Originally published June 12 2005
Tips for a healthier, happier brain
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Some tips for a healthier brain include eating brain-healthy foods -- eggs, beans, vegetables and berries -- to boost mental function, getting a good night's sleep, listening to certain relaxing music such as Mozart, and exercising. Experts also say that memory can be improved through conditioning the brain, such as learning long lists of facts by using mnemonic devices.
There are lots of tricks, techniques and habits, as well as changes to your lifestyle, diet and behaviour that can help you flex your grey matter and get the best out of your brain cells.
A few drugs that might do the job, known as "cognitive enhancement", are already on the market, and a few dozen others are on the way.
The pharmaceutical pipeline is clogged with promising compounds - drugs that act on the nicotinic receptors that smokers have long exploited, drugs that work on the cannabinoid system to block pot-smoking-type effects.
Some drugs have also been specially designed to augment memory.
UNTIL recently, a person's IQ - a measure of all kinds of mental problem-solving abilities, including spatial skills, memory and verbal reasoning - was thought to be a fixed commodity largely determined by genetics.
But recent hints suggest that a very basic brain function called working memory might underlie our general intelligence, opening up the intriguing possibility that if you improve your working memory, you could boost your IQ too.
Simple things like always putting your car keys in the same place, writing things down to get them off your mind, or just deciding to pay attention, can make a big difference to how much information you retain.
SKIMPING on sleep does awful things to your brain.
"If you boost that, you can't help boosting everything above it."
Sleep is when your brain processes new memories, practises and hones new skills - and even solves problems.
Angela Balding from the University of Exeter, UK, has found that schoolchildren who exercise three or four times a week get higher than average exam grades at age 10 or 11.
THE convent of the School Sisters of Notre Dame on Good Counsel Hill in Mankato, Minnesota, might seem an unusual place for a pioneering brain-science experiment.
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