’s ability to fight off neurological damage declines as we age. This makes performing even a simple mental task challenging.
However, we can exercise our brain and strengthen its abilities just as we exercise our body on treadmill running workouts. By performing some targeted brain exercises regularly, you can improve your cognitive reserve. A simple action like brushing your teeth with the opposite hand can stimulate the brain.
Practicing active learning can also be a targeted exercise. Learning new languages and expanding your vocabulary are just a few examples. But the task doesn’t have to be as daunting or heavy. It can be as simple as games.
Sudoku word puzzles, scrabble, and crosswords are just as effective. If you are not a word wizard, that’s okay too. Popular card games like blackjack and poker can also work to exercise your brain.
Any poker strategy requires lots of focus and in-depth thinking, which can be extremely beneficial to the physical state of your mind. In fact, this benefit is quoted in a 2009 French study that found playing poker drastically reduces the risk of brain-related diseases by 50%.
As leading Alzheimer’s researcher Dr. Jeffrey Cummings agrees with the study results.
This makes poker by far the best gaming genre to take part in maintaining a healthy brain. To get the most out of this incredible brain-boosting game, you must know how to play and master it, before heading to the nearest online poker tournament. Be sure to take a look at the terminology too. It not only gives you basic tips on playing poker but also prevents you from getting busted early on in the game.
3. Limit Your Drinking
Excessive drinking is a major risk factor for dementia. One study from 2018 shows perpetual heavy drinking may lead brains to shrink in volume. They found brains of those who drink more than 14 drinks a week for 2 decades were 1.6% smaller. This is in comparison to non-drinkers.
That’s not all the consequences. For men, heavy drinking may also drive memory loss much earlier in life, this was shown in men who had 2.5 drinks or more a day. Just as sugar has an addictive nature, you can build up a tolerance level for alcohol. The more you drink, the more your sense of reward with a few drinks wears off. Soon enough, you find yourself in need of more booze to get the same effect.
This is because alcohol causes the brain to lose part of its normal functioning. It damages and kills brain cells that may not grow back. Dementia is led by an inadequate supply of vitamin B1, thiamine. Alcohol rubs your ability to absorb thiamine and use an enzyme to convert it into an adaptive form.
While alcohol’s immediate damage to the body is always more identifiable and visible. Slurred speech and temporary loss of memory are two common effects to speak of. Yet more permanent, the cellular-level damage is less obvious and not as identifiable. To keep your brain and your mind fresh and sharp, limit your drinking to a moderate level – 2 drinks a day.
4. Get Adequate Sleep
Last but not least, one of the key aspects of improving brain health is sleep. Sleep provides your brain the time to consolidate memory and regenerate cells.
Without adequate sleep, your brain spends much of the day running on fatigue. Like our physical state, a stressed, tired, and over-stimulated brain lacks performance. By establishing a good and effective sleep pattern, you get to start off on a clean slate each day with fresh energy and a peak-functioning brain.
A recent discovery also reveals that the brain uses sleep time to conduct a mini detox. During sleep, the brain sits in a fluid that flows between cells and works to remove waste. It washes away the build-up of toxic proteins to the liver for discharge. This process and other simple lifestyle changes are said to make your brain smarter, healthier, and perkier when awake. To get adequate sleep, be sure to secure 6-8 hours of quality sleep at night.
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