How to Improve Your Brain Performance

In the early 1980's, Marian Diamond a neuroanatomist at University of California at Berkeley made an experiment using rats. She placed one group in a stimulating environment with toys, treadmills ladder and swing. While the other group was confined in a bare cage, the rat put in the first cage (the stimulating one) not only that they live longer, but their brains show more connection between neurons. Santiago Ramon y Cajal, the father of neuroanatomy, had found that the number of interconnections between neurons was a far better predictor of brainpower than the sheer number of neurons.

As we know our brains control almost all of our action in life, from moving, seeing, listening to reasoning and thinking. But with our daily activity this kind of activity become more and more automated as we start to get used to it, and if we are not careful we will end up not using our brain much, just like the rats put in the second cage in Diamond experiment.

To actively improve our brain we should always use our brain, like learn more, as it will create more connections between brain cells, even if we don't practice the skill for decades the connections will still exist, maybe weakened a bit but not gone.

There are a few tips to how to improve our brain performance which I collected from several source over book and internet:

1. Do a body exercise, you would gain two benefits by doing this, first it would help improve your cardiovascular health and second it would reduce your stress level, why because when we workout our body release some kind of stress reducer called endorphin, see http://xcellen.blogspot.com/2007/11/not-heart-to-hurt.html on benefit of cardio exercise.

2. Exercise your brain, by learning new things, like sutdy foreign language, playing brain stimulating games, or even finding a new hobby, as it will create more connectivity between your brain cells.

3. Train your motoric skill, use your left hand to write if you are right handed, or do juggling.

3. Always have enough sleep (6 hours is common, 8-9 hours is ideal), without enough sleep would causes cognitive impairment later in life, and beside that you won't be able to think clearly and would be easier to forget something.

4. Get enough food for your brain, like antioxidant vitamins, B vitamins (B12) and folate are important for brain cells function.

5. Keep an eye on your health, disease like blood pressure, high cholesterol and obesity may increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease.

6. Recheck your drugs, since some prescription and over the counter drugs may cause memory or concentration problems.

7. Reduce your smoking habbit.

8. Excess on caffeine and alcohol are bad, try to reduce it.

9. Meditate; if you can meditate properly it can help reduce your stress level, since stress can cause a short term memory loss, inability to focus, confusion and agitation.

Hope you found this useful. Cheers :)