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Neuroscientist: Simple Exercises to Keep Your Brain HealthyCognitive fitness tips -
Just like babies, adults can keep growing their brain and protect cognitive functioning as they age. Here are ten of them. Exercise increases blood flow to the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain responsible for memory.
One recent study found that the loss of tissue density in the brain was less in those who were aerobically fit, which is another way of saying fit people have better cognitive functioning. This offer is available for shipments to ME, RI, NH, CT, NJ, NY, PA, DE, VA, MD, VT and DC only.
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You'll get benefit more by doing these games a little bit every day. Spend 15 minutes or so, not hours. Meditation not only relaxes you, it gives your brain a workout.
By creating a different mental state, you engage your brain in new and interesting ways while increasing your brain fitness. Your brain needs you to eat healthy fats. Focus on fish oils from wild salmon, nuts such as walnuts, seeds such as flax seed and olive oil.
Eat more of these foods and less saturated fats. Eliminate transfats completely from your diet. Stories are a way that we solidify memories, interpret events and share moments.
Practice telling your stories, both new and old, so that they are interesting, compelling and fun. Some basic storytelling techniques will go a long way in keeping people's interest both in you and in what you have to say. The average person watches more than four hours of television every day.
Television can stand in the way of relationships, life and more. Turn off your TV and spend more time living and exercising your mind and body. Physical exercise is great brain exercise too.
By moving your body, your brain has to learn new muscle skills, estimate distance and practice balance. Choose a variety of exercises to challenge your brain. Books are portable, free from libraries and filled with infinite interesting characters, information, and facts. Branch out from familiar reading topics.
If you usually read history books, try a contemporary novel. Read foreign authors, the classics, and random books. Not only will your brain get a workout by imagining different time periods, cultures and peoples, you will also have interesting stories to tell about your reading, what it makes you think of and the connections you draw between modern life and the words.
Learning a new skill works multiple areas of the brain. Your memory comes into play, you learn new movements and you associate things differently.
Reading Shakespeare, learning to cook and building an airplane out of toothpicks all will challenge your brain and give you something to think about. We love our routines. We have hobbies and pastimes that we could do for hours on end. But the more something is 'second nature,' the less our brains have to work to do it.
To really help your brain stay young, challenge it. Change routes to the grocery store, use your opposite hand to open doors and eat dessert first. All this will force your brain to wake up from habits and pay attention again.
Brain training is becoming a trend. There are formal courses, websites, and books with programs on how to train your brain to work better and faster.
There is some research behind these programs, but the basic principles are memory, visualization, and reasoning. Work on these three concepts every day and your brain will be ready for anything. Nouchi R, Taki Y, Takeuchi H, et al.
Brain training game boosts executive functions, working memory and processing speed in the young adults: a randomized controlled trial. One study published in The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences found an association between low physical activity and dementia risk.
The researchers also did MRI scans of about 2, people 60 or older and found that the more active they were, the larger their hippocampus.
Best of all? Target Optical. Older adults should aim for at least minutes a week of moderate-intensity activity, according to current physical activity guidelines, though you may want to consider mixing in bursts of high-intensity activity.
A study published in the journal NeuroImage: Clinical found that six months of strength training can help prevent shrinkage of the hippocampus in older adults.
Another study , published in the Archives of Internal Medicine , compared the effects of two different types of exercise done once or twice weekly over 12 months among women ages 65 to 75 — balance and tone training and resistance training — and found that pumping iron produced the best results for memory and other cognition measurements.
AARP Membership — Memorial Day Sale. LIMITED TIME OFFER. Join now and get a FREE GIFT! They also had more activity in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain where higher-level thinking occurs. Adults with mild cognitive impairment due to dementia saw a boost in cognitive ability too. Ciolek points out that tai chi is a great form of exercise because it combines mental focus with movement.
In other words, the brain has to think about what comes next while the body stays active. A landmark New England Journal of Medicine study followed seniors for more than 20 years and found that regular dancing reduced the risk of dementia by 76 percent — twice as much as reading.
More recently, a review published in the journal Current Alzheimer Research concluded that dance interventions improved cognitive function in dementia patients. More generally, experts recommend that people try to stay on their feet as much as possible.
A study that Small and others published in the journal PLOS ONE found that adults ages 45 to 75 who sat at least three hours a day had substantial thinning of their medial temporal lobe, a part of the brain responsible for the formation of new memories.
Even if you tend to sit more than you move, don't jump into activity, which can raise the risk of physical injury. Instead, Casaletto recommends that you start slowly and work your way up. This can be intentionally parking a little farther away from the grocery store, doing wall sits while you brush your teeth, going for a walk during your next phone call, standing while you take that meeting or even doing five sit-ups during a commercial break.
Hallie Levine is a contributing writer and an award-winning medical and health reporter. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Consumer Reports, Real Simple, Health and Time , among other publications. Editor's note: This article, originally published on March 2, , has been updated to reflect new information.
Cognitive fitness tips is especially true when it comes titness exercise. Studies Cognitive fitness tips that regular hips activity can help lower fitnesss risk of dementia, and recent research offers some clues about why. This protective impact was found in everyone, even in people showing signs of dementia. One reason may be that physical activity promotes healthy synapses, the small pockets of space between neurons that allow them to communicate. AARP Membership.
Can't find Effective fat blocker Cognitive fitness tips Don't oCgnitive occasional Immune-boosting energy supplement, it's Cognitivee to sharpen your mind, improve brain fitness, and maintain tip-top mental Cognitive fitness tips. Sally Wadyka is yips writer, editor, and content creator with over three decades Cognitivr experience tipps print and digital publishing. Maggie Seaver is the digital health and wellness editor at Real Simple, with seven years of experience writing lifestyle and wellness content. She spends her days writing and editing stories about sleep, mental health, fitness, preventive health, nutrition, personal development, relationships, healthy habits, and beyond. She loves demystifying complicated health topics, debunking wellness fads, and sharing practical, science-backed solutions for healthy living. Haley is a Wisconsin-based creative freelancer and recent graduate.
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