1. Eat Brain Healthy Food
Certain foods improve your brain's function: foods like leafy green vegetables, fruits and vegetables with antioxidants, soy, and whole wheat provide nutrients that help with brain development and maintenance. Even foods like cacao beans and coffee beans contain vitamins and nutrients that are good for your brain—just skip all the excess sugar.
2. Reduce Your Cholesterol
According to research by Kaiser Permanente, high levels of cholesterol increases a person's risk of developing dementia. Women with a cholesterol value of 240 and over have a 66 percent increased chance of developing Alzheimer's disease, and a 25 percent increased chance when cholesterol levels are between 200 and 239.
3. Use Omega-3 Supplements
Besides omega-3 fatty acids found in food, supplements can also be used. DHA, or decosahexaenoic acid, has been added in food for infants and pregnant women. Omega-3 fatty acids cannot be made by the human body, so eating as many omega-3 rich foods and supplements is necessary for optimal brain health.
4. Try Memory Techniques
Using certain memory techniques, like chunking, can increase your memory. Chunking is used for working memory, a form of short-term memory. When remembering items, group them together meaningfully. For example, instead of remembering one number at a time, remember the numbers as double digit or triple digit numbers.
5. Increase Your Vocabulary
Women have a a greater ability with language compared to men. Increasing your vocabulary not only helps with verbal skills, but it exercises both your language skills and memory.
6. Take Time to Relax
Many times, concentration problems are due to stress. Take some time to relax: mediate, listen to calming music, or do something for yourself.
7. Study a New Language
Besides new vocabulary, women can use their language abilities to learn a foreign language. Foreign languages have different grammatical structuring, so it will challenge your brain to reorganize sentences.
8. Sleep Eight Hours a Night
Often, memory and learning problems are due to a lack of sleep. While you sleep, your brain converts short-term memories into long-term memories—one reason why it is important to get a good night sleep before a test and not stay up late cramming. Make sure you get at least eight hours of sleep a night.
9. Learn More Efficiently
Every person learns differently; for example, some people learn verbally and other people learn visually. Take your learning method and use it to your advantage: verbal learners can use a tape recorder and visual learners can use notes.
10. Do Mental Activities
Keeping your mind active is key to keeping your brain healthy. Mental activities can range from doing puzzles, like Sudoku, or reading.
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Elizabeth Stannard Gromisch received her bachelor’s of science degree in neuroscience from Trinity College in Hartford, CT in May 2009. She is the Hartford Women's Health Examiner.
Add a Comment6 Comments
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July 1, 2014 - 1:12amThis Comment
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This Comment
Hi Elizabeth, I find your tips about chunking pieces of information together to increase short-term memory particularily interesting. I have also found that putting the information into a catchy phrase, song (as silly as it seems) or creating a rhyme or acronym with the need to know info are helpful memorization techniques as well.
January 22, 2010 - 8:18amThis Comment
My grandfather used to say, "Use it or lose it," referring to keeping your brain active. My favorite fictional character, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, relies upon his "little grey cells" to help solve a mystery, and I have a habit of saying that I'm putting my "little grey cells to work." In our family, we had a longstanding tradition of challenging thought through debate and reporting on current events from daily newspapers or publications like Time Magazine, which I didn't really fully appreciate until I had my own kids.
I admire my 80-year-old mother for her continual thirst for knowledge and am grateful she passed along her enjoyment for crossword puzzles and, more recently, sudoku. She announced to me the other day that she wants to learn French so that she could hold conversations with me - I thought that was hilarious, since I'm so badly out of practice (mine is a multi-lingual family, but I'm the only one who studied the language). At my daughter-in-law's birthday dinner, several of us decided we're going to learn Portuguese, since she speaks it.
Judging by how mentally alert my grandfather was, and my mother still is, keeping the little grey cells challenged is a very good thing.
September 10, 2009 - 7:54pmThis Comment
I thought you'd find this new take on omega-3s interesting: http://www.prevention.com/cda/article/the-vanishing-youth-nutrient/6dec72fe5deb2210VgnVCM10000030281eac____/news.voices/in.the.magazine/september.2009.issue/0/0/1
September 10, 2009 - 1:47pmThis Comment
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September 10, 2009 - 11:02amThis Comment