Tips to improve your brain performance

Most of us wish to improve their brain skills to have a better memory, a higher IQ, less chance of Alzheimers, better spelling, quick insights, witty retorts, mind reading, superiority…..underlie an improved brain. Your brain grows new neurons every day, which is neurogenesis, and your brain is incredibly plastic, which means it grows new connections each time you learn something, and if those connections are fired enough they will remain available for work.

 Until about ten years ago, no one knew our brains could rewire so profoundly or so rapidly, and now we are working on developing tools to enhance neurogenesis and neuroplasticity.

 1/ Improve Your Brain Through Physical Exercise

 The most important pillar of brain fitness according to the experts is physical activity/exercise. There is both good news and bad news. The good news is that the level of activity/exercise is not required to be Ironman Triathalon level, it can be more of what you already do. So if you walk around the block, walk enough to develop some deep breathing, deep enough that it is hard for you to talk and breathe at the same time.

 The bad news is that if you want neurogenesis and neuroplasticity you have to do it.

 2/ Improve Your Brain Through Nutrition

 You can find a tremendous amount of information about nutrition and your health and immune system, but I bet you had not given too much thought to how nutrition impacted neurogenesis and neuroplasticity.

 Experts go into great detail about micro and macro nutrients and what they are, and they emphasize the tremendous importance of omega 3 fatty acids to your neurons. It turns out that our neurons are mostly omega 3 and if there is not a regular supply of replacement omega 3 our neurons get brittle and do not communicate with each other effectively. That looks and sounds like confusion and disorientation.

 The best source of omega 3 is fish, which runs the risk of mercury poisoning, so perhaps you want to get that part of the improve your brain puzzle through a supplement which has been appropriately processed to remove mercury.

 3/ Sleep Your Way to an Improved Brain?

 But is it possible to improve our mental performance and maybe increase our IQ ?

 Well, there are some things we can do now to increase neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, two recently discovered capacities of the human brain which

 The improve your brain process requires a good nights rest so your brain can consolidate the days learning and complete some hormonal tasks. If we cut our sleep short, our brain improvement degrades. 

Same goes for stress management. Stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol kill those new neurons, so managing stess is a very important part of the improve your brain game plan. 

4/ Improve Your Brain Through Novel Learning Challenge 

Most of the brain fitness folks indicate that to improve your brain, you must challenge it with novel learning experiences like learning a new language or learning a new instrument. 
 We cannot do more of the same old same old and expect to get more neuroplastic connections in our brain. So I cannot read another counseling book and expect any improvements because my brain knows counseling. 
 However, I can get some neuroplasticity going if I give my brain a challenge that involves an increasing level of challenge and an opportunity for an appropriate number of correct responses, like around 80%.