Be Nice To Your Brain …
New Scientist Magazine - 20/07/2005
It’s true – you are what you eat, and so is your brain. New Scientist magazine has recently published a fascinating article identifying a number of simple things we can do to keep brain-fit.
And among the simplest is good food for your greediest organ - the brain. Begin with breakfast to ensure the steady supply of glucose that all brains need to function well. And make it something like beans on toast: high-fibre and protein boost cognitive performance, to the extent that research has shown kids who breakfast on fizzy drinks and sugary snacks performed at the level of an average 70 year old in tests of memory and attention.
Off for a business lunch? Try an omelette and salad. Eggs are rich in choline which is used to produce an important neuro-transmitter; a salad full of anti-oxidants including beta-carotene and vitamins C and E helps mop up damaging free radicals. Regardless of the extra kilos they add, cakes, pastries and biscuits should be flagged at afternoon tea, says the New Scientist article. They contain trans-fatty acids which are now being implicated in a raft of serous mental disorders from dyslexia and ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) to autism.
At the end of the day, you should definitely sleep on it. Skimping on sleep does shocking things to your brain, with planning, problem-solving, learning, concentration, working memory and alertness all being dealt to. If you have been awake for 21 hours straight, your abilities are equivalent to someone who is legally drunk and it doesn’t just take an all-nighter to result in this: two or three late nights and early mornings on the trot have the same effect.
And there is increasing evidence that sleep can help produce moments of problem-solving insight: sleep somehow allows the brain to juggle new memories to produce flashes of creative insight. So if you want to have a “eureka” moment, stop racking your brains and get your head down.
Of course you knew it all along – physical exercise does boost the brain. Even a sedate walk for half-an-hour three times a week can improve abilities such as learning, concentration and abstract reasoning by 15 percent. And activities like yoga – and in particular bending over backwards – have a mood-altering ability.
The effect works both ways too because just as physical exercise can boost the brain, mental exercise can boost the body. Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio asked volunteers to spend 15 minutes a day thinking about exercising their biceps. After 12 weeks, their arms were 13 percent stronger. Paying attention, though it sounds simple, is a complex mental process worth getting to grips with. Good sleep, good food and good exercise are the top options but in the workplace particularly, remember that it takes up to 15 minutes to regain a deep state of concentration after a distraction such as a phone call.
New Scientist suggests that if you feel your brain could do with a bit of training, boost your mental problem-solving skills. The working memory is the brain’s short-term information system, a workbench for solving mental problems. For example, if you calculate 73-6+7, your working memory will store the intermediate steps necessary to work out the answer. There’s a thought now that working-memory training could be a key to unlocking brain power.
