Note: If you enjoy this article, consider reading 5 Ways Of Enhancing Brain Power [Part 2].

No matter how much education you’ve had or how high your current I.Q., there are still many things that you can do to boost your brain power. Boosting your brain power isn’t always dealing with reading books or hanging around scientists 24/7! There are tons of great methods that you can use improve your brain’s overall level of functioning. The following methods included within this article should help you flex your neurons a little bit and build yourself a better brain! 5 great ways of enhancing brain power are included within this article!

1. Consider Taking “Smart Drugs”

Should aging automatically cause slow reactions, memory decline, and unfocused thinking?

At around 50 years of age, many people admit to discovering noticeable changes in their mental processing abilities. At this point, individuals are at the beginning of a natural process of decline. In many individuals, this “decline” can quickly turn into the devastating “dementia.” Everyone should be doing everything they can to slow dementia, so scientists have devised a solution to slowing the dementia problem: “smart drugs.”

Several drugs that might help with dementia and enhance cognitive abilities in the brain are already on the market. A ton of these drugs are also ready to hit the market in upcoming years. One such example is: “modafinil,” known to treat narcolepsy. Modafinil is also known to keep a person alert for 90 hours straight without jitteriness or poor concentration like common-day amphetamines.

What is really cool is the fact that with “modafinil,” sleep-deprived individuals can even perform better than their well-rested selves. (Sounds a bit insane to me…) The amount of deprived sleep doesn’t even really need to be made up! (Scary?) Military research has found that people on “modafinil” can stay awake for 40 hours, sleep the normal 8 hours, and then pull a few more all-nighters with no ill effects! It is also well-known that many people who do not even suffer from narcolepsy take modafinil to increase their energy and enhance their cognition.

The pharmaceutical industry has been riddled full of cognitive-boosting compounds. Some drugs have also been specially designed to improve memory. Many of these drugs appear to work well without any major side-effects! Then why isn’t everyone taking cognitive enhancing pills? Because screwing around with our memory may have unwanted effects – we may end up remembering things that we didn’t want to! In disorders such as: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, this can be a big problem!

What looks to be a cognitive enhancer, could have drawbacks. However, the opportunity to increase brain power by popping a pill may be too tempting to pass. The drug acts only in the brain and has a short half-life. Several of these types of drugs, especially the Ampakines class, have been proven to restore complete brain function in sleep deprived humans. By taking these “smart drugs,” you can make an elderly person perform like a younger person. Which elderly person wouldn’t want to boost their brain?

2. Eat “Brain-Foods” (Food Determines Thoughts)

What you eat, directly affects your brain… Then what is the optimal diet for your brain’s functioning?

Your brain is the organ in your body with the most dietary requirements. It isn’t at all surprising that your food choices will directly affect the functioning of your brain! Many people find it hard to believe that simply changing their diet will improve their mental health or mental disorder, but they need to start! What you eat will directly affect the thoughts that you think.

One great way to aid your brain is by simply eating breakfast each and every day. The brain is fueled by a steady supply of nutrients, vitamins, and glucose, which breakfast always supplies. Studies have shown that skipping breakfast reduces cognitive performance in the brain.Another way to improve your diet includes cutting back on sugars and fizz-drinks. According to research published in 2003, children who ate lots of sugar and fizz drinks in their breakfast diet, performed at the same cognitive level of the average 70-year-old attention and memory tests. So what should you eat?

Toast alone is one food that has been proven to boost kids scores on cognitive tests. However, when the tests get tougher, those who had diets with high-protein performed the best. Beans are a great way to get protein and fibre and are actually one food that is recommended to have with your toast at breakfast. Researchers claim that if you aren’t able to eat beans before lunchtime, wholemeal toast with “marmite” makes a phenomenal alternative. Marmite, a yeast extract, is enriched with vitamins that have been known to have a direct effect on boosting the brain.

Junk food has been linked to tons of mental disorders. Great substitutes for junk food at lunch are eating things like omelettes and salads. Eggs are rich in choline, which your body uses to produce the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (which helps improve memory and alertness). A deficient amount of acetylcholine has been linked to a significantly reduced ability to remember words. Lower than average acetylcholine levels are also associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The good news is that studies show that eating a healthy diet may slow age-related memory loss!

A salad packed full of antioxidants, will also help keep an aging brain in peak-performance by helping eliminate damaging “free radicals.” A diet high in antioxidants has been shown in studies to aid in learning and improve cognitive skills! You can top off your lunch with a zesty yogurt dessert. The yogurt will naturally help you produce amino acid tyrosine, needed for the production of the neurotransmitters dopamine and noradrenalin, which lower stress.

In case you like to snack in the afternoon in between lunch and dinner, be sure to avoid junk food! Avoid processed foods like cakes and pastries. These types of foods add fat to your body and have been linked to causing mental disorders due to their higher than average amount of trans-fatty acids. Trans-fatty acids have been linked to dyslexia, A.D.D. / A.D.H.D., and even autistic symptoms. Triglyceride is another cholesterol-like substance that trans-fatty diets bring to the body and brain, which has also been linked to mental disorders.

Since brains are roughly 3/5ths fat, trans-fatty acids can clog up your operating system quickly! In stead of polluting your brain with the unhealthy fat, scientists are recommending a supplement of Omega-3 Fatty Acids (commonly found in Fish Oil – which I have preached about). Therefore Eskimo’s are correct: fish is the single best brain food. Not only do fish feed and support a developing brain, D.H.A. (found in Fish Oil) also seems to ward off dementia!

A great, healthy way to finish off your final meal of the day is to eat blueberries and strawberries. Rodents fed on these fruits showed boosted short-term memory, attention, and coordination abilities. Whether or not they work well on your brain, they still taste great – you’ve got nothing to lose by eating healthy fruits like these!!

For more brain-boosting foods, check out this article: 5 Supercharged Brain Foods!

3. Listen To Mozart Music

Music has been known to boost brain power in certain areas, but you cannot listen to some music and instantly become brilliant!

Listening to Mozart has long been known to improve one’s mathematical and spatial reasoning abilities. Even rats are able to run faster and more accurately when listening to Motzart than other types of noise. This sounds like a great way to help improve your brain, right? Well, according to researchers, it doesn’t work for everyone who listens to Mozart! What is even more interesting is the fact that other researchers believe that music boosts brain power because of its ability to make the listeners “feel better”: more relaxed and aware at the same time. Another crazy thing is the fact that listening to stories have yielded similar performance enhancements.

There is, though, one way in which music has been proven to actually make you smarter: by taking lessons! Studies have shown that children that were given music lessons, improved their I.Q. scores by roughly 3 points compared to others! Scientists have also found that after two years of music lessons, children scored better on spatial reasoning tests than those who took “computer lessons.”

Music lessons seem to build a wide-range of mental skills due to mental coordination of finger movements in combination with various sounds, pitches, and rhythms. Listening to music also has been known to have an emotional impact. So if you want to improve your brain through music, consider taking lessons! It sure would do more good for you than harm!

4. Give Your Brain A Workout

Putting your brain to work can actually repay you with some impressive cognitive results.

It was only until recently that people thought that I.Q., problem solving skills, memory, and verbal reasoning were mostly determined by genetics. Recent research has shown that our “working memory” – the brain’s short-term information storage system – can be utilized to increase our intelligence level and our ability to recall memories.

An example of working memory: each time you do math, working memory allows you to store the intermediate steps to solve the problem. The amount of information that our working memory can store, strongly correlates with our general level of intelligence.

Researchers have studied working memory through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI scans) and have found that individuals who participated in active brain training programs had significant boosts in regions associated with working-memory. Training our working memory is a key part of boosting and increasing our brain power. Children were also researched: those who had completed “mental workouts” had roughly 10% leaps in their I.Q. scores! Though “working-memory” training is in its earliest periods, it could be a key part of enhancing our brain’s cognition. Anyone’s brain can be improved through a well-devised brain-training program!

5. Use Memory Boosting Techniques

Is your memory below par? No need to stress, just use some memory boosting methods…

First of all, a great way to improve your memory is to learn how to use your memory. Tricks like “mnemonic devices” can significantly help boost your ability to memorize. When researchers studied World Memory Champions and compared their brains to normal people, they didn’t find a higher I.Q. in these individuals than an average person. However, while these people memorized something, their brains lit up with above-average activity in certain brain regions.This is due to the fact that these individuals used different strategies of memorization – they visualized what they were memorizing and sometimes incorporated a story within their memorizations! For example if they were memorizing certain names, they would make up a mini-story behind each name that they memorized along with visualization. Many hollywood actors and actresses use a similar method: they attach their emotions to the words that they say. They also area able to link words with movement, which seems to help.

It is known, though, that we always remember emotionally intense moments better than the rest. Besides incorporating emotions, movement, and visuals into your memorization, simple techniques can help too. Things like: putting your car keys in the same place, writing things down to remember, and even making a conscious effort to pay attention can make a huge difference in how much you remember.

For more great memory-boosting tips, check out this article: Tips To Improve Your Memory!

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