Increase Your IQ, get smarter and optimize your brain power. Your entire life, you'll be glad you did. Chances are you will also be happier and be financially successful. Studies have proven that lifelong earnings and you'll have more satisfying career choices. There are short term and long term methods to become smarter, increasing your intelligence even scoring higher on standard IQ tests.

Gain in intelligence by simply improving your posture, correctly breathing, modifying your diet - yes you can be more intelligent, smarter and be happier in life just by giving yourself the right fuel, having the right diet and even boosting performance with supplements as simple as caffeine in limited amounts.

The reasons vary but basically, your brain needs a lot of oxygen and water to optimize its functions. Even though the brain makes up hardly any of your entire body weight, it is estimated to use about one fifth of our entire oxygen consumption. If you take away oxygen supply from us, our brain performance decreases immensely. If you start to feel drowsy, even lazy and not that alert, get some fresh air, walk down to the water cooler for a double dose of brain food, oxygen and water.

After large meals, our digestive processing uses up a good portion of the available oxygen in biochemical reactions and limits the oxygen percentage that the brain receives through the blood transport. Subsequently, many of us feel sleepy after such a large meal. A suggestion here is rather than eat three full meals a day, choose twice as many smaller meals or snacks. Many work lifestyles might prevent breaking throughout the day even for a few minutes, so there is another way. It is to chew up your food extremely well allowing some breakdown of food or digestion to occur within the mouth alleviating the stomach of the full oxygen depleting digestion processing.

Blood transports nutrients and oxygen to our brain which needs a vast amount of blood circulation. Of course blood is made up of mostly water. So its easy to see the role of water in optimizing brain functioning here, drinking water is essential for optimal concentration and mental alertness. The brain needs a constant supply. So do not reach the point where your mouth is dry and your desperately needing water. At that point, you are already dehydrated. Keep a steady supply of water throughout the day, keep sipping it as you work or exercise or even watching television.

Long term, brainwave patterns have been entrained to match electrical frequencies associated with advanced brain functioning. By listening to computer generated tones that are emitted at specific frequencies, your brain's electrical impulses will match these generated electrical impulses. We can thank how we were created for our brain's ability to in a sense learn without having to learn. Brainwave entrainment can actually be a shortcut to success as brain wave patterns can be developed quickly instead of the method of many super successful in the past often requiring decades of training to form their neural pathways. The practice of entrainment relies on our brain's ability to adapt to the preferred frequencies simply by listening to the corrected patterns in certain deep states of mind.

Meditation is a natural method that has been scientifically proven in some cases to effect the brain physically. First, meditation allows better breathing and with it the benefits of oxygen and improved blood flow as previously written here. Meditation can be learned from a beginner book from your library, articles on the web written by authorities in this field, and of course specialized training which can become quite expensive.

The benefits of meditation are worth it to many, as it is known to create a sense of heightened awareness, better focus, increased learning ability, improved recall and long term memory. Being quiet and listening in the learned relax state can provide your brain with better performance as actually processing information becomes more efficient as proven with the latest brain technology monitoring.

Simple self hypnosis has shown improvement to a limited extent in accelerated learning, absorbing information faster with eye movement and still increasing comprehension. Some hypnosis in repeated sessions will increase the processing of information and subsequently recall. This is an area that has definitely shown proven results in brain improvement, however the reliability has not been flawless as some people will not be changed.

The scientific community has also discovered that our brains have a hidden potential for improvement, creative thinking and optimal usage. Minimizing the detrimental effects that effect brain optimization is another field of study by many and a topic with too numerous fail modes to include all here in detail.

Besides the physical limitations by lack of oxygen, water, exercise, incorrect nutrients, there exists new causes of brain degradation all of which are not clearly defined. Poor effects are known already from harmful stress, negative thoughts, distractions, excessive noise, chemicals and more.

There is new hope as well as great strides are being made in researching radiant thinking, mind mapping, linear thinking, creative visualization and effects, imagery, positive thoughts, positive surroundings and effects of affirmations...

Remember, your brain cells crave stimulation. Use your brain throughout life. If your work doesn't challenge you, go out and play brain games even, write, keep a daily journal.

Some of the great minds in history as Thomas Edison, Isaac Newton, Thomas Faraday, Einstein, even Steven Hawking (electronically) were compulsive journal or diary maintainers and many people in a wide variety of professional disciplines have proven the IQ building effects of daily journal success, themselves being super high achievers.

At whatever intelligence level you are at now, you can improve your brain functioning and maintain optimal performance as you age.