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New and yet Complex activities are good and proper brain exercises.
The brain exercises suggested in the article are evidence-based, so real benefits can be seen in mood, focus, memory, and many more.
Generally, you must have come across the fact that to stay fit, you must keep the body fit.
Regular and different physical exercises include balance exercises, strength, aerobic, and flexibility.
But if you are planning to keep the hour brain fit, you must be looking around ways to do it as it may sound different and tricky. You must be unsure about brain exercises.
There is a certain kind of exercises which are appropriate to qualify for the real brain exercises. Many of these exercises promoted are of no good use in reality as they fail to meet up their extraordinary created hype.
No matter, if you have the achievement of good mental performance or leading to mental decline. The article discusses the most effective brain exercises so your brain may work out well.
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What Makes an Activity a Brain Exercise?
The majority of people live their lives in a fixed set of daily routines.
There are many good reasons underlying it. The decision-makers responsible for draining out your brain will be limited.
The complex tasks can be performed easily with it, such as car driving with minimum efforts.
You must be thinking about the brain energy we are using every day, so let me tell you, it is all your subconscious, managing and running your daily routines, and little energy of your brain is used.
Consequently, routines give the least stimulation to the brains.
You and your body might feel too lethargic and low due to a lack of physical activities. Similarly, your brain will turn to be slow and sluggish due to the continuous routine work.
Remember, when the daily routine is shaken proactively, definitely, your mind will be sharper and healthier.
There are two criteria that every brain-stimulating activity should meet, according to the experts. These activities are enough, so your brain may start to exert well.
Keep in mind the activity must be complex and novel simultaneously.
Benefits You Can Expect from Brain Exercise
Your brain is the central processing unit of your body, so it turns to be the most important part of your body.
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You have to be taking proper care of it with its exercises.
1) Faster thinking
It is not sufficient that you are just quicker when your brain gets quicker, you can reap further benefits from it.
With the increasing age, it is vital to increase your brain speed too.
Though, you must be shocked that wisdom tends to grow with age, but our brain starts getting slow down.
Many of the brain exercises are developed for improving brain health and speeding up your brain for it better and quick working.
2) Better memory
Indeed, a better memory is a perfect blessing for everyone.
Strong and better memory is essential for you to feel confident and sharp in every situation. These memory activities improve your auditory and visual memory.
3) Sharper listening
Sharp listening is required in your daily interactions to make you the best among all.
Our memory and interpretation skills will also get better. Sharp listening is more dependent on your brain instead of your ears.
Your auditory sense tends to decline after the age of 30. Speech cannot be understood easily as the processing of the brain slows down a bit, particularly in a noisy environment or when anyone speaks fast.
Brain exercises make their brains capable of working similar to 20 years old by reducing miscommunications and promoting good conversations.
4) Good mood
Brain fitness is often associated with the words- sharpness, memory, focus.
But you will be amazed to hear that a better mood does not pop out when it comes to brain fitness.
The brain exercises are designed for helping your brain to produce dopamine as well as other chemicals of the brain. This makes you feel alert, upbeat as well as rewarded.
You cannot ignore the self-confidence, which may be the product of faster thinking, better memory, and enhanced focus.
The practitioners feel good when they experience more positive moods.
5) Productivity and motivation
Your brain exercises will surely enhance your productivity when your concentration and focus are at its peak.
Good productivity will automatically increase the motivation too.
6) Self-confidence
Self-confidence is the key to your success. Your brain might slow down to some level with age.
You might be wise enough, but you may feel less sharp, so this will help indicate the lack of self-confidence, which can build up with the brain exercises.
A combination of self-assurance with wisdom and skills will surely brush up your personality. This will lead you to seek and explore new opportunities.
7) Mental flexibility, fluid intelligence, and creativity
You might feel a lack of creativity and mental flexibility, so brain exercises will be helpful in enhancing these benefits too, and in case, if you fail to have it, it may develop with a fit brain.
Fluid intelligence will surely increase and enhance your innovation and creativity also.
The Benefits of Neurobic Brain Exercises
Dr. Lawrence Katz is a famous name in the neurobiologists.
He has been recognized internationally who has been working as the leading neutron regeneration researcher.
In 1988, he wrote Keep Your Brain Alive: 83 Neurobic Exercises to Help Prevent Memory Loss and Increase Mental Fitness. At that time, few people knew about something like brain fitness.
In this book, the term neurobics was coined for describing brain exercises by utilizing all of the five senses in the novel and new ways.
He explained that mental decline is not just the product of loss of your brain cells, but it may occur due to loss of communication in the brain cells.
When the dendrites get complex or the number decrease, the nerve cells branch, then this may occur. New dendritic connections may grow with the right type of brain exercises, according to him.
He pointed out that most of the brain exercises rely primarily on sight.
He had a firm belief that the complete mental exercises have the involvement of all five senses in a non-routine manner.
He further stated that any of the activities is a good mental exercise when it is fun, challenging, and new for you.
83 mental exercises have been listed in his book. Some of these might sound kooky such as choosing your clothes you will wear on a day with closed eyes.
Some of the neurobics exercises, I felt worthy of being mentioned in your list. They are equally well because they can be done anywhere and at anytime.
1) Switch Hands
Your brain activity will increase when you use your non-dominant hands. This may sound easier, but it can be very hard at the start.
This is the reason that it will be a good workout for your brain.
Being right-handed, use your left hand like writing, brushing the teeth, and using the computer mouse.
2) Eat with Chopsticks
The mindful eating of your brain will be enforced that will be good for the brain, calorie consumption, and digestion.
If you have already mastered this skill, then use a non-dominant hand for your chopsticks.
3) Do Activities with Eyes Closed
Close your eyes while washing the hair, taking a shower, or sorting off laundry. Your brain is forced by it to utilize the New neural pathways.
No doubt, refrain from doing things that will put you in risk or danger.
4) Do Things another way round
You need not worry that you will stand on the head. When you look things upside down, your brain will automatically stimulate.
Wearing your watch upside down can be the first basic step to twist your mind. You will think every time forcefully when you will look at your watch.
Even the calendars or clocks can be hanged upside down.
Once you get used to it, start using your cell phones or any other thing you can think of imagining to do upside down.
You can even start mirror writing. Do you know what it is? The practice of writing backward will wake your inner artist like Leonardo Da Vinci.
5) Read Books Aloud
You can enjoy reading and listen to books. This activity can be done with your child, a friend, or any other significant person.
If you do not find it feasible, then practice it with alternate reading after listening to the audio books.
The imagination is engaged in an entirely different manner.
Three different regions were lightened in the brain imaging demonstrations when the same word was heard, spoken, or read.
6) Take New Routes
Remember, your brain does not get into autopilot mode.
When you follow your rut mode in your daily routine, its stimulation will lower down. New ways must be adopted for doing the same tasks. New routes will help in activating your hippocampus and cortex.
Have a look at the example of Bill Gates! He drove back from work to house every day through a different route to look where he reached.
This can be done through walking, cycling, or even public transportation too. This simple change is enough to provide benefits to your brain and change the ways of thinking easily.
7) Use All Your Senses simultaneously
You must try out activities that will use up all of your senses simultaneously.
Dr. Katz highlighted a list of activities like gardening, camping, and travel that will use all of the senses in innovative and new ways.
He suggested one of his most favorite activities. Shopping activity at the farmer’s market will let you sniff, touch, taste, and look at the products.
Socializing and conversing with farmers who provide your produce will provide more brain stimulation.
Brain Exercises That Increase Intelligence
- A good relief for everyone who are worried about their intelligence. The groundbreaking study in 2008 showed that you can improve the overall intelligence with brain exercises.
- Great changes were made in science related to intelligence. This study revealed many important findings.
- The right stimulus can increase your intelligence, which is the fluid.
- The benefits you will reap are highly dependent on the number of training. It is simple that you will gain more if you train more.
- The cognitive abilities will be enhanced irrespective of its starting point.
- The enhancement of cognitive skills in one aspect will enhance other unrelated skills too. We have discussed below some of the most important ways of increasing cognitive potential.
1) Try Out New Things
You can do new things that you have never done before.
Try out a completely new recipe. Travel to some entirely new place. Learn out a new hobby, which is entirely opposite to your personality.
Learn to swim, do horse riding, repair your vehicle, use any specific software program.
2) Learn new skills
Learning a new skill will be a completely wonderful and fun experience. It will improve memory function.
You can even plan to learn a good dance move if you are a typical couch potato. Dopamine is released, as well as motivation neurotransmitters. The new neurons’ creation is also stimulated.
Surely, your brain activity is stimulated when you start learning new skills.
After mastering that skill, the mental advantages come to a haul as your brain efficiency for that activity increases.
Remember to step out of your comfort zone to quicken your brain. Once you reach the master level, the next level must be tried on as a challenge.
You can even learn a skill related to it. Learning any language, mastering chess, and learning of musical instruments are the perfect brain because there is always room for learning.
3) Turn Away from Technology
There is one more way which we cannot date to imagine.
It is to create difficulty for yourself by reducing the usage of technology. You can do basic maths and English spellings on your own instead of smart phones.
Your ultimate lifesaver. Learn some numbers of contacts to impress them, especially your friends.
Turn off the GPRS to learn new routes, read the map, and innate direction is used for finding your right path.
The cab drivers of London get a strong challenge for their brains as they try to learn the map of London.
They are required to learn 20000 landmarks and 25000 streets to get their licenses.
Researchers have proved about the significantly larger hippocampus of the London cab driver in comparison to the average hippocampus. This part of the brain is responsible for the memory part.
4) Create diverse social relations
Connecting with others is not just partying and mixing with others.
In fact, having connections with others will benefit you in other ways too. When you connect to other people at any time, you have exposure to new and innovative ideas. You will get new perceptions and thoughts regarding different things.
But remember you can reap the benefits of the company with different people, only if they are different from you people.
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You must intentionally look for people who are different from you in terms of interests, careers, different cultural and social environments.
You will experience and explore completely new ideas and perspectives. Your mental growth will quicken.
The upcoming ideas might not sound like mental workouts, but they will show up as best brain exercises.
They discussed activities that are main and should be part of life regularly if mental performance needs to be enhanced.
5) Practice Meditation
Meditation is an exercise of thinking or focusing on one thing or mind for a longer time with zero distraction and disturbance.
The main aim of this practice is to obtain internal peace and relaxation.
Meditation is a very powerful exercise that can help you in many ways. People have been practicing it for ages to develop inner peace and calmness.
Many types of research show that practicing meditation can help you in sharpening and keeping your brain healthy.
It can change the structure, volume, and strength of the brain.
It also decreases stress due to some activities taking place in the brain. The increase in volume indicates a positive sign of emotions and brain health.
While a decrease in volume is a great risk. It shows that a lot of negative vibes, emotions, and stress are developing in the brain.
Meditation can help you to activate your brain in a positive and stronger way. It minimizes the tension and stress, keeping your brain healthy.
Similarly, it helps you in focusing on your work and paying more concentration on the important stuff.
Meditation also fights against the aging factor of the brain. It provides a happier and more positive set of feelings.
6) Get Physical Exercises
Are you familiar with the quotation that says, “use it or lose it”?
This quotation perfectly fits here because it tells you that if you don’t exercise, you will automatically lose your strength and health.
Physical exercises not only keep you physically fit, but they also strengthen and sharpen your brain.
It increases the strength of the brain by creating new and strong connections between the cells in the main cortical parts of your brain.
Exercising can help in regulating and maintaining the flow of oxygen. It discards the metabolic waste from the brain.
These physical exercises will help you to concentrate and think quickly. Walking is also very beneficial for the brain. It boosts the speed of the brain along with sharpening your mind.
Both indoor and outdoor exercises are great for health. But outdoor exercises can increase vitality, self-esteem, and enthusiasm while decreasing stress, tension, and depression.
These exercises will support you in learning and improving your mental skills.
Exercising regularly for at least 2 hours can improve the sleeping and health quality of a person. They eliminate mental disorders, anxiety issues, and severe depression from your life.
7) Take Up a Creative Hobby
What are your recent hobbies? Having creative and positive hobbies can motivate you towards a happier and healthier life.
This point deserves a lot of attention because it can provide you a prosperous life or can either destroy it. You need to be very careful regarding your daily activities and hobbies.
Engaging yourself in a creative hobby is very similar to a meditation technique. Hobbies are medicine for depression and the risk of aging of the brain.
Some of the beneficial and creative hobbies are knitting, writing, reading, drawing, playing, exercising, cycling, gardening, photography, painting, traveling, and many more.
You can select one from these for relaxing and developing peace in your mind.
This will provide you with a very happy life. There is a lot of research that proves that good hobbies have helped many people in fighting against fatigue, exhaustion, distractions, and severe stress.
Thus, you must engage and keep yourself busy with something beneficial and positive.
8) Engage in Lifelong Learning
If you want to keep your brain and body young, then you need to find out more and more about this beautiful world.
You should never stop yourself from learning and educating. A person who stops learning will indeed be responsible for ending his life badly.
There are a lot of different ways through which you can learn various things.
Some of them are; surfing through the internet, using social websites, doing different online courses, playing games, using new technologies and gadgets, and taking admissions in different cooking courses.
You can even join some academies for learning and enhancing your passion. Traveling around the world can help you in developing peace in your mind.
It will also provide you with new and interesting facts about the place you are visiting. This traveling can increase your knowledge and skills.
You can learn different languages and online courses. This will, for sure, help you in increasing the health and strength of your brain. It will provide you with a calm and beautiful life.
Is Online Brain Training a Good Mental Exercise?
Are you wondering about online brain training programs such as Fit Brains, BrainHQ, and Lumosity?
Why are not these part of our lists? These programs promise everything ranging from increased IQ to better memory. But don’t fully trust their claims.
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These companies are earning huge profits as this industry is huge. A big amount of your money will be at stake. Experts are still confused and arguing on the point that are these brain training effects on healthy adults.
Sven these claims of the companies have been rejected by scientists.
They have supported brain training but are not in favor of these companies. It is merely because these companies overstate the claims. Also, many of the brain training studies are substandard.
Look at the two main big brain training exercises and their final verdicts.
The ACTIVE Study
US National Institute on Aging funds the Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) study.
This large scale trial conducted for the first time showed that the cognitive skills of older adults were improved due to computerized brain training. The participants of this study were of good health and an average of 74 years old.
Final Verdict
This computerized brain training will show cognitive benefits that are long-lasting. The cognitive areas are processing speed, reasoning, and memory.
Brain Test Britain
This Brain Test Britain has been the largest computerized brain training so far. It had more than 60,000 participants.
The participants were of the ages 18- 80 years old. It had an average age of 43 years old.
Dr. Adrian Owen, one of the designers of this study, is from the University of Cambridge. The results are obvious.
This brain training is good when only six weeks are spent with the usage of the internet.
There are no visible differences. The results appeared in Journal Nature.
Final Verdict
This computerized brain training proves no benefits of improving the skills when playing these brain training games for the people of different ages.
Brain Training and Lost Opportunity Cost
There is a certain opportunity cost involved in everything.
The brain training similarly has the lost opportunity cost. On average, a person spends 10 hours on the screen every day.
If you can be involved in other activities, that turns out to be more challenging and rewarding, then surely brain training is not a preferable and good option.
The other drawback behind it is that the brain training programs based commercially rely exclusively on sight. Ideally, you should be engaged in activities that have the involvement of all the senses.
Invest your time on some better activities like the one we suggested above instead of investing your precious 20 minutes in any brain training activities.
Therefore, invest your time wisely in any activity that will boost up your mental activities. Try out our suggested activities.
There are many other activities too that will improve your mental fitness, but the discussed ones are very effective.
Remember, mental fitness is equally important for you to like physical fitness. Don’t take it as insignificant or less important.
Try activities for mental fitness and reap its outstanding benefits when your age brings its drawbacks to your mental health.