By eating certain types of foods and engaging in active thinking games, skills and tasks, you can ensure your brain receives the care it needs to maintain processing speed, reasoning abilities and memory. You need to exercise and feed your brain for optimal health, just as you would any other part of your body. Keeping your brain active, fit and healthy takes only a few minutes every day.
Eat Chocolate
Dark chocolate causes the brain to produce dopamine, which encourages brain stimulation, sparks memory and enhances learning. Eating small, 1-oz. serving of chocolate every day may help boost your brain power, suggests Posit Science.
Memorize Something
Memorize a new song, a phrase in a foreign language or a famous speech to help keep your brain fit and healthy. Posit Science suggests learning the lyrics to a new song and trying to memorize them. Such an activity stimulates the release of a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine, which helps the brain memorize and function.
Work Puzzles
Fitting a jigsaw puzzle increases activity in different areas of the brain and increases spatial awareness, suggests Posit Science. You feel the pieces in your fingers, shift your focus from the shape of edges of a small piece into the larger piece. The activity engages reasoning, visual acuity and mental imagination, all good exercises for the brain.
Limit Alcohol and Cigarettes
Alcohol can cause your brain to become sluggish and, in large amounts, reduces your concentration and memory, spatial skills and reasoning capability. For optimal brain health, don't smoke or drink, suggests Randall Hansen, Ph.D., writing for EmpoweringRetreat.com.
Stimulate the Brain
Engage in activities that stimulate and challenge the brain to learn new things, suggests Hansen. Visit an exhibit at the museum, play games against a computer or challenge your friends or other family members to chess, card games or board games. Games that involve strategy or advance planning may be especially beneficial to brain function, as they combine reasoning, processing and memory skills.
Change your habits and routines once in a while to keep the brain stimulated, which helps create new neural pathways and growth. New habits may require new thinking or physical coordination skills, suggests Hansen.
