Your brain is a muscle, and it should be exercised daily. Obviously the exercise will be a bit different than you’re used to. These are a few ways that you can work to make your brain more efficient.
1. Get Exercise Regularly
Time and time again, it has been proven that exercise will help to increase brain function, and enhance neurogenesis. Each time you exercise, you are creating new brain cells.
2. Indulge in your Curiosity
Stop taking everything at face value and begin questioning. Things that you see on a daily basis can be improved, and you should be thinking more about how to do this. It will force your brain to be innovative.
3. Try New Things
Your brain becomes stimulated when you experience new things. Though it can be easy to get stuck in the rut of doing the same things, new experiences create neural pathways in the brain, increasing intelligence. This could mean taking a new route somewhere, cooking a new recipe, or a new exercise routine.
4. Start Eating Right
A person’s diet has a massive impact on how their brain functions. The brain consumes more than 20% of all oxygen and nutrients that you consume. Taking this into consideration, feed your brain the good stuff that it needs to function more efficiently. This includes fresh fruits and vegetables as well as Omega-3s that are found in oily fish.
5. Turn on Some Music
Both playing music and listening to it will expand your potential for learning. Learning how to play instruments will rewire the brain, allowing you to think faster and more accurately. This will still happen when you listen to music, but it will be less pronounced.
6. Get Enough Sleep
Sleep helps to detox your brain in a way. When you are sleeping, the body uses the time to regenerate the cells and remove the toxins that have collected throughout the day. It is recommended to hit the hay before midnight in order to gain the positive effects from the most beneficial hours of sleep.
7. Positive Thinking
Existing brain neurons are killed off from stress and anxiety, but this also stops any new ones from being created. Research shows that a positive outlook (especially regarding the future) will speed up the time that it takes to create new cells and will dramatically reduce your stress and anxiety. Aim to gain control of your negative thoughts, and take steps to replace them with positive ones.
8. Read
Reading a book relieves tension and stress, which are factors that will kill your brain cells. Opening a book is a form of escapism, which allows for the reduction of strain. Reading will trigger your imagination and creativity, allowing for the escape. Using your imagination is an excellent way to teach the brain because you are forcing your mind to depict what you are reading in the book.
9. Brain Training Games
Activities that require memory and concentration are great ways to train your brain to become better at concentrating on difficult tasks. Users may also see an improvement in their problem solving, persistence, and spatial skills.
10. Scale Back Your TV Time
Those who watch television or broadcasts over the internet for over 4 hours per day generally have a lower mental acuity score — this means that their overall intelligence level is low. Television not only takes away from intelligence, but it may also lead to attention disorders such as ADHD. This is because of the number of the rapid-fire stimuli, the brain becomes overloaded during the times that it is viewing television.
11. Combat Inflammation
Toxins, chemicals, and infection are all things that can leave your body inflamed, thus negatively impacting your mental performance. Fight inflammation by increasing your intake of antioxidants and Omega-3s. A Swedish study found that inflammation in the body has been consistently linked to lower intelligence in those aged 18 to 20.
