10 easy ways to boost your brain power
Thinking is the basis of human life, while each person has situations when he is not too pleased with his own ingenuity.
When you need to learn a bunch of material for an exam or develop some kind of large-scale project, you want to become a genius at least for a while. Here are 10 ways to improve your brain's higher cognitive functions.
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1. Drink coffee
Of course, constant lack of sleep and excessive consumption of coffee has not benefited anyone yet, but recent studies reaffirmed the short-term positive effect of caffeine: coffee not only improves tone, it helps you focus on time-consuming tasks and improves almost all indicators of intelligence, such as logical thinking or time reactions.
Scientists emphasize that one should not think that caffeine makes you smarter, it just makes the brain work in a more efficient “emergency” mode, but constant overload will definitely backfire with rapid fatigue in the future.
2. Allow yourself some wine
Over the long history of drinking, mankind has discovered a lot of both positive and negative effects of alcohol. Recent experiments by Norwegian scientists prove that people who regularly drink wine (in moderation) on average show better indicators of cognitive functions in tests than those who abstain from alcohol, this pattern was especially pronounced in women.
Most researchers have recently been talking about the beneficial effects of a small amount of wine on thinking, speech coherence, attention and other higher mental processes. It is believed that fermented grape juice contains antioxidants that prevent brain aging, so, as our ancestors used to say, in vino veritas!
3. "Charge" from the Sun
Excess sunlight is bad for the skin, but don't avoid sun exposure entirely - vitamin D is good for the brain.
Scientists set up an experiment and found that sunbathers did better on test tasks than volunteers with low levels of vitamin D.
As some researchers suggest, vitamin D has the ability to slow down the aging process of the brain, so if you are not a vampire, you can safely "recharge" the sun's rays. But remember: measure is good in everything, otherwise you risk getting a sunburn.
4. Let the thought flow
In order for the head to work with maximum efficiency, it is necessary to be able to focus on a specific task: the brain is most effective when it is busy solving a single problem, unless you, of course, are Julius Caesar.
But as recent research has shown, sometimes it's better to really "let go" of your thoughts and think about something abstract - such a small "change" will then allow you to better perform tasks that require the participation of memory and increase overall thinking productivity. Constant focus on one or more things slows down the process of processing information and “tires” the brain.
5. By talking to yourself, you can find the "missing" item at home
When a person begins to communicate with himself, many people usually twist their finger at the temple, suspecting problems with the head. After studying this phenomenon, scientists came to the conclusion that thinking out loud really improves intelligence.
The participants of the experiment were required to find some object, while the influence of their remarks on the search efficiency was recorded. Volunteers who spoke aloud the description of the purpose of the search completed the task faster than those who were silent. Moreover, statements not related to the desired object did not give a pronounced effect, that is, it makes no sense to repeat “refrigerator” loudly if you can’t find the keys at home in any way.
6. Dance
Active physical exercises and dancing will help to avoid the onset of senile insanity, scientists say.
When a person dances, his body and head work in harmony: movements require clear psychomotor coordination, which increases attention and positively affects spatial orientation. Decisions are also made faster and, in addition, learning new dance steps makes the process of thinking more flexible.
Do you want to "pump" the brain? Sign up for a dance school, because it's not only beautiful, but also useful.
7. Think about your diet
Often certain foods are presented as a universal miracle cure for increasing intelligence. Don't believe it: you can't eat something for dinner and become a genius right there. But it should be remembered that the quality of food has a great impact on both the brain and the whole body, so you can choose a diet in such a way as to reduce fatigue and optimize mental effort.
To successfully work the head, the body needs glucose (found in many fruits), unsaturated fatty acids (rich in fish), amino acids and antioxidants that are present in wine, as well as vitamin E, which can be found in nuts. Among other things, nutritionists advise including blueberries, avocados and more cereals in the diet.
8. Play Tetris
Curious data was obtained by scientists who studied the functioning of the human brain while playing Tetris: short-term sessions of the game increased the amount of gray matter, improved spatial thinking problem-solving skills, and also increased overall mental activity.
Another amazing feature of the well-known computer game is the smoothing out of mental trauma: if you spend some time folding multi-colored bricks on the screen in a stressful state, negative impressions are more likely to be forgotten.
Doctors are now interested in this unexpected therapeutic effect with the aim of using this method to mitigate the effects of post-traumatic stress disorders.
9. Exercise
There is a widespread belief that bodybuilders and athletes do not have high mental abilities, but as it turned out, this is not the case.
Physical education, of course, does not raise the level of IQ, but it improves blood circulation and increases overall tone, which allows the brain to work more efficiently. Researchers have empirically found that exercise improves cognitive skills by about 10% in children and adults. At the same time, it is absolutely not necessary to develop a complex set of exercises - an ordinary run is enough to achieve a positive effect.
10. Don't overeat
When it comes to the long term, improving mental performance will give a carefully selected set of foods, but when you need an immediate effect (for example, you have to take an exam), it is better to refrain from eating solid food.
Researchers at the Yale University School of Medicine conducted an experiment on mice, and it turned out that rodents performed much better on test tasks for higher cognitive functions when they were hungry. The reason for this lies in the mechanism of natural selection - when the brain "feels" hunger, the intensity of its work increases to reduce the time it takes to search for food.
Therefore, if you have to brainstorm, you should not eat "to satiety" - satiety does not contribute to the playfulness of thought, but you do not need to go on a hunger strike: it is important to find a middle ground.