10 Ways To Boost Brain Activity As You Age

1. Physical exercise. Physical exercise strengthens your brain. Exercise benefits your brain cells. The blood vessels inside your brain dilate and increase blood flow when you engage in regular exercise. Exercise helps to eliminate toxins and allows oxygen and other nutrients to flow into your brain strengthening your brain cells.

2. Mind exercises. Concentration and clear thinking are more or less automatic once you remove distractions. Learn to stop and watch your busy mind. As you notice things that are subtly bothering you, deal with them. This might mean making a phone call you need to make, or putting things on a list so you can forget them for now. With practice, this becomes easier, and your thinking becomes more powerful.

3. Healthy breakfast. Start your day with a healthy breakfast. Skipping breakfast affects your brainpower and performance at home, school or work. Minimize your eating during the day to mostly live raw fruits and veggies and their juices. This will help you detoxify and nourish your brain with essential nutrients and antioxidants to protect your brain from daily free radicals assaults.

4. Increase Water Intake. Given that your brain is about 80 percent water, the first rule of brain nutrition is adequate water to hydrate your brain. Even slight dehydration can raise stress hormones, which can damage your brain over time. Drink at least 84 ounces of water a day. It is best to have your liquids unpolluted with artificial sweeteners, sugar, caffeine, or alcohol. You can use herbal, non-caffeinated tea bags, such as raspberry or strawberry flavored, and make unsweetened iced tea. Green tea is also good for brain function as it contains chemicals that enhance mental relaxation and alertness.

5. Keep journals and notebooks. All the smart people write down their ideas, thoughts and observations. Writing things down lets, your brain know that you value "it's" ideas. How does it reward you? By providing more ideas and better ideas. Writing things down creates a feedback loop that makes you smarter. You objectify your thoughts onto paper and that helps you think about them in a more powerful way. This is a great way to improve your brainpower.

6. Think positively. Thinking positively enables you to access your higher thinking abilities. When you are positive and feeling good, your mind functions smoothly. Ask yourself emotion-leading questions like, "What am I grateful for right now?" and "Who do I love and who loves me?"

7. Make sure you sleep enough. Your brain is rejuvenate during those sleeping hours. Research from the University of California suggests that if you have been awake for 21 hours straight, your abilities are equivalent to someone who is legally drunk. Sleep allows your brain to process new memories, practice new skills and solve problems. Therefore, a good night's sleep is essential to boost your brainpower. How many hours sleep constitutes a good night's sleep will vary between individuals, but between 6 - 8 hours, sleep is normally considered sufficient.

8. Creative Visualization. Use the power of Creative Visualization. Creative Visualization is a technique that involves the use of mental energy to transform and improve the life of the individual who uses the technique. You can use your brain's mental energy to improve your life because your imagination is incredibly powerful and, when used correctly, can enhance your life by creating what you really want. Creative visualization can be used to accelerate learning, improve memory and motivation, and of course, improve brainpower!

9. Develop your creativity and your intuition. Creativity gives power to your thinking. Raw computation can be done by computers now, but humans provide the creative thought that shapes our world. Intuition can be an important part of brainpower. Einstein and others have relied heavily on their intuitive hunches.

10. Make a brainpower plan. It takes about twenty to thirty days of repetition to establish new habits, many psychologists will tell you. This means that when you create your plan for improved brainpower, be sure you plan to use that new problem solving technique, or eat those new brain foods for at least three weeks. You can use many of the brain boosters here and get immediate results, but it is creating new habits that will give you the most brainpower.