5 Tips For Optimal Brain Health

Keeping your brain healthy and operating at optimal levels is not always the easiest task to accomplish, especially for athletes who regularly put their bodies through significant amounts of stress. Whether you participate in sports activities or not, it’s important to promote optimal brain health throughout your life. Keep the following tips in mind to encourage your brain to remain happy and healthy. You can also visit our Denver brain center for brain training on the Dynavision D2™ lightboard system.

5 Tips For Optimal Brain Health

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Eat a Proper Diet

There’s a reason diet comes up on almost every health and wellness related blog post or article you come across these days: eating a proper diet can make all of the difference in your personal health when it comes to your body and your brain. To promote optimal brain health, try to keep your calorie intake at normal levels, avoid foods containing saturated fats and cholesterol, and eat more foods containing or enriched with Omega-3 fatty acids (fish, eggs, flaxseed, nuts, etc.) and rich in vitamins. Lastly, limit your intake of alcoholic beverages.[grid_row_close]

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Get or Stay Fit

Exercising on a regular basis will keep you energized, help you get more restful sleep, and encourage optimal brain health. Regular physical activity helps your body maintain ideal blood circulation and pressure and promotes new brain cell growth. Exercise will also limit your stress levels, which can help relieve mental fatigue and will also aid in keeping your body in proper working order. For optimal health, pair your fitness routine with regular sleep. If you are a heavy tobacco user, you will also want to break that habit.  [grid_row_close]

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Engage Your Brain

You can encourage neurological plasticity, also called neuroplasticity or brain plasticity, by keeping your brain stimulated and engaged throughout your daily life. This could be as simple as reading a book or doing a crossword puzzle, or it could be a much larger commitment, such as learning a new language, learning to play an instrument, or pursuing a post-secondary degree. However you decide to get your mental stimulation, be sure that you’re challenging yourself. The brain values activities that are either challenging in their complexities or fascinating in their novelty. Opt for the more challenging activity rather than the one you’re more familiar with to truly work out your brain.[grid_row_close]

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Be Social

Research studies have shown that social interaction can have a positive impact on brain health by promoting the creation of new brain cells and encouraging healing. Make spending time with your friends and family members a priority, join a club sport, a book club, or a church group, or find other ways to get involved within your community. It is simply important to engage in social interaction in order to provide your brain with new challenges and new opportunities.[grid_row_close]

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Meditate

Studies have shown mindful meditation to be beneficial for optimal brain health and function. To participate in mindful meditation, one must pay attention to both one’s inner experiences as well as one’s outer experiences with compassion and without judgement. Mindful meditation practiced daily is meant to help you become present with yourself. Consider it this way: being aware means thinking, but being mindful means being aware of thinking.  [grid_row_close] 

Want to do more to promote optimal brain health? At NeuraPerformance Brain Center in Denver, we use the Dynavision D2 brain training system to help our clients improve their abilities to make fast, smart decisions, to improve reaction time, etc. Contact us today to learn more.