Have a Healthy Lifestyle
While brain plasticity can happen at any point in your life
and you can improve it by engaging in new activities and avoiding stress, you
can improve neuroplasticity by giving it the right nutrition.
With that said, keep in mind that what goes into your body
goes into your brain as well. You may realize that it is extremely difficult
for you to think when you are hungry, tired, or short of breath. That is
because your brain is starved of nutrients and oxygen, which allows it to
function well.
For that reason, you need to make sure that your brain is
receiving all the resources that it needs in order for it to function the way
you want it to.
You also need to make sure that your brain is managing these
resources well by making it resilient and injury-free as you age.
Balanced Diet and Exercise for a Healthy Brain
Physical exercise and healthy diet is one of the most
important pillars when it comes to forming a
healthy and plastic brain. If you
want to think faster, become more creative, and develop better ways to live
your life to the fullest, then you need to sharpen your brain by giving it the
nutrients that it needs. While your brain only makes up for the 2% of your
entire weights, it actually consumes about 20% of the nutrients that you
receive from the food that you eat.
Exercise, on the other hand, improves blood and oxygen
circulation in your brain, and reduces stress. Since your brain takes up about
20% of the oxygen you have in your body, it pays for you to improve how you
take in oxygen in order to achieve better neuroplasticity.
Improving Your Diet for a Healthy Brain Now that you are
aware that what you eat contributes to how your brain functions, then you would
definitely want to make the most out of your food for neuroplasticity sake.
Studies reveal that these foods are great for your brain:
1. Jolly Green Giants Kale, collards, spinach, and romaine
lettuce are only some of the dark green leafy vegetables that you should start
including in your diet. These vegetables are known to slow down and prevent
cognitive decline.
2. Monosaturated Fats, These good fats which are often found
in olive oil and avocados are proven to slow down your brain’s aging. They can
also improve blood and oxygen circulation in your brain and improve vascular
health.
3. Omega-3 Salmon, walnuts, flax seeds, sardines, and raw
almonds are rich in Omega-3, a compound that is proven to combat cognitive
decline. By incorporating nuts in your breakfast, such as substituting cow’s
milk for almond milk, you are also feeding your brain with zinc, which is
enhances cognitive performance and regulates the plasticity of your brain’s
synapses. By having zinc-rich nuts and seeds during breakfast, you would be
able to jumpstart your brain in the morning more effectively.
4. Food Rich in Vitamin B12 and Folic Acid Pasta, fortified
cereals, and bread contain folic acid, which is responsible for regulating your
brain’s neurotransmitter activities. Folic acid also promotes brain
development. Vitamin B12 found in eggs, dairy, and eggs is responsible for
promoting brain resiliency, which makes it less prone to injury and disease.
Since it prevents the death of brain cells, you would be able to preserve
cognitive ability better when you have Vitamin B12 in your diet.
5. Complex Carbohydrates The brain requires glucose as much
as it needs oxygen. If you think that you are starving and you are having
difficulty thinking, then you would need to eat carbohydrates to get the energy
that your brain requires.
6. Coffee is a stimulant that triggers your sympathetic
nervous system, the region of the brain that is responsible for speeding up
cognitive functions. Apart from making you more attentive and improving
short-term memory, coffee is also rich in antioxidants, which are compounds
that make your neurons recover from stress and injury.
7. Fruits and Berries Fruits and berries contain a lot of
vitamins that are necessary for improving overall brain performance, such as
vitamin A found in bananas which allows you to switch from one mental task to
another more effectively. Ascorbic acid, which is found in a number of
citruses, improves cognition and activates the sympathetic nervous system that
regulates thinking and emotions.
Hydrate Your Brain
Your brain needs water – lots of it. Water allows your brain cells to remain
hydrated and it also increases the oxygen levels in your brain. It also allows
you to achieve fluid balance, which is very important for the brain to send
impulses, create neurotransmitters, and secrete hormones.
Also keep in mind that your brain cells needs twice the
energy than other cells in your body would require, and water provides this
energy better than any substance. That’s why if you think that you are
experiencing a brain drain, maybe you need to drink a glass of water.
Work Out Your Body and Brain - Since your brain is an organ
that interacts with your environment through perception and action, you are
also promoting neuron growth when you do exercise. Doing a simple mindful walk
would already do wonders for your brain, which is stress alleviation and better
oxygen flow. When you engage in exercise-related stress for a short time, you
are stimulating your brain to release endorphins, which allows you to reduce
discomfort or pain. Eventually, you would be able to teach your brain to manage
pain more effectively through regular exercise.
When you engage in an active lifestyle, you are allowing
your brain to optimize cognitive function by stimulating different parts of
your body. Of course, everything in your body is being controlled by different
regions of your brain. Since stimulating brain regions create better neural
pathways, you are strengthening these connections, which delays cognitive
function loss as you age. That
means that when you get older and still commit to regular exercise, it may even
be possible for you to prevent memory loss.
In the
end, caring for your body contributes to your holistic development – having a
great body can actually equate to having a great mind.
By
caring for your body through committing to a healthy diet and exercise, you are
enabling your brain to remain plastic and delay cognitive decline over time.
Here are some things that you can do to declutter your
brain:
1. Do some stretching. Stretching exercises and doing some
yoga poses allows you to make oxygen flow through your body and relax your
mind. By doing some stretching when you feel that your mind is overwhelmed, you
allow your brain to make some space. You may even find that you have better
ideas when you get back to your tasks after stretching.
2. Sing or listen to your favorite song. You can get rid of
negative clutter from your mind by hearing a tune that you really like. The
reason is that it would be difficult for you to ruminate about things that bog
down your mind when you hear a rhythm or a melody that you really like.
3. Get moving. One of the most effective ways to clear a
brain fog is to get your body moving. You can dance, do a favorite exercise
move, take a mindful walk outside, or anything that sets your body into
movement. By doing so, you get some endorphin bonuses, which allows you to get
out of a mental block.
4. Think of happy thoughts. Remembering something positive
that happened to you does not only allow you to relive happy feelings, but also
help you get into a positive mood. By making it a point to remember the good
times, you allow yourself to get motivated by past actions and also look at the
better side of things. When you become aware that you are capable of
experiencing something good out of your experiences, you allow your mind to
channel behaviors and skills that puts you in situations that you may have
enjoyed in the past.
5. Remember to be grateful. Clearing out mind clutter can be
as simple as being truly grateful for everything that you enjoy. By being
simply thankful for whom you are or who you are not, you enable your mind to
free itself from worries, which contributes to stress reduction.
6. Use humor. It may be impossible for people to purge
negative thoughts that easily, since negative emotions such as anger, hate,
embarrassment, and sadness are all part of humanity. However, it is possible
for you to redirect your mind from these negative emotions by channeling humor.
While you are aware that negative biases and emotions are part of life and are
completely unavoidable, you can reframe the context of negative situations to
look at their better side. By seeing negative events to be funny from another
perspective, you allow yourself to direct your mind to think of positive
thoughts. When you learn to laugh at your mistakes, you practice your mind to
look at another angle of an otherwise bad experience. Once you become aware
that a bad event may not be that bad at all, you can also consider that a
negative experience can help you learn something that you are not aware of
before.
7. Surround yourself
with happy people. As a famous saying goes,“fake it until you make it”. That
goes the same with channeling positive thoughts to replace the bad ones. By
mimicking the optimism or positive disposition of people around you, you would
be able to pick up how optimistic people view the world around them. This can
turn into a habit sooner than you think, since you are likely to catch positive
emotions more than the negative ones.
Remember to Acknowledge Your Feelings While it is good to
think about positive thoughts all the time, you do not need to neglect the
reality that you can feel bad about certain things. You sure can improve
neuroplasticity and deal with stress better when you are happy or content, but
you also need to recognize that it is okay for you to feel negative emotions.
By acknowledging that they exist, you become mindful of things that can make
you feel upset or unhappy.
This mindfulness would allow you to avoid stress and
unnecessary thoughts better, and also remind you that you are in control.
Acknowledging your feelings is a means to empower yourself. When you do that,
you develop self-confidence which is very important in combatting stress. When
you realize that it is okay for you to feel certain emotions because of certain
stimuli, you become mindful of your thoughts and you become aware of what is
truly happening in your mind.
For example, when you feel offended by a co-worker that
constantly teases you about the way you look, you acknowledge the fact that the
way you appear before others actually matters with you. That realization makes
you aware that you need to do something about it, which gives you control over
things that you can do about to avoid a negative feeling.
Honouring your
emotions, however, do not require you to dwell on them to the point that they
become mental clutter. You only need to go as far as accepting them in order to
pinpoint the cause of worry or stress.
This way, you would be able to address the true causes of
your mind clutter and address them altogether.
Now that you know how to free up your mind from things that
you do not need, you would be able to experience better control of your life!
Wishing you a neat and wealthy life,
Pedro Proff
"For a Neat Life."
