Brain Health Lifestyle
Benefits of a Balanced Lifestyle
Keeping your brain healthy requires more than just mental stimulation. Scientists now know more about the brain and the many things we can do to keep it healthy and sharp. Research is showing that there are great deal of things we can do to reduce our risk of mental decline and debilitating diseases such as Alzheimer's. With aging comes change, usually associated with loss of ability or function. The great news is that just like our bodies, if we stretch and exercise our brain, we can keep it fit.
Lifestyle is a major factor in determining brain health, and the great news is there are a lot of simple things we can do on a regular basis to positively affect our brains and our lives!
Finding Balance through the 5 Pillars
Your brain is a highly dynamic, and constantly reorganizing system capable of being shaped across your entire lifespan. Similar to animals, your brain can generate new brain cells and respond to environmental input. One of the best things you can do for your brain is to expose it to enriched environments, to the novel and complex, and to build your brain reserve! Stimuli that is considered rote and passive to your brain is less likely to promote health.
As part of the extensive work I have done on human brain health, I have proposed a lifestyle that includes five critical factors. Click the links below to learn more about each one:
The Role of Emotions on Brain Health
Emotions play a critcial role for us not only on a daily basis, but with our ability to survive and thrive as a species. We use emotions to communicate, express, perceive needs and intentions of others and maintain our own internal stability. Most people, including specialists, tend to focus on the human brain as a cognitive system. Discussion is typically about memory, attention, spatial skills, etc. which is interesting and important. However, the human is much more than a cognitive tool - it is our emotional and creative system as well.
It is important to understand that negative emotions can trigger functional decline, interpersonal difficulty, and cognitive impairment. These emotions impair thinking by reducing focus, attention, memory, and our ability to execute plans. If emotion gets out of control, it can result in high distractibility, poor attention, and generally impaired cognitive functions across the board.
Kindness and forgiveness with a large dose of positivity is a great place to start. We can actually exercise these functions and brain regions by being nice, forgiving others and apologizing, and attending to the positive in all situations. Your brain will be exercised in relational and emotional functions and will feel better about itself which means you will feel better about yourself!
Click here to read more about Emotions and the Brain...Simple Ways to Improve Your Lifestyle
- To reduce unhealthy stress levels, take up yoga, meditate, laugh, exercise, or care for a pet.
- The easiest way to challenge your brain is to choose a "word of the day" and then work the word into a conversation. Improving vocabulary is a great way to challenge your brain daily.
- Ten minutes of focusing on the positive and visualizing the future each day can change the way you look at life, opening your mind to new possibilities.
- Take advantage of your natural learning booster by believing something is important. If we try to learn without feeling interested, very little of that information will be saved in our memories. When we tell ourselves that what we're learning is important, our brains join in, triggering our learning circuits.
- Try making a list of ten things you are thankful for – just doing this daily can make a big difference in your everyday attitude and help manage stress. There is a definite connection between healthy living and having a positive outlook on life.