A Healthy Brain: 8 Tips To Staying Mentally Fit As You Age
All your life, you’ve heard that you should exercise regularly to stay healthy, but you don’t hear much about staying mentally fit. When we’re younger, such a task isn’t so hard. But as you age, that starts to change. It’s never too late to start living a healthier life.
These tips are designed to help you stay mentally fit as you age:
1. Read More
Look, you’re doing that right now. Reading keeps the mind sharp. In fact, the scientific journal Neurology reported that reading and writing more in your later years resulted in a 32% decrease in the likelihood of memory loss and cognitive decline.
2. Feed Your Brain
A healthy diet is one of the most pivotal factors in staying mentally fit. Reducing dairy and red meat consumption has been shown to improve your overall health and your brain health. Eat a diet filled with whole grains, beans, lentils, nuts, vegetables, and fruit.
3. Get Moving
You knew this was coming. Just because you’re getting older doesn’t mean exercise goes out the window. In fact, it’s more important than ever.
Want to know an interesting fact? The simple act of walking sends shockwaves up from the foot, stimulating your arteries. This gets more blood to your brain and therefore more oxygen. This results in a healthier brain.
4. Touch Your Toes
Just like walking helps with increased cerebral circulation (that’s the flow of blood to your brain), so does stretching. Why? Because as we age, our circulation isn’t what it used to be. With all that walking you’re about to do, you should make sure you’re in the best shape to do that.
5. Get Social
Loneliness can truly hamper someone’s brain health. Cambridge conducted an interesting study where they followed seniors for over a decade and found that those with a busy social life had a 70% lower cognitive decline.
6. Listen To Music
Music has been shown to improve the mind. You hear a song and it can transport you back in time, bring about a memory you had forgotten all about. There is a strong tie between our relationship to music and our memory.
7. Learn A New Language
You might be questioning this one. Why learn a new language if you might never get to visit the country of origin for language? Learning a new language trains the brain to think more quickly, fine-tuning your processing skills.
8. Find A New Hobby
If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. It’s true. We have to constantly exercise our minds. One way to do that is to start a new hobby. Our hobbies tend to shift as we get older. We find ourselves having to branch out and do things we might not have done when we were younger.