Improve Your Memory and Brain Power: Science Makes you Smarter: Fading Brain Power is a huge concern for baby boomers, their families, and Medicare. For boomers, the cognitive decline comes like a thief in the night to steal memories and lives. For families, it’s the heartbreak at the moment your mother does not remember who you are. For Medicare, it has bankruptcy written all over it.

But the good news is that we DO NOT have to experience This.

Here’s how.

Even if we have certain “snips” (single nucleotide polymorphisms) in our genes (APOE-e4, TOMM, and others) that predispose a person toward Alzheimer’s, according to science, various degrees of Alzheimer’s-susceptibility can be met head-on and avoided with exercise and nutrition. And rejuvenating therapies (detoxification, innate stem-cell activation) come from evidenced-based natural health therapies.

Improve Your Memory: Neuroplasticity

Thanks to the brain’s neuroplasticity, brains can re-wire and re-build themselves according to the body’s innate wisdom IF it has the stimuli and tools. Stimuli are exercises – the movements that prevent neuro-amnesia (use it or lose it) where the brain ignores unused pathways that can result in muscle atrophy, feebleness, and weakness. Tools are key nutrients the brain requires to conduct its innate life processes such as the self-purification processes of its glymphatic system, and lipoproteins.

Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places.

Improve your memory and brain power: It seems an odd thing about human behavior, but often before accepting the truth, we’ve got to look everywhere but the right place. It’s almost like we want to avoid the truth, or test the truth with extensive devils advocacy, before accepting the “ah-ha” moment of truth and taking appropriate action.

Aged people most enthusiastically grabbed at the straw of keeping their brains sharp by sitting around and doing Sudoku and crossword puzzles with the errant promise that by using their brain, they would not lose them. Kinda makes sense, right? But science says, “not right.”

Improve Your Memory: Brain-Train.

For our discussion here, the media pushed old people to keep their brains active by sitting around in their La-Z-Boy™ recliners doing Sudoku and crossword puzzles. Yet Science clearly demonstrates that brain training does not make a person smarter¹. So what’s the point of ‘brain-training’ exercises? Science says, “Well, it makes people better at playing brain-training games.”

So, if you enjoy counting to 9 (and haven’t lost all your money playing baccarat or Chemin de-fur), certainly continue to enjoy Sudoku math-puzzles. They’re fun. If you can whip out a New York Times crossword puzzle in 10 minutes, you deserve that glowing satisfaction of knowing that a 3-letter word for ‘drops on the ground’ is not dip, it’s dew; and a 6-letter word for “strips in geography class” is not a future Chippendale’s dancer, it’s isthmi, (the pleural of isthmus) which, as you learned in grade school, is a narrow strip of land with the sea on both sides. Crosswords do help maintain vocabulary skills.

Science says you will get better and better at those games for your time and effort. (I wish that Science would say that I’d get better at playing the guitar for all the times I strummed my happy little fingers.)

Improve Your Memory: You Can Become Smarter Via The Muscle-Brain Connection!

The latest science says that humans can improve their cognition. Your smarts did not peak with your libido earlier in life and then decline. You can indeed become smarter. It’s not by using your brilliant mind (though card-counting can help you win at baccarat), it’s by exercising your muscles.

When surveyed, being smarter is something that many people desire. What does becoming smarter mean? It means that you can have greater mastery of life, make better decisions, be more helpful, often earn more, and find greater spheres of influence in which to employ your steel-trap intelligence.

Improve Your Memory: Here’s How Exercise Makes You Smarter

1. More energy! The more you use your muscles, the more mitochondria your cells make (mitochondrial biogenesis) to generate more cellular ATP—the chemical energy of life. The brain is a hog for energy. This is why science attributes fire (e.g. cooking certain foods) to supporting human brain enlargement and complexity through which humankind became the dominant life-species. Cooking breaks down the cellulose and cell membranes of that lima bean so the body gains access to the RNA/DNA structures inside the cell nucleus.
2. Brain-Drain. Exercises increase circulation which helps facilitate toxin removal via sweat, lymphatic and glymphatic transport, and the liver/gall bladder’s normal processes. Toxins are associated with silent brain inflammation, so their removal is critically important to the brain’s functional health.
3. Boosts Natural Neural Stem Cells via BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotropic Factor) that facilitate brain cell renewal and growth. (Won’t make your head bigger unless your ego gets in the way, but BDNF does improve memory – a metric of smartness.)
4. Miracle Grow. Exercise supports the activation of a smart, neuroprotective molecule called irisin. This molecule is a precursor to BDNF which activates genes involved with cognition.
5. Improved Mood. More endorphins. Science says, not only is exercise superior and more effective than the dangerous drug, Zoloft; endorphins are linked with improved memory.
6. Laser Focus. Exercise improves the brain’s ability to focus, to be fully engaged in your topic of thought. Science finds that your peak mental zone occurs for 3 hours after exercising. This means that you can measure productivity and see how getting more done in less time creates time for exercising.
7. Kindness. After exercise, Science finds that people are more kind to each other. This probably has to do with the endorphin release. The world is perceived as a more positive place. Only makes sense that this positive mindset is smart. It tangibly increases productivity.
8. Boosts Creativity. The energized, smart brain is more creative, and creative thinking is what made Einstein, well, an Einstein.

Science considers the brain to be an important organ.

This is despite some theories that our brains get us into trouble and we need to get out of our heads and into our hearts more. As important as the liver or the gut microbiome. We need our brains to help our daily juggling act to keep all the balls in the air—hormone balance, metabolic processes, mobility, blood sugar balance, immune system function, you name it, a well-working brain is a tremendous asset and necessary for optimal health.

QuirkyHealthTips.

Get off the duff. Get movin’. Get more buff. For health’s sake, you and I don’t need to become sedentary-lifestyle statistics.

If you are not exercising, you may not yet realize how important it is in the big picture of life. This brain-blog will present the research and techniques that boost brain power, and exercise is a major aspect of brain function and health. Both science and evidence-based programs concur, muscle movements are necessary—it’s a must-do—it’s how our bodies are designed to work. And with smarts and creativity, life takes on a new shimmer and sparkle that adds value to every moment.

Happy Health,

WellnessWiz Jack