Brain Boosting Tips Courtesy of Prevention Magazine
Brain-Boosting Tips |
No matter how much you exercise your mind, you can’t be a couch potato and still be the smartest person in the room. Here’s how to boost your mental muscle, courtesy of Prevention magazine:
- Take a nature walk. Researchers from the University of Michigan found that walking in a park instead of on a city sidewalk increased memory and attention span by 20%. Marc Berman, who co-authored the study, says that crowded sidewalks and noisy traffic require the brain to focus on getting you from point A to point B, but natural settings don’t have those distractions, so your brain can use the downtime to process information.
- Get your blood flowing. A study from the University of Pittsburgh found that aerobic exercise actually increases the size of the brain’s learning centers.
- Lift weights with your eyes closed. Dr. John Martin is a neuroscientist at Columbia University. He says that strength training fine-tunes the brain’s balance centers. Since we rely heavily on vision to coordinate movement, pumping iron with our eyes closed forces the brain to work smarter and make new connections.
- You’ll think faster if you play ball. German researchers found that 10 minutes of bouncing a ball from hand to hand increased the attention and concentration of volunteers. Learning to juggle fires up the wiring between brain cells, so they can carry more information.
So remember: To stay in peak mental shape, you need to exercise your brain AND your body.
