Brain Booster

Do you want a quick brain boost? And do you want a longer term brain boost? Probably both, and we now know a great deal about how to do both.

I have resorted to milk chocolate over the decades of my life to help my flagging attention in the afternoon, especially after those meat loaf and mashed potato lunches I used to have as a kid in grade school.

Meat Loaf

But what we really need is simply a change in attention or attentional style, and there are many ways to do that.

Daydreaming is a natural tool that we use to refresh our neurochemistry.

However that tool may not always get affirmed in the class room or the board room, but heart rate variability biofeedback,for example, or a quick brain boost using a computerized brain fitness program will fill the bill quite nicely, switching my attentional style and refreshing my neurons at the same time. A walk or a quick workout, even in my office, could accomplish the same thing. Your supervisor will not mind your having an exercise ball in the office if your productivity increases, right?

Nobody knew too long ago that we humans grew new neurons every day if we took care of the pillars of brain fitness, and nobody knew how plastic the human brain was, which means how quickly and efficiently the brain creates new connections between neurons when something new is learned.

So the best way to boost your brain is to find ways to attend to the pillars of brain fitness while you are involved in your daily routine.

The pillars, and if you want an excellent resource to discover information about the pillars of brain fitness, then please read Brainfit for Life by Simon Evans, Ph.D. and Paul Burghardt, Ph.D.

The most important brain booster is exercise, and the good news is you do not need to join an expensive club or buy expensive outfits to provide your brain what it needs in this regard.

A wonderful model for exercise that you can do at home is the HIIT or high intensity interval training model.

Don't let the acronym scare you. HIIT means that you do 30 second intervals of exercises you choose, like your grade school calisthenics for example, for 10 minutes. Or if you are walking around the block you speed it up so that you are breathing deeply enough to make talking and breathing difficult.

Evans and Burghardt call that increasing your physical activity, and perhaps you move eventually to something a little more formal like going to the YMCA and doing a physical workout.

If you want to take a look at a model of HIIT that can be done at home, here is one that I recommend. After you finish your chocolate and your workout, you will need to attend to nutrition, a very important aspect of brain boosting, including getting your omega 3 fatty acid.

Evans and Burghardt make some recommendations about sleep and stress management also, but the last pillar of brain fitness is one that I think offers a wonderful range of brain boosting opportunity, and that is the novel learning experience.

That is where you get to try out some computerized tools which are challenging, efficient, and have some research behind them

Some are computerized but not online. You buy them and download them, and they complement your other brain boosting activities perfectly. Others are online, and you can keep them booted up and switch over to them for a few minutes of brain boosting between clients or calls.

As a result of attending to the pillars of brain fitness, you keep growing new brain cells and increasing neuroplasticity.

Not sure about you, but I thing brain boosting, especially because it is so easy to include in your daily routine, ought to be mandatory.

I bet you even know some folks who you could gift the brain fitness tools to, because the need is so great.

Brain Booster

Michael S. Logan is a brain fitness expert, a counselor, a student of Chi Gong, and licensed one on one HeartMath provider. I enjoy the spiritual, the mythological, and psychological, and I am a late life father to Shane, 10, and Hannah Marie, 4, whose brains are so amazing. http://www.askmikethecounselor2.com

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