Brain Power and Memory Improvement

THIS ARTICLE’S PDF: Brain Power and Memory Improvement

The human mind is an extremely complex and intricate well-oiled machine very different and more advanced than computer technology. Our human brain has evolved over thousands of years to make us the most powerful (not physically, but mentally) living things on Earth. Sometimes however, it seems that it is hard for us to remember the simplest memories or associations. How our mind can be improved naturally has to do with exercise, diet, and the way in which we learn. The most important fact we need to take away is that we need to be able to move our formulations, associations, and short-term memories, into the expanded spaces of our brain where long-term memory can be stored and created. Our brain is constantly making new connections and associations and it is important for your memory to continue to make these connections to stay healthy.

The Four Laws of Memory¹

The four laws are how the human brain chooses to make a long-term memory. They include and are not restricted to: association, images, intensity, and repetition. You may be familiar with two or three of those but I will quickly explain what they each mean and how they relate to your brain processes.

Association: You can improve your memory by noticing how you remember certain things. By associating an experience or an object with something very similar, it is easy for you to remember that originally hard-to-remember object.

Images: When you think of a memory, what first comes to mind? An image. Human memories are seen like a slideshow in our heads and that is why it is much easier to use vision to remember certain memories. The more senses you use however, the stronger the memory becomes.

Intensity: When thinking of important days in history, it is much easier to remember what you were doing that day than the day before or after. An example is 09.11.01 – you remember that day, but do you remember what you did on the tenth or the twelfth?

Repetition: This is the test-takers answer to a better score. Repeating facts and figures or experiences in your head can get you to memorize and store the experience in your long-term memory. Recalling a phone number after 20 times saying it can be easier that recalling it if you only said it once.

Exercise, Sleep, and Memory:

Although I am advocating exercise to improve your memory, do not exercise and study at the same time. Exercising can increase the blood flow to your brain but it also relegates a lot of blood to the working muscle. Thus, you do not have your body’s full attention, just like if you eat a large meal and the blood goes toward your stomach to help you absorb and digest the contents. Therefore, I would exercise at a given point during the day, and study after you recover or before you start, thus getting the best of both activities. Skimping on exercise is one thing, but it is absolutely essential to get enough sleep. Studying when you are tired doesn’t work and when we are at that stage our creative processes and critical thinking skills are at a minimum. Sleep is when we retain most of the information we received that day and it is when the connections and associations are made and strengthened.

Laughter is Always the Best Medicine but Stress? I Think Not: ²

Having fun is an important activity, even to strengthen the power of your brain.  In a study by Harvard researchers, the people that were the most social creatures were the ones that had the slowest memory decline. Interact with people and the more you socialize, the more you are staying active on the memory-front. Another important factor for memory improvement includes the ability to laugh. Laugh at yourself, laugh with others, and associate with people who can make you laugh!

Stress can be the biggest memory buzz-kill. Stress can kill brain cells, and that’s a fact. Activities such as yoga and meditation have recently been able to show that your brain chemistry actually changes so that you are able to have more connections in areas that bring you joy and peace, the left prefrontal cortex. Meditation can improve your body’s ability to fight off depression, anxiety, diabetes, and even high blood pressure.

Food and Memory:²

When talking about brain boosters and memory-loss preventers, omega-3 fatty acids are beneficial for your brain’s health. Also added to this list are green vegetables! Produce has antioxidants, just like red wine, that can prevent your neurons from being damaged. Leafy vegetables like spinach, broccoli, romaine, and arugula can act as brain superfoods that benefit your brain’s ability to maintain and retain memories.

As a practice that has been going on for years, many ancient civilizations used a variety of herbs to increase brain power and memory. Some of these spices include Cinnamon, Ginger, and Turmeric, all of which can be easily incorporated into your diet. Cinnamon can lighten your mood, Turmeric helps in memory improvement, and Ginger has an ingredient known as Zingerrone that defends your brain cells, aiding in memory loss prevention.¹

As much as I wouldn’t want you to overly exercise this habit, caffeine actually helps to boost memory. By heightening your sense, coffee, chocolate, and soda act as a stimulant and allow your brain to retain more in a given period of time. Also to improve memory, try eating foods that have a high amount of antioxidants, fiber, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, vitamin C, iron, calcium, and healthy fats.

When talking about foods to avoid, think saturated fats. They have been linked to neuron damage and dangerous disorders such as dementia. Avoid red meat, whole milk, butter, cheese, sour cream, and ice cream, as these are all foods that are high in saturated fat. See the September 4^th article, Facts About Fats: The Good, The Bad, and the Essential.

What You Can Do On Your Own to Improve Memory:

There are quite a few activities that you can do on your own or with a friend that can sharpen your senses and improve your brain power/memory. One of these is playing cards (even Monopoly DEAL) or games that challenge your brain, like Sudoku. Another is by playing an instrument. By reading the notes and making associations of sounds with notes, you are actively exercising your brain and effectively improving your memory. Another way you can improve your brain power is by taking notes by hand, rather than typing. You spend more time looking at the word you are writing and thus you can remember it better. The last and most important thing to improve memory is to drink enough water! Dehydration can cause your mental capacity to be lower and your memory to be impaired.

Closing Remarks:

As you try to figure out ways to improve your memory, sometimes we forget to perform the simplest activities that can boost your brain power. Drink lots of water, eat a good diet, exercise, and mentally challenge your brain once in a while. By strategizing, you can exercise your brain, and by focusing on living life optimistically and without stress, you can see a drastic improvement in your will to learn. For studying, association and repetition is key, and consuming stimulants in proportion are efficient memory boosters. Sleep well, eat well, exercise yourself (mentally and physically), and you will notice a boost in your brain power! Good luck!

References:

1. http://andromida.hubpages.com/hub/memory-improvement-tricks
2. http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/6-foods-to-help-improve-your-brain-memory-power/

Saurin Gandhi

Creator of SGHealthyLiving

 

Having Trouble Falling Asleep? – A Daunting Task

This Article In PDF! – Sleep – A Daunting Task

Some nights, sleep can be a daunting task. Night after night, we have millions of thoughts racing through our head that we end up lying in bed agitated, frustrated, and stumped as to why the temperature isn’t just right, the position is a little off, or why our brain just won’t stop revving. Although the stimuli that our brain receives throughout the day is usually constant every day, some days, the food we eat, the mood we are in, and the environmental stimuli can contribute to the quality and quantity of sleep our body receives. Although we usually point to these specific instances, often it is a small change in daily routine that can cure your sleeping difficulties and give you the energy you need to stay mentally sharp throughout the day. In this article, I will be investigating the best way to get a good night’s sleep and the food that can contribute to providing your body with natural, healthy, and effective sleep-inducing substances.

Matching Your Circadian Rhythm

The key to getting a good night sleep is experimenting with the times you get to bed and how many hours you can get. By creating a consistent cycle, you can optimize your sleep by matching your natural sleep–wake cycle, your circadian rhythm. By matching this, you would be able to sleep the same amount of hours as you would any other day but feel much more refreshed and full of energy. By making your cycle consistent, going to sleep and waking up at the same time, you can make your body want to rest at a specific time, making you sleepy.

Adjusting Your Environment

Sometimes, it’s not you, but the environment that keeps you from getting your sleep. Having a noisy roommate or keeping the television or music on while sleeping can interrupt your sleep and cause you to wake up tired in the morning. Having a bed that doesn’t suit your body can also result in interrupted sleep and make you wake up to an aching back or neck. Another factor in getting sleep is getting the temperature right. In most cases, you should have a cold environment rather than a hot one, for a couple of reasons. When you are cold, you can easily snuggle up to a loved one or wrap yourself in one or more blankets. When you are hot, it’s a little harder cooling off and getting sleep. Sweat and heat are not your best friends when trying to sleep. Try not to wear socks, open the window a little bit, and keep the AC/fan on. Getting a routine going and seeing what works and what doesn’t will be the best way you can fight off the insomniac inside of you.

Don’t Bring Work to Your Bed

Associating the bed with times of stress or work can cause you to be unable to wind down when you want to. The constant worrying or stress can cause you to have racing thoughts that you can’t seem to control. By managing this stress and recognizing the cause of the stress, you should deal with it either with coping mechanisms or calming activities such as deep breathing, meditation, or yoga. These activities have been proven to ease your mind and get you to a more peaceful state of mind before falling asleep.

Exercise and Eating Healthy

One component of effective sleep that is not recognized as much is exercise. By getting a workout in the morning you may think that you are just making yourself tired, but in actuality, you would see that a repetitive cycle of exercise in the morning will give you much more energy throughout the day and a satisfying night of sleep. The foods to watch out for before you attempt to sleep are foods high in fat, acid, or spice. As an Indian, I know too well that spicy food makes you burn inside, and can make it difficult to find sleep fast. Foods high in fat take a while to be absorbed. It may help you to fall asleep faster because the blood travels to your digestive system, but the fatty foods you eat right before going to sleep are also the cause of excessive fat storage in the body. You should avoid drinks when trying to sleep because of the urinary trips you may have to take in the middle of the night. Specific drinks you should avoid are caffeine and alcohol. Caffeine, just like nicotine in cigarettes, is a stimulant and will keep you up. Alcohol, a depressant, will allow to you to fall asleep faster, but you will wake up often throughout the night and possibly even only after a few hours of sleep, wasting the entire next day due to fatigue.

Foods You Should Avoid Before Trying to Sleep

High protein foods without carbohydrates can keep you awake since the protein-containing foods also contain the amino acid tyrosine which stimulates the brain. Avoiding high-caffeine or stimulant drinks or foods will also help you find sleep faster as soda, coffee, tea, oranges, and pineapples can keep you awake.

Foods You Should Eat Before Sleep

Light snacks rich in tryptophan and carbohydrates are effective in achieving a peaceful state of mind prior to sleep. Tryptophan is the amino acid that is the basis of the formation of the sleep-inducers, serotonin and melatonin. Foods high in carbohydrates can allow for the release of insulin, clearing your blood of amino acids competing with tryptophan. In addition, combining tryptophan-foods with carbohydrates and calcium can help the brain to make melatonin. Thus, the sleep-inducing foods that may help you sleep when consumed in a small quantity one hour before bedtime are: Turkey, Peanut Butter, Granola, Whole-Grain cereals, bananas, dairy-products, soy-products, meats, beans, lentils, watermelon, eggs, nuts, hummus, rice, potatoes, honey, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, and ground sunflower seeds. Other popular nighttime snacks are apple pie with ice cream and oatmeal raisin cookies with milk.

Closing Remarks

Trying to find sleep at night isn’t always easy for me, but there are a few tactics I use to knock me out. Occasionally, I will read a book, watch some TV, stretch to relax my muscles, crack my back to release stress, or even take a hot bath. By changing the small things in your daily routine, you can find the combination of activities or foods that can get you to sleep well and make the most of your next day.

Saurin Gandhi

Creator of SGHealthyLiving

References:

http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/family-nutrition/foods-sleep/foods-help-you-sleep

http://www.helpguide.org/life/sleep_tips.htm