Roadmap to a healthy brain
Exercise the body
Physical exercise has a protective effect on the brain and its mental processes, and may even help prevent dementia.
Regular exercise promotes cardio-vascular health, boosts levels of brain-protective chemicals and reduces stress. Aim
for at least 30 minutes exercise a day.
Adequate sleep
Sleep recharges the brain and allows the body to rest and heal. While we sleep our brain consolidates memories.
Inadequate sleep affects the way our brain cells function and can raise the risk of stroke and depression. About 7 to 9
hours a night is ideal.
Manage stress
High levels of chronic stress are not only bad for blood pressure, cholesterol, and other physical ailments, but it also
wears away at brain fitness and overall memory performance. We can't entirely eliminate stress from our lives, but we
can minimize it to improve brain health and memory ability.
Balanced diet
Our brains need a well-balanced, low cholesterol, low saturated fat diet. Studies have shown that foods rich in Omega-3
are good for the brain so include fish in your diet. Enjoy caffeine and alcohol in moderation and as a general rule,
good nutrition for the body is good nutrition for the brain.
Stay socially connected
Maintaining friends and social networks can help keep our brains healthy as we age. Living life to the fullest and
having fun is an easy prescription to follow.
Mental Workout
Use it or lose it! Keeping the brain active seems to increase its vitality and may build its reserves of brain cells and
connections. You could even generate new brain cells. Stay curious and involved commit to lifelong learning to keep
those brain cells working
BRAIN EXERCISES
Memory
Funnily enough, your memory plays a pretty crucial role in all cognitive activities including reading, reasoning and
mental calculation. It’s a pretty handy thing to have, to keep and to expand on! There are simple things you can do to
help keep your memory on track, for example, try simple exercises such as listening to a song you don’t know and
memorising the lyrics or even brushing your teeth in a different way. By trying new things you’re using pathways you
haven’t used before and in turn are engaging the senses to help stimulate your mind and strengthen your memory.
Attention
Help your brain stay attentive and maintain concentration despite noise and distractions and improve your ability to
multitask. Try Switching up your routines, change around your desk lay out or drive a different way to work. It’s the
little things that count so avoid auto-pilot and increase awareness.
Language
Want to improve your fluency, grammatical and vocabulary skills? Challenge your ability to recognize, remember and
understand words with simple little tricks and tasks – it’s as easy as reading a different section of the newspaper! For
example if you regularly read the sports section then switch to the business, and you’ll soon become familiar with the
lingo. It’s also easier to read and understand new words in context, but if you don’t recognise a word, make sure you
look it up.
Visual-Spatial
Analyzing visual information is necessary to be able to act within your environment. It’s a colourful world out there,
and there are lots of things to remember. Tying in with memory training, play a game with yourself when you’re sitting
waiting with nothing to do; pick out a few objects in the room and try remember where they were located. Try to remember
again a few hours, or even a day later.
Executive function
Not nearly as complicated as the name suggests, executive function is all about the logic and reasoning skills you use
on a daily basis. This is where your friends come in. In order to hone in on these skills, get out there and socialize.
It’s good for your brain. Not only is this fun form of therapy good from a mental well-being perspective, but it also
boosts your intellect through the amount of strategizing you’re doing just from hanging with your mates, through
considering possible responses for desired outcomes.
BRAIN FOOD
Salmon
There’s nothing fishy about it, salmon stacks up as one of the top tier brain-power foods. A great source of essential
fatty acids (such as the all-important Omega-3), protein, low saturated fat and with generally among the lowest amounts
of contaminants (such as mercury) among seafood, wild salmon is good for your brain, your mood, your synaptic
connections and your arteries and helps reduce your risk of a stroke, Dementia and Alzheimer's. Other oily fish also
stacks up pretty well, but no, deep fried doesn’t count.
Cocoa Beans
Cognitive enhancement, mood and bliss-enhancement, antioxidants, flavonoids, catechins and many other brain & body-enhancing elements, this is one of nature’s super-foods. While it is better known to us in the
not-quite-so-healthy form of chocolate, you’re not doing yourself any favours by grabbing a block of the old dairy milk.
For some of the good stuff, look out for products which have a high percentage of cocoa such as in dark chocolate bars,
or pick up some organic cocoa powder for nom-nom drinks (refining, processing and over-roasting depletes the actual
nutrients so be wary).
Berry Good
They’re delicious, they’re nutritious, get berrilicious for some super-good brain action. Blueberries come out on top
with the highest antioxidant power, which can in turn help protect your brain against stroke or other neurological
diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Wholegrain
Having issues remembering why you came into a room? Remember what this article is about? Make sure you’re getting enough
folic acid, vitamin B12 and vitamin B6 and you might just see an improvement in your ability to recall information. Hit
up your cereals, wheat bran, wheat germ and whole wheat pasta to get your daily dose.
Eat more tomatoes
A tomato a day keeps dementia away. Chuck these little beauties into your salads and sammies because there is good
evidence to suggest that tomatoes contain a powerful antioxidant called Lycopne. This lovely little lifesaver can help
protect against the kind of free radical damage to cells which occurs in the development of dementia, particularly
Alzheimer's.
ENDS