“Change your Brain… Change your Life!”

The brain is a very small organ, but of extreme importance.

Your influence is so relevant, that we’ve all heard the phrase: “Change your Brain… Change your Life!”
In reality, besides it being a very small organ, it consumes 20% of the energy that our organism needs.
Its performance is influenced by many factors, and today we leave here 5 tips to improve your brain, in a very simple way, so that is can be an alert and specially, when put in practice, they may bring benefits to our health, and consequently, for out lives.

1 – Sleep well
There is no doubt that a good night sleep is the secret to a better physical appearance an to keep us in shape.
The fact of not resting enough, and having some restful sleep, influences our concentration capacity. This problem can affect our learning capacity and the capacity to retain information.
On the long run, not sleeping well and having bad sleep habits, can increase the chances of having a stoke, specially in adults and elders.
Let us see what we can do to sleep well:

Supper:

-Dont consume foods high in calories;
-Eat less sugars, less salt and processed foods;
-Eat fish, grilled veggies, raw, steamed cooked, a cold salad, soups;
-Dont eat meat and eggs because we need melatonin(sleep hormone) to sleep well, and these foods interfere with its release.

Stay away from caffeine or other stimulants after 17h.
The stimulants with interfere directly on the nights rest.
And note that this time was established after a variation of researches ad studies that where completed, but it also depends on the persons resistance, and it is needed to make adjustments on the time of the last dose of stimulant for the day.

Turn the lights off early:
Light also interferes with the release of melatonin which is the sleep hormone. Many are the people that suffer from insomnia due to a small quantity of this hormone.

Going to sleep always on the same time to not alter the quality of the sleep.
Sleeping on different times, not respecting the biological clock, can lead to a non restful sleep.

2 – Exercising the Brain with Reading
Reading stimulated memory, expanding our mental capacity, it also improves our way of speaking and writing.
Reading = Physical Exercise For the Brain

3 – Having goals in life
The brain begins to die when out memories are more important than our goals.
Helping others is very gratifying and it helps the brain, as well as bonding, having ideas for the future, etc.

4 – Having good Eating Habits
The brain is influenced by food, because, in the intestine, there are 260 million neurons that communicate with the brain. From there, our neurologic side has direct connection with what we eat.
Scientists call the intestine the “2nd brain”, because of the big relationship of the two organs.
A good nutrition, rich in legumes and vegetables and less fat, leads to an increase of the volume of the brain. On the contrary, a non-balanced nutrition causes him to atrophy, which can lead to confusion, memory loss, and other degenerative diseases like Alzheimer.

5 – Reducing Stress
A study published on the Molecular Psychiatry, reveals that the exposure to chronic stress can intervene on the brain functions and increase the risk of anxiety, learning disability, or mood swings. For this, reserve, every day, 5 to 10 minutes to relax.

Lets put this into practice?

Dr. Fernanda Tavares