Without Dash

Do you have children? Are you amazed sometimes at the speed with which they learn things? I know I am. At the age of three, my daughter was bilingual, when she started kindergarten, which is taught in different language than her own. Now, one year later, she is perfectly trilingual. She picked up the third language so easily, while I’m still trying to express myself in the third language after eight years of trying. I guess the 100 billion neurons in my brain do not want to reorganize themselves anymore and are a little rusted in place.

The busy life that we all lead can best be managed with routines and schedules, but this can also easily turn into boredom and even worse a cognitive decline and ultimately brain-damaging disease.

The brain should be considered as a muscle that we need to flex. It is important to challenge the brain by learning new and novel tasks. This will help keep you mentally sharp, prevent cognitive decline (dementia) and even as an adult you can still earn a few extra IQ points. Also, brain damaged by a stroke can be healed though exercises. Just as eye sight can be improved through the right exercises.

If the brain is capable of so many things, why don’t we use this potential to become who we want to be? We can do it! We can still train our brain at any age and learn new skills, within our capabilities of course. But we are very much capable of developing a part of our brain as we wish. We can develop our auditory cortex and become musicians or our hippocampus and become great navigators, etc. Research shows that only a single class or exercise of something new already creates many new connections in your brain. Imagine after years of practice.

So, how are we going to score a few more IQ points? Surely not by playing Sudoku puzzles every night. Of course after a while, you get really good at solving Sudoku issues, but that is not going to help your brain with anything. Apparently, you can score a higher IQ by training your brain’s working memory. You can do this by learning logistics. Try to organize a trip with a few friends and put your agendas together to see what would be the best time.

With the right training, your brain could develop an extra 8 IQ points within 5 weeks time. But that does mean a very hard training. Until your brain hurts. Literally. And not many people can endure that. It takes just as much will power and determination as going to the gym and train hard every day until you look like a swimsuit model.

If you are not interested to have a swimsuit model’s brain….. eh…. You still need to keep your brain fit though, just like the rest of your body. You can easily incorporate brain exercises in your daily routine, by doing the thing differently every time and avoid routines. Switch the hand you use when you use the mouse of your computer, or brush your teeth, learn clay modeling or yoga, take a different route home after work, get dressed with your eyes closed, etc. And apparently a great way to keep your brain fit is playing bingo! Research shows that playing bingo helps keeping your mind sharp and strengthens your hand-eye coordination.

Lawrence C. Katz, Ph.D., a professor of neurobiology developed Neurobics, a unique system of brain exercises using your five physical senses and your emotional sense in unexpected ways that encourage you to shake up your everyday routines. They are designed to help your brain manufacture its own nutrients that strengthen, preserve, and grow brain cells.

Another way to train your brains is to become a mother and start a family. Motherhood comes with a passion that can bring us far beyond our normal thresholds. Mothers develop strong senses and a strong intuition. They are mastering social skills and empathy. And of course multitasking is developing rapidly. Some of the characteristics of the mommy brain disappear again when hormones are stabilized, but most of the developments will stay until long after your children can dress and eat by themselves.

And then we come to physical exercise. That physical exercise is good for you starts to be a common theme with many of my articles here. We already found that it is good for your mental health, it helps you find out who you are, it helps to release stress, and more. But did you know that it directly benefits the brains? When breathing and heart rate are increased, more blood flows to the brain. This improves the energy production and waste removal. Especially walking is good for your brain, because walking increases blood circulation, while it is not strenuous enough to make your bodily muscles scream for oxygen and glucose. So you can effectively oxygenate your brain while you walk. In a study from the University of California it is found that women who walk are less likely to experience age-related memory loss or decline in mental function.

We can do a lot more with our brains than we would think. If you are motivated enough, you can train your brain to extremely high levels. But we also need to take care of our brains, like we do with the rest of our body. Come to think of it, even better than the rest of body, because we have to live with our brain for the rest of our lives. And we surely want it to be good company until the end.

Tags: brain, Health