Improve Brain Health Now: Easy Steps

By Caroline Latham | April 11, 2007 |

There are four essen­tial pil­lars to main­tain­ing a healthy brain that func­tions bet­ter now and lasts longer. Those pil­lars are: Phys­i­cal Exer­cise, Men­tal Exer­cise, Good Nutri­tion, and Stress Man­age­ment. Phys­i­cal Exer­cise: If you can only do one thing, do some­thing car­dio­vas­cu­lar, mean­ing some­thing that gets your heart beat­ing faster.Mental Exer­cise: If you can only do one thing, learn some­thing new every day. Good Nutri­tion: If you can only do one thing, eat more veg­eta­bles, par­tic­u­lar­ly leafy green ones. Stress Man­age­ment: If you can only do one thing, set aside 5–10 min­utes to just breathe deeply and recharge

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Are yoga and meditation good for my brain?

By Caroline Latham | February 15, 2007 |

Here is ques­tion 16 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Questions.Question:Are yoga and med­i­ta­tion good for my brain?Key Points: Yoga, med­i­ta­tion, and visu­al­iza­tion are all excel­lent ways to learn to man­age your stress levels.Reducing stress, and the stress hor­mones, in your sys­tem is crit­i­cal to your brain and over­all fitness.Answer:Yes.… the zebra releas­es the stress hor­mones through life-pre­serv­ing action, while we usu­al­ly just keep mud­dling along, get­ting more anx­ious by the moment.Prolonged expo­sure to the adren­al steroid hor­mones like cor­ti­sol, released dur­ing the stress response, can dam­age the brain and block the for­ma­tion of new neu­rons in the hip­pocam­pus, which is the key play­er in encod­ing new mem­o­ries in your brain.

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