Keeping Your Brain Fit
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Staying fit is a great plan to help lead a longer healthier life but if my brain can't keep up, then what's the point. The brain is a muscle too and it follows the same "use it or lose it" policy as your other muscles. So how can you keep your brain fit? Brain exercise is the answer.
Two of the most important factors in keeping your brain healthy are traditional exercise and nutrition. Keep your body healthy and your brain will follow suit. But after that there are other ways to exercise your mind.
You've probably heard people describe one of their older relatives like this, "my Uncle Larry is a sharp as a tack, he does the New York Times Crossword puzzle everyday." Well, Uncle Larry has the right idea but his execution is a little off. You see the best way to stimulate your brain is to break free of everyday activities and challenge yourself in new and unexpected ways. By doing the crosswords everyday, he has created a familiar routine that becomes less challenging everyday. Uncle Larry, it's time to add Word Searches and Sudoku for some variety.
- Activities to exercise your mind:
- If you're right handed, trying brushing your teeth with your left hand
- Try accomplishing something with your eyes closed, such as putting the key in your front door or walking to your fridge
- Try a different route on your daily commute
- Reconstruct your day by writing down what you did. For example, if you take a trip to the zoo, when you get home try to write down all the animals that you saw in the order that your saw them.
Your mother may have told you that playing too many video games will turn your brain to mush, but she was wrong. The Nintendo DS Lite (aff)
has a few games that are designed to exercise your brain and they are varied enough to avoid becoming routine. I recently played my cousin's copy of Big Brain Academy (aff)
on her DS. The game consists of a bunch of fun puzzles that you try to finish in a set amount of time. Just as you get the hang of the puzzle, it's over and there's a new one to try. When I finished, the game informed me that my score was that of a hair stylist. Yikes! I had better get some more brain exercise.
posted by Anthony @ 7:32 AM,
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Brain Wave Therapy
Saturday, December 30, 2006
When I was younger and was willing to try anything that sounded cool, I stumbled across Brain Wave Therapy. Unlike some of the other odd things I tried, Brain Wave Therapy actually works. Here’s how it works. Your brain resonates at different frequencies based on what you’re doing. You’re creating Delta waves when you sleep, Alpha waves when you’re focused and theta waves when you’re meditating. By listening to the right frequencies, you can coax your brain to do what you want it to. For example, if you listen to theta waves when you’re trying to meditate you should be able to achieve a deeper state of relaxation then you normally would without the theta waves. Sort of like your own meditation guru in a your MP3 player.
Eager to revisit Brain Wave Therapy I downloaded some of the BrainSync audio files. All I had to do was listen to them with stereo headphones and I would be on my way to the benefits of meditation.
If you don’t like the idea of listening to static then maybe BrainSync's Audio Recordings
aren't for you. Well maybe not static, it’s more of a constant hum. There’s some bells and chimes and some of recordings sort of sound like music but you really shouldn’t expect to be rocking to the oldies. There are some other recordings that you could try such as those by Dr. Jeffrey Thompson but my experience is with BrainSync so I can't vouch for them.But it definitely works for me and Brain Wave Therapy has been clinically proven to be effective. They are also offered to patients at America's most respected cancer treatment hospitals, Memorial Sloan Kettering and Dana Farber.
Labels: brain, brain wave, meditation
posted by Anthony @ 7:31 AM,
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