While there is no fountain of youth for the brain, neuroscience provides evidence for the next best thing. There are lots of things you can do right now to preserve, protect and enhance your gray matter. One hint: If you’re already a devotee of a heart-healthy lifestyle, you’re way ahead of the game. What’s good for the heart is probably good for your head. That’s twice the motivation and payoff.
Foods for thought—and memory. We are what we eat, the old adage goes. When it comes to brain fitness, eating certain types of food can improve and preserve our sharp-as-a-tack selves.
The strategy: Keep unhealthy fats to a minimum (no more than 20 percent of calories). Sticking to a Mediterranean style diet—lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, a minimum of red meat, plenty of fish, daily wine—is paramount.
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1- Folate: A member of the B vitamin group, this nutrient is found naturally in legumes, kidneys, oranges and leafy green vegetables.
2- Other B vitamins: Vitamins B6 and B12 are believed to be involved in the formation of the sheaths around nerve cells that contribute to communication between these cells.
3- Vitamins C and E together: A Johns Hopkins University study published in 2004 demonstrated that subjects who had the highest levels of these two antioxidants had a greatly reduced chance of contracting Alzheimer’s.
4- Omega-3 fats: Eat at least two servings of tuna, salmon or sardines a week, but consider taking a supplement, too.
5- Drinking and thinking: Alcohol in any form—beer, wine or spirits—is beneficial to the brain. But if you’re striving for optimum brain health, red wine should be your drink of choice. That’s because it contains an abundance of a potent antioxidant called resveratrol, a type of polyphenol.
5- Fitting the pill —aspirin and ibuprofen. The daily use of a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory—aspirin and ibuprofen are two of the most common—is considered by some researchers as a promising therapy for keeping the brain healthy in certain groups of older people.
6-Minding your meditation. You don’t have to join a monastery or hire a guru to reap the substantial rewards of daily meditation. As little as 15 minutes a day may be enough—whether it’s sitting in the car waiting to pick up your child from school or in a quiet room at lunchtime.
7- Get on the laugh track. It’s long been said that laughter is the best medicine, and science keeps reaffirming the concept. Laughter reduces the stress hormone cortisol in your body; it relaxes your arteries so that cholesterol is less likely to build up; and it even engages you in a bit of exercise (belly laughs activate hundreds of muscles throughout your body).
8- Social studies. All primates, including humans, are highly social animals. In a sense, our brains have spent a couple of million years fine-tuning themselves to the nuances of social interactions, because that’s been a lynchpin of survival.
9- You snooze, you win. Although scientists still puzzle over why sleep is necessary, one thing is certain: We cannot survive more than a few weeks without it. When we are denied good, restful, sustained sleep on a regular basis, our brains falter in concentration, learning, memory and alertness.
10- Jumping jacks for the brain? Well, sort of. By stimulating your mind, you may be able to improve cognitive function, and perhaps delay or even prevent mental disorders such as dementia.
11- Pump up the hippocampus. How can a rousing, sweat-inducing physical workout benefit your grey matter? By improving blood flow, releasing stress-reducing endorphins, strengthening the connections between brain cells and increasing the number of brain cells themselves.
Read the ‘11 Brain Boosters’ in more detail
Read WatchMojo’s ‘Drinking and Thinking’
Read WatchMojo’s ‘Fitting the Pill’
Read WatchMojo’s ‘You Snooze-You Win!’