1. Quit Smoking
Not smoking is one of the first steps you can take to improve your brain health. But smoking is not just any old bad habit. One Archive of Internal Medicine study published in 2010 followed 21,123 smokers from 1978 to 2008. Those people who smoked more than two packs of cigarettes a day had twice the rate of dementia when they were older. This was true even when the researchers controlled other factors that could explain the results, such as education level, race, age, diabetes, heart disease, and substance abuse. Those who smoked between half and one pack a day had a 44 percent increased risk of developing dementia. Even the lowest level of smokers had a 37 percent increased risk. The good news is that those people in the study who used to smoke but stopped had no increased risk of dementia and had normal brain functioning into old age.
2. Think Positive and Be Positive
There is a well-known effect in the psychology of education referred to as the “Pygmalion effect”—after the Greek myth Pygmalion—whereby teachers, often unknowingly, expect more of particular children, who then, in turn, strive to meet those expectations. This research suggests that if we set high standards for ourselves and are helped to believe that achieving them is possible, they become possible. On the other hand, children who are made to feel that there is little point in them trying to reach high standards give up easily and do not reach their potential.
3. Get Quality Sleep
The brain does not shut off when we are asleep. There is a lot of work going on while you sleep—and much of it involves consolidating the learning that took place during the day. Psychologists have long understood that our dreams, for example, are really just a reflection of all the work our brains are doing trying to make sense of all the information we have been taking in but have not yet fully interpreted and made sense of. So if this is true, you really can solve problems and make sense of things by “sleeping on it.” On the other hand, if you do not sleep properly, you can lose the benefit of your learning experiences. You also will not learn as well the following day. Adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep each night to benefit fully and perform at their cognitive peak each day.
4. Meditate
In recent years, psychologists have become more interested in some ancient wisdom around mindfulness and mediation. Some impressive evidence has started to come in that these practices improve our physical and mental health. Meditation techniques vary widely, but they all have in common some form of focus on breathing and achieving calm.
Research is showing that meditation improves concentration and memory. Studies have also tracked the growth in important brain areas associated with intelligent thinking over time as research participants practiced meditation.
5. Exercise
It has come as a surprise to psychologists over the past decades that physical exercise is a sort of miracle cure or “panacea” for a wide range of physical, emotional, and intellectual problems. Exercise is free, and there are generally no side effects. Physical exercise increases your blood flow, which in turn increases the amount of oxygen and glucose your brain is receiving. Exercise also generally involves physical coordination, and so your brain also gets a workout as it coordinates all of that complicated physical activity.
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