You may have heard about the FTC fining Lumosity $2-million for deceiving customers into thinking that playing their games would boost brain power. This left us wondering if there were any other things we could do to help keep our brains functioning at top speed. The guys at ForMen have reviewed some ideas from the folks at Today.com and have listed a few of our favorites below.
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Exercise
Study after study has shown that physical exertion can protect brain cells, says Dr. Paul B. Rosenberg, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.
“It seems like aerobic exercise is better than non-aerobic exercise,” Rosenberg says.
“I tell my patients a minimum of 30 minutes a day. There was a neat little study in older adults in which they randomized 100 people to aerobic exercise or stretching. They found that in the folks that exercised, their hippocampus actually grew over the course of a year, while in the sedentary folks the hippocampus shrunk.”
Read and write — often
A study published in Neurology that followed 294 seniors for six years, testing their cognitive abilities annually, found that memory was best preserved in those who read and wrote the most.
When autopsies were performed on participants who died during the course of the study, it became clear that the there was no impact on brain pathology, just on brain performance.
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Cut back on booze
This is especially true if you’re a heavy drinker and male: Another Neurology study found that middle-aged men who consumed more than two and a half drinks a day sped their memory loss up by nearly six years. That study followed 7,513 men for more than a decade, testing their memories every four years.
Keep busy
Studies that have looked at so-called Super Agers — people who stay cognitively sharp well into old age — have found these people have only one factor in common, says Sandra Weintraub, a professor of neurology, psychiatry and psychology and a neuropsychologist at Northwestern University’s Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center.
“Some of them smoke, some of them drink, some of them are couch potatoes, some exercise every day, some eat pork bellies and some consume a Mediterranean diet,” Weintraub says.
“What they do have in common is that they are very engaged and active. They’re so busy it’s hard to get them in for research visits.”
Consume olive oil
A study published earlier this year found that a Mediterranean diet not only protected the heart, but also the brain. Study volunteers who specifically were asked to consume several tablespoons of olive oil every day did better on tests that evaluated thinking speed.
Here’s to increasing your brain power and thanks for letting ForMen help.
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Curated article from:
Today
