The Brain and Healthy Aging

Tip for Healthy Aging: Keeping Your Brain Young

If you find yourself avoiding the mistakes of your youth, you can take solace in knowing that this is a sign that your brain has continued to improve. No matter how many senior moments we may suffer, our brains can still grow and change to adapt to the mental challenges we face. One of the best ways to helps our brains grow is to take time to learn new things, particularly taking time to learn how to keep ourselves healthy.

It is possible that one of the main reasons the young brain is so agile and quick to change and adapt itself is that we have so much to learn when we are younger. You are constantly learning when you are young and your brain is constantly growing and changing to meet the demands you put on it. When you are older, you have to require your brain to continue to learn and adapt to new situations if you want your brain to continue to grow and change itself. Some things, such as stress, can be destructive to your brain growth and adaption, but learning how to deal with stress can make your brain grow.

In fact, every time you face a challenge, your brain will either make a decision it always has in the past or it will change itself so that it can make the new decisions you want it to make. You are in control of your brain development. Take some time each week to add some totally new type of knowledge or reasoning skill to your brain's arsenal, and your brain will stay much healthier and fresher.

Even socializing with others has an impact on whether you keep your brain young or your brain ages. Spending plenty of time interacting with other people is an important part of a healthy brain. This can increase your learning and keep your mental acuity.

Don't Overlook What You Eat

Your brain is where you think, but it is also a physical organ. If you are to keep your brain healthy, you must give it all of the nutrients it needs and keep your blood healthy. You should eat plenty of vegetables and fruit each day. Both are associated with overall good health. Both are associated with strong mental acuity. If you are coming up short in any nutrients, you may wish to speak to your doctor about how you can change the foods in your diet or get supplements to make up for the shortcomings in your diet.

Vegetables and fruits can also provide you with the nutrients to prevent such problems as strokes that will damage your brain. You may be surprised to learn just how much having a low-fat diet high in minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants can do for your brain function. But they are also vital to maintaining healthy brain cells, neurons, and neurotransmitters. Short-term memory, long-term memory, emotions, and reasoning skills can all be impacted by how you eat.

Control Stress for a Young Brain

Stress can be very harmful to all of the organs of the body, including your brain. Stress is a natural part of life. It is actually how we deal with stress that makes it either damaging or healthy for us. Exercise and diet are excellent ways of controlling stress. But keeping everything in perspective of the big picture is also vital. Long-term stress can be extremely damaging to the brain. Long-term depression can also cause damage to the brain.

One of the things you may do to yourself that makes stress so damaging is worrying over things out of your control. When things are in your control you should do what you can to relieve your stress in a positive way. When things are beyond your control, you need to let them go to keep your brain young.