Are you looking for ways to keep your brain sharp as you age? Do you want to find different things that you can do to stay cognitive and alert? If so, then you need to read up on how to keep your brain healthy.
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to spend a fortune on memorization apps and cognitive thinking programs to do so.
There are several things that you can do in your everyday life to keep your brain healthy and active as you age. See below for several tips on how to keep your brain at optimal performance throughout your life.
- Always Challenge Your Brain
Even though your brain isn’t technically a muscle, there are a lot of similarities. Much like working out the muscles in your body, you should often challenge your brain to think and stay alert and active.
If you aren’t challenging your brain and pushing it to improve, then it’s regressing. Its productivity will never stay stagnant.
That’s why you should always find new obstacles for your brain to overcome. If you love sports, start coaching a team. If you love solving problems, then volunteer time for a nonprofit. If you have time to kill between events, pick up a jigsaw puzzle.
If you want your brain to remain healthy, you need to find different ways to push it beyond its comfort zone. This will help you with critical thinking and solving problems when you need to think quickly.
If you have a loved one that needs memory care, be sure to pay close attention to the signs.
- Workout Frequently
While you might not think it, there’s a direct correlation between your brain’s function and your body’s physical activity.
Studies have shown that regular exercise can help improve the brain’s function by increasing blood flow and releasing more dopamine in your body. The increased blood circulation brings more oxygen to the brain, which your brain uses for thinking.
Also, you use your brain more in your workouts than you might imagine. For example, if you’re weight training, then you’re probably following a strict program of exercises, sets, and reps.
That includes things like counting your reps as you perform the exercise, keeping track of the number of sets you do, using math to add more weight, and so on.
Working out also helps reduce obstacles that lower your brain’s function such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and mental stress that you might be dealing with.
- Find Time to Meditate
For many people, working out and meditation are the same. If you fall under that umbrella, then that’s perfectly fine!
However, for those of you that don’t prioritize time to meditate each day, you might be doing significant long-term damage to your brain. Without time to relax and meditate, your brain can easily become fatigued from overstimulation.
Many studies have shown that meditation can help enlarge the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain that’s tasked with making decisions. It can also help reduce mental stress, which is very taxing on your brain’s ability to function.
So, what does meditation look like? Only you can answer that question! If you’re looking to relax during mediation, try some deep breathing exercises. These can be performed in your house, your car during your lunch hour, and anywhere else you need a mental break.
If you’re religious, then try diving into a new devotion or reading more bible verses in short stints throughout your day. For those of you that need physical and mental relief, yoga can be a great form of meditation.
- Prioritize Your Sleep
Even though many people are raised to shoot for 8 hours of sleep each night, many people opt not too. In fact, Americans only average around 6.8 hours of sleep each night.
While that one hour of less sleep each night might not seem like much, it quickly adds up over time. That’s seven fewer hours of sleep each week, and around 28 (or more) hours of less sleep each month. If you don’t think your brain suffers for that lost sleep, think again.
However, the length of sleep isn’t the only important aspect. You need to try and get consecutive sleep. This allows your brain the time to rest, restore its memory, and get blood flow for the day of thinking that’s ahead!
- Audit Your Diet
Perhaps it’s time for a reality check. Even if you start working out more often and getting more sleep at night, your diet might be the main inhibitor of your brain’s functionality.
For that reason, you must take time every few weeks to assess your diet over the past few days. If you’re eating a bunch of processed foods, there could be ingredients within them that slow your brain’s function and make it fatigue quicker.
Instead, you want to aim for as much natural food as possible. Try eating more fish, fruits, vegetables, whole wheat, and nuts. These foods give your brain natural fuel that it can pump throughout your body.
How to Keep Your Brain Healthy: Enhance Your Activity and Lifestyle
Now that you have seen several tips and tricks for how to keep your brain healthy, be sure to implement all these strategies in your life.
It should come as no surprise that exercise, good sleep, and a good diet are all tied to your brain’s function as you age. Give your body what it needs, and it will become a well-oiled machine that keeps your brain churning your entire life.
Be sure to browse our website for more articles on improving brain function, as well as many other helpful topics.
