“In creating the human brain, evolution has wildly overshot the mark”
– Arthur Koestler
Your Brain, an Owner’s Manual:
It’s the most important organ in our body. But as we age, while we talk a lot about the health of our heart and our skin, we don’t often think about the thing that allow us to “think” in the first place.
Although your brain is an organ, you can think of it like a muscle. Like any muscle, we have some control of how vigorous our brain is. If we exercise it regularly and treat it well, it will be stronger as we age.
Picture rain falling in the hills. Water trickles, drop by drop, until the drops start connecting with each other and flow faster. Trickles combine until thousands of droplets have merged into streams flowing down to one river.
Your brain works like this. Our thoughts are electrical impulses travelling through our neural pathways. The more we have a thought, the more ingrained that particular neural pathway becomes. It becomes habit, a stream bed that all the trickles around it fall into.
When you stop thinking about a subject (ex. You finish a course and don’t revisit the materials) the stream bed can actually go dry. The neural pathway can actually disappear and we’ll lose our memory of that thought.
Bottom line: thinking new thoughts is the best way to keep your brain healthy. Establishing new neural pathways exercises our brain. We can keep our existing pathways (our old knowledge) strong while learning new things and strengthening the network as a whole.
7 Best Brain Exercises:
Now that we know how to exercise your brain, let’s zero in on the best ways to do it:
- Learn New Things: Exposing yourself to new ideas and stimuli acts as brainfood. It’s not just about getting “smarter”’; it’s about keeping your brain healthy and vigorous. Read a new book, watch a documentary online, attend an event you’ve never been to.
- Experience Something New: Whether a cooking class, art workshop, or a new club, get out there and have a new experience. It doesn’t have to cost money; it could be as simple as finding interesting people on Facebook and having a coffee to talk about new ideas. Every new experience and person met = new pathways opening, and that means brain growth.
- Repeat & Review: The best way to hold onto the things you’ve learned is to revisit them. It could be as simple a skimming some old notes, just enough to keep that neural pathway healthy.
- Puzzles: You’ve heard about the benefits of a daily crossword, Suduko puzzle, or trivia. The benefits are real. Daily challenges keep the exercised areas of your brain sharp.
- Talking: Bad news for the silent types. Speaking forces you to put thoughts into words, and doubles the traction on the neural pathway you’re using. Say it outloud, and you’re more likely to remember it later.
- Exercise: Working out releases endorphins and dopamine, which tend to keep you focused and feeling better about life in general. That makes you more interested in learning new things and better able to retain what you’re learning.
- Nourish your Brain: Think of water like oil for our engine of a body. Brains thrive on it. While you’re at it, extra servings of blueberries, wild salmon, nuts, avocados, whole grains, and beans help too.