Train Your Brain
Each day, it is important for us to keep our minds clear, remember the things we need to do, and have the sense to do all that is required of us each day. Living alone, I have no one to ask about the date, the time, or anything else that I might not know right away. So to keep my mind normal and active, I do what I consider to be training my brain. Each morning I note what time I wake up, go through my usual routine, and repeat to myself the day, date, and year. Working from home and writing online also requires me to make sure I meet my deadlines and have a set schedule, So I have notebooks all around me, and I jot things down that I need to remember. An excellent way to train your brain every day is to recount everything you have done the entire day after the day is over.
Memory capacity increases when you keep your mind sharp and always challenge it to learn new things. Every time I read about or find something interesting online that I did not know about before, I take the time to know everything about it. Once I have learned about something, I pass it on in a post, and it helps me greatly to write up the article by just remembering what I learned about a particular topic. Other times I make a few notes to remind me.
Cognitive capacity is enhanced when you challenge and train your brain every day. It improves and strengthens the connective tissue in the brain’s neurons and, in turn, helps them perform better and quicker. This process is called neuroplasticity and is how your brain expands its capacity. The more I train my brain, I find that I can remember things from a very long time ago, and I can even remember how and when things happened and who I was with when they occurred.
Exercising the brain by doing some simple exercises to challenge your thought processes can greatly help delay the symptoms and help beat the odds of developing dementia and other kinds of memory loss. I take my old photo albums, and I look at photos, and I think back. Usually, if I think long enough, I can remember most of the people in the photos, and I write down their names, where the photo was taken, and what was happening at that time, even for photos in which I am not present.
How to Sharpen Your Brain
Take the time to stimulate your brain cells, so they’re communicating with one another. Solve some cognitive exercises. You could try to learn a new foreign language or refresh your memory of the one you know but have not had reason to use. Choose a hobby to learn, perhaps something you have wanted to do for a long time now but never found the time. Set aside some time for that.
Often I think of something I want to check out online, and then, I search it on Google. Now, if I suddenly forget exactly what I wanted to check out, I go on to something else and keep that in the back of my mind. After a while, it comes to me what I originally wanted to find out, and I go and get the information I wanted. Repeat the information you have just found online out loud and jot down what you learned. When I jot down notes, I usually jot down just a bit of information to remember exactly what it was that I intended to look for.
Reading books is a great way to help recall information, especially on different topics. Often even reading fiction, I find some of the places that I read about I want to know more about, so I get online and search for the places I just read about to find out if they exist. Other times I would like to know more about actual cities or states in the US, and I get online and find all the information I need.
I enjoyed all kinds of board games and card games but have no one to play with now. There is my laptop, and I enjoy various games I play online, including two of my favorites, backgammon and Yahtzee. It helps a lot, and I start remembering all the right moves and challenges that I used to do against friends when playing certain games. Even solitaire is a good challenge to train your brain.
Don’t rely on knowing what you want to do the following day because you could leave out something really important. Instead, for each day, make up a schedule of what you plan to do and check off what you have done as you go along, Then before you finish for the night, make up a schedule of what you need to finish the following day and what additional thing you want to do.
Foods Offering More Brain Power
As a child, you might have hated it when you were told to eat more vegetables, but guess what? Your mom knew what she was talking about. Hopefully, you do eat vegetables now, but your brain needs nutrients such as Vitamin K, lutein, folate, and beta carotene, so it is important to eat a lot of leafy greens. Leafy greens include spinach, kale, collard greens and broccoli. Research has shown that these leafy greens might be able to help slow cognitive decline.
Eating fish at least twice a week is a good choice since fatty fish have abundant omega-3 fatty acids, which are healthy unsaturated fats. They’re known to lower blood levels of beta-amyloid, the protein that damages clumps in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease. The best fish to choose is salmon, cod, canned light tuna, and pollack. If you’re not a fish eater, choose an omega-3 supplement or terrestrial omega-3 sources like avocados, walnuts, and flax seeds.
Flavonoids found in berries can help improve your memory. By consuming two or more servings of strawberries and blueberries every week, research has shown a delay in memory decline in women by up to two and a half years.
Coffee and tea are good to consume, and research has shown that the caffeine in a cup of coffee or tea can boost concentrations. Caffeine helps to solidify new memories, and through research, caffeine groups were able to identify the images they had studied the previous day correctly; also, on the following day,
Walnuts are a great source of protein and healthy fats and can help to improve memory. Since walnuts are high in alpha-linolenic acid, a type of omega-3 fatty acid linked to lower blood pressure and cleaner arteries, these nuts are good for both the brain and the heart.