Boost Your Brain Health: Four Ways To Improve Cognitive Function

Boost Your Brain Health: Four Ways To Improve Cognitive Function

 

Keeping your brain healthy is more than just putting it to good use! In fact, you need to care for it in a variety of other ways in order to keep on doing so. Here’s how your diet, mood, exercising habits, and sleeping patterns can affect your cognitive functioning, as well as how to tailor them so it can thrive!

 

Nutrition

  • Feed Your Brain

 

When you satiate your hunger, you feed your brain! A variety of nutrients are crucial to the function and longevity of your noggin, and the only way to get them up there is to eat them. Fuel up your cerebrum with a diet rich in brain-healthy nutrients so it can power you through your best life!

  • Antioxidants

 

These compounds play an important part in protecting your body’s fats, enzymes, and vitamins, and they can even delay the damages that inevitably happen to your cells over time! As far as brain health, this means that antioxidants will afford it protection and keep it astute.

 

When you are lacking in these substances, oxidative stress can occur within your brain, contributing to age-related illnesses like Alzheimer’s disease.

 

Vital Antioxidants and Their Best Sources:

 

  • Lutein and Beta-Carotene: Green, leafy vegetables 
  • Vitamin C: Citrus fruits
  • Vitamin E: Nuts and seeds
  • Selenium: Eggs and fish 

  • Omega-3s:

 

Your most vital organ needs omega-3s in order to properly function and develop. These far-reaching fatty acids facilitate communication between your neurons, support your neurotransmitters, help blood flow to your brain, promote tissue growth, and cheer on your cognition!

 

Studies have shown that omega-3s can help prevent neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders like depression and anxiety!

 

The Best Sources:

  • Seafood, plant oils, and fortified foods


  • B-Vitamins

 

The B vitamins 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, and 12 keep your brain healthy by helping it to produce neurotransmitters, allowing the messages between your brain and body to be delivered on-time and in-tact. Your body doesn’t store it, so you need a steady supply!

 

These vitamins can ‘B’ helpful in preventing dementia, and they lower your risk of losing your memory through cognitive decline!

 

The Best Sources:

 

  • Iron and Zinc

 

Scientists think that iron and zinc in the brain may play a vital role in neurotransmission! A diet rich in these metals will aid your cognition and get your neurons functioning optimally.

 

Anemia is often the result of an iron deficiency, and it can deprive your brain of oxygen. Not getting enough O2 can hurt, or even kill, your neurons!

 

The Best Sources:

 

  • Mollusks, legumes, and beef

  • Know Your Brain 

 

No brain is the same! Certain conditions, such as DNA mutations, can disrupt the processes that keep yours functioning optimally, making it harder to absorb key nutrients. A medical doctor who also specializes in nutrition can assist you in keeping your brain running as strong as possible, as long as possible! After analyzing your unique biological make-up, they can suggest foods and nutritional supplements to fill in any gaps that might be interfering with your intellect!

 

Mental State

  • Decrease Your Stress

 

When you are stressed out, cortisol is released throughout your brain. If this hormone is elevated, it can damage your hippocampus, impairing your memory and ability to learn. Not only that, but chronically high levels of cortisol may cause your HPA, hippocampus, amygdala, and frontal lobe to start to atrophy!

 

Constantly filling your head with negative thoughts might activate genes in your DNA that make your brain age more quickly! Stopping this despondency by finding healthy ways to lessen your stress will not only get you up and running, but potentially help you to turn on your best features.

  • Diminish Your Triggers

 

Trauma from your past can make your amygdala apt to activate fight-or-flight responses unnecessarily! Adrenaline is released at these times, causing your small blood vessels to constrict. This can potentially reduce blood flow to your brain.

 

If this rush recurs often, it can cause neurological damage. Taking away these triggers, or at least decreasing their impact on your body’s chemistry, may help to keep you and your brain flowing with ease.

 

An array of therapies are available to diminish the effects of your trauma on the natural responses of your brain and body. A certified counselor can facilitate these treatments and tone down your troubles, so your head can be happy and healthy! Nowadays, you can either do this through Telehealth or in a counseling office.

 

Exercise

  • Get Blood to Your Brain

 

Your brain has a high metabolic demand and requires a good flow of blood. Regular exercise will pump it up! This is not only beneficial, but essential, as it allows all the nutrients your brain needs to carry out its job to be delivered quickly and efficiently. 

 

There is a lot of evidence to suggest that a healthy heart and a healthy brain go hand-in-hand—so you’re better off not skipping cardio. If your cardiovascular system is compromised, your brain could be negatively affected, so checking up on it is crucial. 

  • Improve Your Memory

 

A sedentary lifestyle not only slows your memory, but also ups your chances of developing dementia! Regular exercise helps to increase the BDNFs (brain-derived neurotrophic factors) in your brain. The more you have, the more you can remember, because your capacity for memory and its level of function depend on them. If you could use some motivation to hit the gym, try getting nostalgic, and then remind yourself that to keep these priceless memories, you need to move!

 

Working out also decreases the number of stress receptors in your hippocampus, making your daily stressors less harmful to your brain. You should still look for ways to decrease your stress, because its hormones won’t disappear after a workout, but it will minimize the negative effects they have on your mental faculties! Just an hour of light to moderate physical activity each day can strengthen both your body and mind.

 

Sleep

  • Improve Your Neurons’ Communication

 

When you are ‘in the grind’, you might feel like you are making the most of your mental faculties, but keeping at it requires you to work smarter and not harder. To get the most out of your magnificent mind, you need to ensure you’re consistently getting enough sleep. Sleep plays a vital role in the functions that go on inside your skull, including nerve cell communication. Getting to bed early will give your brain the time to complete tasks that optimize your ability to complete yours!

  • Rid Yourself of Toxins

 

A mind can only consistently feel clear if it is decluttered regularly. Luckily, your cerebellum cleans itself while you snooze! One of its nightly chores is to remove toxins, offering you the clarity to focus on what truly matters when you wake up. If you think you are doing your priorities a favor by cutting into your precious sleep, think again, because you can only lend them your full attention when your brain has had time to get rid of what doesn’t belong there!

 

Optimizing your lifestyle to facilitate brain health may seem like a big feat. As soon as you begin to enhance your mental faculties, though, everything will seem a whole lot easier. When your brain is running at its best, you will be at your best too!

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

No Comment

Leave your comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Categories