What is the best way to keep your brain healthy for life?

We all want our bodies to be in tip-top shape, but what about our minds? When it comes to wellness and fitness, people tend to focus more on their external appearance, forgetting that we feed the mind is what contributes to the beginning of a lasting wellness, journey. Body, mind, and soul. What you feed the mind is productive, or counter-productive. You either contribute to a conversation with knowledge, stay quiet or look foolish. Either way, it is important to make your contribution, even if it just to answer the questions of a curious child. It sounds easy but when you are asked: “where does the sun come from?” You start thinking too.

You must have heard the phrase, ‘we never stop learning’. It is a true quote. Every day, the human being learns, if they accept the lesson. IT can come from relationships, losses, new beginnings and the obvious academics. We learn from people we meet, those whom we choose to keep in our lives like mentors, and when we further our studies. However, to have and keep a healthy mind does not have to be expensive. You do not have to spend a costly sum for a further education, but you can.

Quiz it

Today, to keep learning all you need is a quizzical app and an open mind. There are several apps available via the Appstore for Android and iOS where users can access to do daily quizzes to give the mental stimulation. It is well known that higher education makes for better mental health. This is because of the challenge. The mind needs constant stimulation to work efficiently each time and do better than before. It is like sharpening a knife, and any tool after substantial dormancy becomes blunt.

Academia: Higher Education

This is why higher education is encouraged and celebrated. Education is considered to be an investment in oneself because of the rewards of making efforts towards achieving more mental efficiency. It translates into better opportunities for one who is better educated. The old school way of keeping your brain healthy lies in reading books. All kinds of books. It keeps you curious and interested.

Healthy body, Healthy Mind

Another way to have a healthy mind is by exercising. Regular exercise gets the blood flowing and allows oxygen to travel around the body reaching the brain. For mental efficiency, we all need oxygen or eventually, pass out. Eating well is also a significant factor. Too much alcohol or binge eating makes the body sick. As the saying goes, too much of anything is poisonous, and that lies in what we consume as well. A cup of coffee serves as a good pick me up, and the caffeine in the beverage enables us to become more alert and thus, work better.

Vary your activities, for many people a routine workout stops challenging the body. The same goes for your mental work as well. When you do the same set repetitively until it becomes easy, it stops becoming interesting because the challenge is lost. This is an indication that you need to progress. Make the challenge harder or try something new. This is one of the reasons online learning is so convenient. There are several free new courses available at the click of a button to challenge yourself.

Stop bad habits

As mentioned before, drinking and overindulgence limit brain functionality. This includes the intake of tobacco. This is especially through smoking cigarettes and the occasional or frequent use of marijuana. This also may lead to limited brain functionality, sometimes with long-term effects. These effects may lead to permanent brain damage and overall declined health, which affects brain function.

Garbage in, garbage out. What you feed your mind is what you reveal, therefore, if the mind is treated like a precious and limitless tool that has potential, it can be sharpened ever so frequently with what you feed it.