Learn how to stay sharp with these 5 tips on keeping your brain healthy.
Memory and brain function is something that unavoidably changes with age. What can be avoided is a rapid decline in cognitive abilities and how to keep your mind sharp can be established through the food you eat and the type of activities you partake in on a daily basis. Here we’re going to focus on how to have a healthy mind and how to keep your brain healthy.
Click here to learn the effects of diabetes on the brain.
5 Tips: How to Keep Your Brain Healthy
How to keep your mind sharp at any age can be simple, if you make sure to stay active, eat well, keep blood pressure down and get mental stimulation. Here are our 5 simple steps of how to have a healthy mind, at any age.
- Kick bad habits – Avoiding things such as tobacco and alcohol can be beneficial for the mind. Tobacco should be avoided at all costs, where alcohol intake should be limited.
- Monitor Blood and Sugar Levels – Keeping your blood pressure low can help lower the risk of cognitive decline as you get older. This can be monitored by exercising regularly and limiting alcohol intake. Diabetes is another risk for mental decline. Diabetes can’t always be avoided but taking measures to avoid the onset of diabetes is important and very similar to keeping blood pressure levels down.
- Exercise – Staying active is important for brain function, muscle memory, keeping blood sugar levels in check and blood pressure down. Exercise also helps keep weight off which can lower the risk of other diseases.
- Stimulation – Learning and mental stimulation helps build new connections between nerves and can help keep the mind sharp longer. This can be by reading, taking a course, learning something new as well as drawing and painting. If you don’t like something new, try something else, the sky is the limit.
- Food – You are what you eat. Healthy nutritional habits can keep the mind and body sharp. See below our list of foods for how to have a healthy mind.
How to Keep Your Mind Sharp: Food
The food you eat plays a major role in regard to how to have a healthy mind and improve cognitive ability. If you are already consuming these foods, great, continue to do so. If you are not, try adding them to your diet without making extreme changes.
- Oranges – Oranges have such a high concentrate of vitamin C that you can get everything that you need in a day by eating one orange. Vitamin C can help fight against mental decline.
- Coffee – If you are already addicted to coffee, you’ll be happy to hear that the caffeine and antioxidants in coffee are helpful for brain function.
- Fish – Fatty fish contains a high amount of omega-3s which help to build brain cells and nerve cells. These are the building blocks for memory and learning which makes eating fatty fish such as salmon, sardines and trout essential for absorbing omega-3s.
- Dark Chocolate – Dark chocolate has flavonoids which can help in slowing mental decline and help with learning and memory
- Broccoli – It’s been proved that the greener your vegetables the better. Broccoli is full of good plant compounds as well as vitamin K which can help protect the brain from damage and improve memory.
- Turmeric – Turmeric is becoming more and more popular as more studies are done about its benefits. Turmeric has an active ingredient that is called curcumin which contains antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds which benefit memory, ease depression and may help grow new brain cells.
- Blueberries – Blueberries contain antioxidants that can help with communication between brain cells
Other foods that can help with keeping the brain sharp are eggs, green tea, nuts and pumpkin seeds.
If you have other health concerns, such as diabetes, speaking to your doctor about making diet changes is important because not all diet changes are recommended for everyone.
