Remember how in the younger years your brain was super active? You could easily solve problems, perceive different situations, take quick decisions, and easily follow your instincts.
But as you started ageing, your mental capacity gradually decreased.
It became difficult for you to comprehend different situations, take decisive actions, remember everything that you heard or were told, complete daily day tasks, and more.
All these are indicative of mental decline and are bound to happen with age.
However, cognitive impairment is not an inevitable phenomenon if you can take good care of your mental health.
Lifestyle changes that improve brain activity
Researchers and health experts suggest that adopting certain lifestyle changes can not only prevent cognitive impairment, but also delay the onset of mental decline.
Here are a few things that will help you keep your brain active even as you age:
Maintain an active lifestyle
Exercising regularly is very essential if you want to keep your brain active.
Exercises will not only keep your body healthy, but keep your brain active as well.
Researches have shown that regular exercise can increase blood to the brain, especially to the thought processing areas of the brain.
More blood supply means better brain health. Also, exercising can stimulate the nerve cells that help make the brain more adaptive, plastic, and efficient.
Exercising can also reduce mental stress that takes a toll on your brain performance.
Train your brain
As you age, your brain activity gradually slows down.
However, training your brain can improve your basic cognitive performance (like information processing). This can be done either on a
hand-held device or online.
Brain training programs usually include entertaining games that aim to promote the activity of different areas of the brain associated with cognitive capacity.
These games are carefully designed and can help improve brain plasticity.
Limit multitasking
As you can easily understand, multitasking can take a toll on your brain.
Multitasking has been proven to increase brain fatigue, reduce mental productivity, and cause undue stress.
This can have a direct impact on your memory and cognitive capacity. That is why, it is best to focus on one thing at a time so that you do not task your brain too much.
Sleep well
Not getting enough sleep is one of the primary reasons why your brain activity takes a hit.
Lack of sleep causes stress and anxiety. It makes the brain fuzzy and makes it difficult to understand things, take decisions, and react swiftly.
During sleep, the brain consolidates the information acquired and processes and stores them for further use.
Not only that, the brain cleanses itself while you sleep so that it can restore itself to its full power.
If you do not get at least 7-8 hours of sleep daily, you may wake up feeling fuzzy, lethargic, and confused.
Change your diet
Eating healthy is not only important for your body, but for your brain as well.
Certain foods contain ingredients that are good for your brain health and improve brain activity.
This includes vegetables like tomatoes, spinach, broccoli, etc., certain berries, omega-3 fatty acid containing food like mackerel, salmon, oysters, caviar, herring, sardines, etc., protein from foods like meat, eggs, peas, beans, etc.
These foods improve your memory, boost the production of neurotransmitters, and increase overall brain function.
Intake of these foods in proper amount in your daily diet is essential to enhance brain activity.
Improve your health conditions
If you want your brain to be active and functioning even as you age, you need to take care of your health conditions well in advance.
For example, if you have high blood pressure in your middle ages, you become prone to mental decline in the later years.
Similarly, high LDL in blood and ailments like diabetes can become the harbinger of dementia as you start ageing.
So, if you want to retain and improve your brain activity, you have to steer clear of health conditions that affect your brain.
The best way to do so is eat and sleep well, get enough exercise daily, take
control of your weight, and avoid alcohol and tobacco as much as possible.
Be outdoors
Even if you have an indoor job, take time out for yourself and spend some time outdoors every day.
Being under the sun and in an area full of fresh oxygen (like parks, forests, etc.) will not only rejuvenate your body, but your brain as well.
Staying outdoors for some time everyday will give you better clarity and focus.
This is a good way to relax and be with yourself which reduces stress and tension, thus reducing their affect on the brain.
Engage yourself in other activities
Do not be trapped in your hectic lifestyle. Don’t just eat, work, and sleep.
Engaging in activities that you actually like doing can keep you happy and improve your intellectual ability.
You can enroll yourself for different learning courses, take up a new hobby, travel to different places, become a food connoisseur, explore your artistic abilities, or socialize with people.
These activities will give your brain a boost and give your life a new purpose.
Meditate
Meditation is an ancient technique to keep the mind and body calm and researchers have found that meditation can, indeed, work wonders for your brain.
Apart from helping it to relax, meditation improves memory and concentration. It can also promote growth of brain areas
associated with intellectualism.
Meditation also increases gyrification of the cortical region of the brain, thus improving mental efficiency and information processing.
Think positive
The Pygmalion effect or Rosenthal effect suggest that when others think highly of you, you generally live up to their expectations.
This research suggests that if you are subjected to positive attitude, you will actually perform better.
The opposite is also true, which is why, you should always think positive about yourself.
Adopting these simple, yet important lifestyle changes can go a long way in improving your mental health.
You will enjoy better brain activity even in the ripe years of your life and stay away from mental decline. So, adopt a healthy lifestyle today!
This post was last modified on October 11, 2019 10:59 AM