They say that aging is one of the causes that lead to the weakening of your brain’s performance. As you grow older, your memory becomes out of form, this is why there are illnesses such as the unfortunate Alzheimer’s disease. Fortunately, there are already known ways that can help you better your brain performance, thus giving you the protection from the dreaded brain deterioration.

One good prevention is the inclusion of colorful fruits and vegetables to your diet. The brighter the color of the fruit or vegetable, the healthier and fresher it is – thus, the better. As you may know, healthy foods help the body get rid of unhealthy toxins because these foods have antioxidants. If you follow this kind of diet, then you may have a 70% lower chance of suffering from dementia when you get older.

Vitamins, especially vitamin B can also help maintain the fitness of your brain. If you lack vitamin B, you are more prone to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease and many other diseases. So, you may want to include vitamin supplements in your everyday meal. If you do not feel like you need supplements, then you may want to cut down on your alcohol and cigarette consumption for these substances, together with coffee and sugar, can use up your body’s stock of vitamin B. Aside from this, you should also try eating more beans and green veggies; these are rich in vitamin B.

You should stay away from bad fats that come from junk foods. Your brain may be made up of fats, but this does not mean that it should come from the fats from hot dogs. Instead of munching on unhealthy foods, enjoy good fats such as fish and nuts and all those foods which are good sources of omega-3 fatty acids. If you do this, you will have a higher chance of keeping your brain in its best shape.

Stress is another thing that you should avoid if you want a healthy brain. Hence, you should protect yourself from being too stressed out and from being overwhelmed by all the drama that may come your way. Release your tension, relax and meditate so that you can give your body and your mind the time they need to recharge. Also, take enough rest and sleep. Six to eight hours of sleep is highly suggested to keep your mind in its prime. After a good rest, you should engage yourself in healthy activities, such as exercising and working out. This will keep your body active and alert.

Finally, if you are exercising your body, you should exercise your brain as well. Always use your mind – think and rethink. Keep your brain muscles active by reading, doing puzzles, answering crosswords and socializing with other people. There are a lot of activities that are designed to keep you thinking. Any type of activity from which you can learn is worth trying. Do not be afraid to explore, active learning is the key to your mind’s actual exercise.

As you know, the healthier you are the better; your brain should also feel the same way. If you are doing all your best to keep yourself physically fit, you should also keep yourself mentally fit. Fight all the factors that may cause the weakening of your brain performance.

You may have personally experienced, or just heard from other people, of the mental boost that they get from smoking. Perhaps, for a short period of time such boost may be true, however in the long run, the effect of the tobacco consumption may be more dangerous to your brain than what you have expected. If you want to better your brain’s well-being, you have to worry about what affects your IQ.

An Addiction Research Center conducted a research regarding the long-term effects of alcohol on an alcoholic’s brain functioning. As expected, alcohol was found to be associated with mental problems and lower IQ scores. And as an addition to their findings, they also found out that long-term smoking has an effect on decreased brain power.

The results showed that alcohol has more severe effects on the thinking skills of alcoholic men who have been smoking for quite some time already. It has an adverse effect on memory, problem-solving skills and even the IQ of these men.

Among these alcoholic subjects, cigarette smoking was seen to be related to reduced mental functioning. However, even though the cause and effect relationship between smoking and the decreased mental performance was not clearly established, there are still some things which point out to the fact that cigarettes are the cause to such effect. In order to prove this point, more studies will have to be conducted.

Aside from these bad vices, there are still other things which may cause the reduction of your brain power.

Other Short-term Causes for Poor Thinking Performance

According to some more studies, foods which include artificial food coloring and sweeteners may be bad for the brain, more especially if they are consumed in large quantities. Usually, the children are the ones more affected negatively by these artificial flavorings and colorings. Examples of these kinds of foods are colas, white bread and hydrogenated oils.

The hydrogenated oils may cause the clogging of the arteries, and thus may result to heart diseases. Because of the clogs, it would be harder for the blood to flow to the brain. Artificially sweetened foods are unhealthy as well because they can cause fluctuations in blood sugar levels. These fluctuations may cause short-term brain fogging and even diabetes. Thus, it would be wiser for you to stay away from excessive sugar products.

Aside from these foods, other intangible things are believed to cause decrease of brain power. Personal problems such as egotism may be a factor. Because of egotism, a person may limit his ideas into just one view, which is his own. Because of egotism, he becomes settled with just his original thought and he would think that since his thoughts are more important than others then there is no more need to look at the ideas that come from others.

As you may have noticed, the effects of the bad eating habits as well as the personal problems may just be temporary. Thus, if you stop eating all those junk foods and start eating healthy; and likewise stop being so egocentric, then your brain functioning may just return to its normal performance. Fortunately, these factors affect the brain efficiency temporarily; unlike with alcoholism and smoking wherein the effects really do affect the IQ.

However, despite the effects’ permanence, the fact still remains that you should take care of your brain. You should keep it healthy all the time by doing things beneficial to your mental health. Whether or not the efficiency of your brain is affected temporarily or permanently, the truth is that it is still harmed for a certain period of time. You should know better, your brain performance should always be at its prime.

As you may have known, your brain works in a complicated manner. The left portion of your brain controls the actions and movement of the right part of your body while the right portion of your brain controls that movement of the left part of your body. Thus, it may be possible that the side of your brain which controls you dominant hand is more used than the other side. So, if you use your non-dominant hand into doing some of your daily activities, would it better your brain’s performance?

If you are a right handed person, then most of the time you are stimulating the left part of your brain. Now, if you use your left hand in doing certain tasks, then you are able to stimulate the right side of your brain as well. By doing so, you are awakening the part of your mental faculties that is intuitive and creative. On the other hand, if you are a left handed person, and you use you right hand in doing simple tasks, then you are stimulating the side of your brain that is rational and organized.

This idea is supported by Tony Buzan, the author of a book entitled Using Both Sides of the Brain. According to him, doing simple exercises or cross-trainings like this bring in additional features to one’s mental functioning, and at the same time there will be a total improvement in one’s brain power. By doing so continuously, a person may stay mentally young and fresh.

Other activities which can stimulate the other side of your brain may be done without really straining yourself. You can just simply walk around your room with your eyes shut close, or you can get dressed and strip of them with closed eyes. You can also revisit your childhood games; the game when you rub your stomach with one hand while your other hand is tapping your head is also a good brain exercise. Simple tasks like these already constitute physical exercise for your brain, and they can already bring good effects to your brain, no matter how trivial they may be.

So, you may start to wonder regarding the mental condition of those people who are blessed to be able to use both their hands for complicated tasks such as writing, or simply put the ambidextrous. You may think that since they are stimulating both sides of their brain that they are more intelligent than others. This is a misconception; there are no studies or researches which can attest to this idea.

There are people who are able to teach and train themselves to use both their dominant and non-dominant hands to do tasks, and sports like the cricket players. But their training does not necessarily turn them into academic geniuses; so perhaps, this is just too much to ask for.

So, whether or not these simple exercises may make you a little bit more intelligent, these physical exercises are still believed to have good effects on your brain. Academically, the results may just be minor, or even unnoticed, but there can be other aspects which are affected, such as your creativity, organization and other features. One thing worth noting is that by doing these exercises, you are stimulating the part of your brain which is not used as often as the other part. Don’t you think it is always best to keep them balanced? If you want to better your brain’s performance, you might as well try to stimulate you whole brain, and not just a single portion.

Common in our society today are the brain exercises designed to give our mental faculties the boost they need. There are games, activities and all other cranial calisthenics that claim to be helpful in maintaining our brains functioning superbly. You should know that these things are not just for those who have mental problems, these activities and exercises are also good for everyone – everyone who seeks to keep your minds healthy; to better your brains. From senior citizens to the younger generations, these activities should be helpful enough to keep them all mentally fit.

Although some scientists may not fully believe in the benefits of brain exercises, a lot of researchers and professionals hold on to the numerous studies showing that the brain really does need an exercise just like the body does. Studies have showed that people who have tried to perform brain exercises regularly have improved memory as well as focus. See, with simple brain exercises the functioning of both hemispheres of the brain are made better; your brain becomes healthier.

Cross Crawls

Cross crawls is a type of exercise that is based on the principle that our nervous system works homolaterally. This means that the left portion of our brain controls the movement of the right portion of our body, and so on for the other half. The principles of kinesiology are also applied in this exercise wherein rhythmic movements are suggested so that the brain’s lateralization can be improved further. You can do this simply by touching your right hand or elbow to your left knee. Do this for several times, and after one side, you may proceed with the other side, doing the same steps.

This exercise, when performed by babies, are believed to realign the brain circuits in order for the left half of the brain to be able to connect with the left part of the body, and vice versa. For the adults, on the other hand, when this exercise is done there is an integration of the different functions and tasks of the brain. This is the reason why this exercise is mostly recommended for people suffering from dyslexia. Aside from this, this exercise is also good for strengthening your immune system’s responses.

Lazy Eights

Another exercise which can benefit both the left and right hemispheres of the brain is the “lazy eights.” This is done by drawing the number “8” on a piece of paper using your right hand for two minutes. After the right hand, you may proceed to draw the same sign using your left hand. This should be done daily, and the result is that you will have better concentration and your hand-and-eye coordination will improve. Aside from these, another benefit is that you would feel a reduction of stress and an enhancement of your mood.

You may also do the “Rhythmic Eights” wherein instead of using paper and pencil, you can just create an imaginary eight in the air with your hands. This should be sufficient to coordinate the two sides of your brain as well.

Try Different Exercises for A Change

Since there are already a lot of exercises designed to improve your mental functioning, it would be a better idea if you would alter your exercises so that your brain will not get used to just one routine. By varying your brain work out, you are also able to exercise as many parts of your brain as possible. There are puzzles, crosswords and other brain games available; you just have to look for those which best fits you. Exercise your brain, better your brain’s performance.

People who are busy with their work are usually the ones who are having problems in sleeping. This is because the exhaustion and their hectic schedule keeps them from getting better sleep on daily basis. If you are one of those who are having trouble sleeping due to too much work, it is now time to reflect what might be causing these and address it properly.

One of the things that hinder people from getting better sleep is the set of foods that they eat. This is because these foods might contain ingredients and other properties that can really affect the person’s chemical balance. If you think that the foods that you are eating affects you in getting better sleep, try assessing your food intake for one day.

What you can do is list down all the foods-including the drinks-that you have taken in for one day and make an assessment after that day. In this way, you can track down which are the foods and drinks you have taken affect your sleeping habits especially at night. The following are just some of the list of foods that might lead one to troublesome and uncomfortable sleeping at nighttime:

1. Too much food intake. This is considered as the major culprit why many people-especially those who don’t have sleeping problems before-are having a hard time sleeping all of a sudden. Experts say that if a person have overeaten, the tendency is that the stomach will have a hard time digesting it. Too much food may also affect the how the digestive system work and may even cause clinical conditions such as ulcer if done regularly.

2. Foods that contain too much fat. Experts say that people are eating foods that have too much fat are prone to not sleeping well at night because it creates a lot of digesting work for the stomach. If one wants to get better sleep, he or she should cut down on foods that are too rich or fatty so there will be lesser work for the stomach especially at nighttime.

3. Too much spicy or acidic foods. These sets of foods can very much affect one’s sleeping habits especially at nighttime. If one eats too many sets of spicy foods especially at night, it can lead to troubles in the stomach and even heartburn which makes it harder for you to lie down and get better sleep at night.

4. Too much alcohol intake. Some people say that alcohol may help one to get better sleep but on the contrary, it doesn’t especially if he or she has taken too much of it.

5. Foods that contain caffeine. These are another set of culprits for people who are having trouble sleeping. If you are prone to not sleeping, it is best to avoid foods as well as drinks that have high caffeine content such as coffee, chocolates, sodas that are caffeinated as well as teas. To get better sleep, it is best to not consume these for a while. Or if you really cannot do without these, try minimizing your consumption even for a couple of days. Once you get your sleeping pattern back, you may go back to consuming these but only to limited content so you would not go back to having sleeping problems again.