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Keeping your brain healthy is essential for living a long and full life. The following eight tips are easy ways to keep your brain healthy and functioning well.

Reading, playing cards, putting together a jigsaw puzzle, playing crossword puzzles or Sudoku, or completing word searches are easy ways of boosting memory and focus. Experiment with things that require manual dexterity and mental efforts, such as drawing, painting, and other crafts.

Try using your non-dominant hand for things like brushing teeth or eating. High-intensity and moderate-intensity aerobic exercise are not just good for your heart. Exercise improves your mood and cardiac function, reduces stress, and makes you more mentally alert.

Read more about the benefits of exercise. Eating healthy—lots of fruit, vegetables, healthy oils, fish and minimizing junk food and fatty meats—is critical for brain health.

Vegetables, such as broccoli, spinach, tomatoes, and some berries, improve memory and overall brain function. Omega-3 fatty acids found in oily fish and some grains help prevent inflammation, preserve cognitive function, and prevent depression, stress and anxiety.

Protein contains high levels of amino acids, which in turn cause neurons to produce neurotransmitters associated with mental alertness. The Mediterranean diet, DASH diet, and MIND diet have all shown a positive impact on cognition and healthy brain functioning.

Poor sleep is one of the biggest causes of reduced concentration and memory functioning. Scientists believe that sleep helps clear abnormal proteins in your brain and consolidates memories, boosting your overall memory and brain health. Adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep nightly to benefit and perform at their cognitive peak each day.

When possible, try to get consecutive hours of sleep per night, not fragmented sleep of two- or three-hour increments. Getting consecutive hours gives your brain the time to consolidate and store your memories effectively.

Read more on healthy sleep. High blood pressure increases the risk of cognitive decline. Simple lifestyle modifications will help keep your blood pressure as low as possible and cholesterol at an appropriate level.

Diet, exercise, weight control, limiting alcohol and avoiding tobacco will go a long way toward improving both. If you need help making changes to support a healthier lifestyle, ask your doctor. Diabetes is a significant risk factor for dementia. Like lowering your blood pressure or controlling cholesterol, you can help prevent diabetes by eating right, exercising regularly, and staying lean.

Caffeine is probably the most famous of the group. By activating the central nervous system, caffeine boosts arousal and alertness. In high doses, though, this stimulation can go too far, causing jitters, anxiety and insomnia.

Cocaine and amphetamines are less benign. Although they work on the brain through different mechanisms, they have similar effects.

They also increase alertness and energy. That all sounds pretty good, but cocaine and amphetamines are extremely addictive drugs and in high doses they can cause psychosis and withdrawal.

The withdrawal symptoms are nasty and can lead to depression, the opposite of that euphoric feeling. And of course, an overdose can kill you. On the Frontier Although high doses of caffeine can undoubtedly have unpleasant effects ranging from irritability to the most unpleasant of all: death in rare cases , small to moderate amounts can boost our mental functioning in ways researchers are now measuring.

One study showed that the equivalent of two cups of coffee can boost short-term memory and reaction time. Functional MRI scans taken during the study also revealed that volunteers who had been given caffeine had increased activity in the brain regions involving attention.

In addition, research suggests caffeine can protect against age-related memory decline in older women. Try to limit yourself to fewer than cups a day. That much coffee contains about 10 grams of caffeine, enough to cause fatal complications.

It must be tough to make sure justice is done. METHOD 4: VIDEO GAMES Video games could save your life. Surgeons who spend at least a few hours a week playing video games make one-third fewer errors in the operating room than nongaming doctors do.

Indeed, research has shown that video games can improve mental dexterity, while boosting hand-eye coordination, depth perception and pattern recognition. Gamers also have better attention spans and information-processing skills than the average Joe has.

When nongamers agree to spend a week playing video games in the name of science, of course , their ­visual-perception skills improve. And strike your notions of gamers as outcasts: one researcher found that white-collar professionals who play video games are more confident and social.

Of course, we cannot talk about the effects of video games without mentioning the popular theory that they are responsible for increasing real-world violence. A number of studies have reinforced this link. Young men who play a lot of violent video games have brains that are less responsive to graphic images, suggesting that these gamers have become desensitized to such depictions.

Another study revealed that gamers had patterns of brain activity consistent with aggression while playing first-­person shooter games. This does not necessarily mean these players will actually be violent in real life. The connections are worth exploring, but so far the data do not support the idea that the rise of video games is responsible for increased youth violence.

Researchers hooked men and women up to functional MRI machines while the participants played a video game designed for the study. Both groups performed well, but the men showed more activity in the limbic system, which is associated with reward processing.

What is more, the men showed greater connectivity between the structures that make up the reward circuit, and the better this connection was in a particular player, the better he performed.

There was no such correlation in women. Men are more than twice as likely as women are to say they feel addicted to video games.

Two years later the families of the victims filed suit against the company that made the massively popular video game Grand Theft Auto. The lawsuit alleges that the perpetrator was inspired by his obsession with the controversial video game. A highly publicized study suggested that listening to Mozart could boost cognitive performance, inspiring parents everywhere to go out and buy classical CDs for their children.

Nevertheless, music does seem to possess some good vibrations. It can treat anxiety and insomnia, lower blood pressure, soothe patients with dementia, and help premature babies to gain weight and leave the hospital sooner. Music training can bolster the brain.

There is no agreement yet on whether musical training makes you smarter, but some studies have indeed shown that music lessons can improve the spatial abilities of young kids. On the Frontier Music lessons and practice during childhood increase the sensitivity of the brain stem to the sounds of human speech.

According to a recent study, the brain stem is involved in very basic encoding of sound, and lots of exposure to music can help fine-tune this system, even in kids without particular musical gifts.

So buck up, tone-deaf children of the world! Think of it like eating vegetables: chewing on that clarinet is good for you. The visual cortex is activated by merely imagining a musical score.

If reams of scientific studies are to be believed and such studies usually are , an om a day can keep the doctor away. Meditation, or the turning of the mind inward for contemplation and relaxation, seems to help all types of conditions—anxiety disorders, sure, but it can also reduce pain and treat high blood pressure, asthma, insomnia, diabetes, depression and even skin conditions.

And regular meditators say they feel more at ease and more creative than nonmeditators do. Researchers are now illuminating the actual brain changes caused by meditation by sticking meditators into brain-imaging machines. Expert meditators also show spikes of brain activity in the left prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that has generally been associated with positive emotions.

And those who had the most activity in this area during meditation also had big boosts in immune system functioning. Meditation can increase the thickness of the cerebral cortex, particularly in regions associated with attention and sensation. The growth does not seem to result from the cortex growing new neurons, though—it appears that the neurons already there make more connections, the number of support cells increases, and blood vessels in that area get bigger.

Scientists used to think Turbo boost your brainpower past childhood, the brain stopped developing. Once bpost Turbo boost your brainpower its uour formed, they were Tutbo for life, and then, all these cells would simply begin their TTurbo decline. And these days, the scientific community actively researches the myriad ways this happens and how we can boost our brainpower. A diet rich in plant-based foods fruits and vegetables helps brain cognition and staves off dementia. Conversely, we know that too much salt, sugar and trans fat lead to inflammation and brain shrinkage. This study is among the evidence linking blueberries to brainpower as we age.