When it comes to improving your mind, there are different things you can do to make your brain improve. You have many options from the diet through education to obtaining peak brain performance.
1. Eat a well-balanced diet
Everyone from your doctor to your mom has told you to eat your vegetables, and that candy is not a breakfast food. Eating a diet that is rich in vitamins and minerals will help to improve your brain performance.
Your brain runs on glucose. Glucose accounts for up to twenty percent of your normal daily calorie intake. You can obtain quality doses of glucose from eating a healthy diet loaded with grains, fruits, and vegetables. Your brain will have enough energy to function correctly with a proper diet, consumed in moderate amounts.
2. Get Enough Exercise
Exercising not only helps your body to remain healthy, but it also helps your brain. Obtaining your peak brain performance requires you remain active. Research on the brain while it exercises has shown that retention and learning increases when combined with exercises.
Exercises will push oxygen and red blood cells through your brain rapidly to help your dendrites expand and make new connections — they need for exercises increases as you age. Your brain starts to shrink as you age, and studies conducted on adults as found that those who regularly engage in the exercise had their brains decrease in size the least.
3. Manage Your Stress levels
Managing your stress levels is important for the health and longevity of your brain as your brain starts to feel your stress, adrenaline, cortisol, and dopamine release into your bloodstream to handle the stress. Cortisol, in particular, damages your brain in large and frequent amounts. Cortisol will age your brain faster and may lead to mood problems like depression and anxiety.
Obtaining peak brain performance is possible through stress management. There are many things you can do that are beneficial for your brain, such as exercising, which releases hormones that will enliven your brain and relax it. You can also start practicing yoga or meditation or take frequent walks in nature.
4. Take Educational Classes
Continuing your education through your own at home efforts or through an organized program will help you in obtaining peak brain performance. Having a degree does pay off, and the more education you continue to receive, the more your brain exercises and creates new connections.
The educational classes you choose do not need to be the calculus classes but can encourage you to think and remember. You can enroll at the local community college in a music appreciation class, start Tae Kwon Do lessons, or learn to play the piano. You do not need a lot of extra courses to stimulate the production of new brain cells.
5. Get Enough Sleep
Getting enough sleep is as critical as eating right and exercising regularly. You need sleep to help your brain form the neural pathways for long-term learning. You need to sleep to increase your learning ability. Staying up all night studying can cut your ability to learning almost in half because your brain will experience fatigue and be under stress.