Boost Your Brain (25 page)

Cognitive Stimulation Tips

CONSIDER YOUR CHOICES
Spend some time thinking about your likes and dislikes. Then make a list of five activities you really enjoy and consider how well each will stimulate your brain. Choose the ones that are highest in appeal
and
brain-building potential.

MAKE IT A HIGH-PRIORITY HABIT
It’s important to train your “memory muscle,” so take advantage of every opportunity to memorize new information and learn new things.

KEEP IT FRESH
Once you’ve mastered a skill or task, move on or find a way to introduce a new challenge. If you’ve played golf every week for a decade, continue to enjoy it, but also try bowling or another new activity. Have you gotten pretty good at playing the piano? Try tackling a new piece that’s above your skill level. As a general rule, if you’re slightly out of your comfort zone when you tackle a new task, you’re challenging your brain—in a good way—and making the new synapses that will add to your brain reserve.

LIMIT DISTRACTIONS
Living in the wired world means we’re constantly interrupted by our devices. Often we make things worse by initiating our own interruptions—checking e-mail or logging into Facebook obsessively, for example. Schedule set times—once an hour, perhaps—to check e-mail, respond to your electronic devices, or enjoy online social networking. Resist the temptation to return to your old, obsessive ways.

EXPLORE YOUR WORLD
When you bring a child into a new room, she’ll set to work immediately, picking up items, examining them, putting them down. She’ll peek and poke and prod at everything in sight. As adults, experience tells us there’s nothing of interest behind the curtains, but while we don’t need to peer in every corner, maintaining curiosity about the world can help us keep our brains engaged and growing. So, explore your world. If you can’t travel, get online and take a virtual tour of a city half a world away. Read
National Geographic
magazine. Download a new app and figure out how it works. Be curious.

BECOME A BETTER SOCIALIZER
If you find it difficult to make conversation or uncomfortable to be in social situations, give yourself tools that make it easier. I have a shy friend who comes to every party with a new joke to tell. He always gets a laugh, which makes him feel good. If you’re not a jokester, try boning up on a favorite topic so you can comfortably add to the conversation.

Checkup Time!

Good work on completing the first month of your bigger-brain plan. This is an ideal time to spend a few minutes thinking about what has worked so far—and what hasn’t. Jot down three major accomplishments you’re proud of and three challenges you still need to tackle.

Accomplishments

1. _______________

2. _______________

3. _______________

Still to do

1. _______________

2. _______________

3. _______________

Week Five

Now that you’ve created some habits around brain boosters, it’s time to turn your attention to avoiding brain drainers.

You’ll read about them starting in Part IV, but for this week let’s focus on sleep quality. One common condition that robs people of quality sleep is obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a sleep disorder that literally starves the brain of oxygen and shrinks the hippocampus. Most alarming of all is that many people have OSA and don’t realize it.

You’ll learn more about OSA in
chapter 9
, but for now you should know that risk factors for OSA include being overweight, having a neck circumference of more than seventeen inches in men and sixteen inches in women, smoking, alcohol abuse, and structural issues, such as a large tongue or an overbite. Other signs that you might suffer from OSA include daytime sleepiness, waking yourself with your own snoring, being told by someone else that you snore loudly (especially if it’s a snore that ends in a gasp for breath), difficulty concentrating, depression, or irritability.

If you think you have OSA, be sure to seek treatment immediately, as this brain shrinker may be offsetting the gains you’ve earned through your brain-boosting efforts.

Sleep Tips, Part One

If you have sleep apnea, seek treatment from a medical professional, but also follow these tips:

LOSE WEIGHT
Although there are other causes of sleep apnea besides being overweight, weight loss can be highly effective in reducing obstructive sleep apnea.

AVOID ALCOHOL IN THE EVENING
Alcohol can relax the muscles in your upper airway, thus worsening obstructive sleep apnea. Avoid consuming alcohol in the hours before you go to sleep. Sedatives like those found in sleep aids can also pose problems for people with sleep apnea and should be avoided.

USE A CPAP
Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) devices blow air into your nose while you sleep. If you have a diagnosis of sleep apnea, your doctor will prescribe a CPAP for you.

SLEEP ON YOUR SIDE
Side sleeping can help reduce sleep apnea, as doing so keeps your tongue from falling backward and blocking your airflow. Make a pocket on the inside of the back of an old shirt and fill it with a few tennis balls—they’ll prevent you from rolling onto your back while you sleep.

STOP SMOKING
Smoking can increase inflammation in the upper airway, increasing your risk for obstructive sleep apnea.

Week Six

Just as OSA can wreak havoc with the quality of your sleep, so too can insomnia, which can also greatly reduce the quantity of your sleep. Signs of insomnia include difficulty falling asleep, a tendency to awaken extremely early, daytime sleepiness, moodiness and irritability, and difficulties with attention, memory, and concentration.

Insomnia can have many causes, including anxiety, depression, medication side effects, sleep disorders, excessive consumption of caffeine, chronic pain, or a host of other factors. If you wake up not feeling refreshed, wake up frequently during the night, or have trouble falling asleep, talk to your doctor about insomnia. This is a treatable condition.

Sleep Tips, Part Two

EXERCISE
Exercising for a minimum of 150 minutes a week may help you sleep better and feel more alert during the day.
¹

AVOID LONG NAPS
If you have insomnia, avoid taking naps. Daytime sleeping will make it difficult to fall asleep or stay asleep at night.

LIMIT USE OF ELECTRONICS IN THE HOUR BEFORE SLEEP
TV and other electronics can rev up your brain before sleep, and the glow from such devices can actually reduce your production of melatonin, a hormone needed for slumber.

USE THE BEDROOM FOR SLEEPING ONLY
Make it your sleep sanctuary. That means removing the TV and avoiding eating, working out, or working in your bedroom.

MONITOR YOUR DIET FOR THINGS THAT MAY BE KEEPING YOU UP
Too much caffeine during the day, eating spicy food, or having a large meal right before bedtime are possibilities to consider and remedy. Some medicines can also cause insomnia.

AWAKEN AND GO TO SLEEP AT ROUGHLY THE SAME TIME EVERY DAY
Waking up at the same time, in particular, is important; so if you experience insomnia or a night of insufficient sleep, try to rise at your usual time and go to bed earlier the next night. If your schedule isn’t permitting you a solid seven to eight hours sleep on a regular basis, make the changes needed to ensure that it can.

CHILL OUT
A too-hot room can keep you awake, so try to sleep in a room that is around 65˚F. Taking a hot shower three or four hours before you sleep can also help to lower your body temperature and relax your muscles.

DON’T STAY IN BED AWAKE
If you’re having trouble falling asleep, don’t lie in bed watching the clock. Instead, get up and engage in a quiet activity like reading. Then go back to bed when you feel sleepy.

SLEEP UNTIL SUNLIGHT
If you can, wake up with the sun, or use very bright lights in the morning to help reset your body’s internal clock.

Week Seven

You’ve now completed your first six weeks of the brain fitness program. By this point, you have made progress—and you’re feeling the brain benefit. You no longer worry about your memory, as it has improved significantly. But remember, you’re only halfway there; more progress is ahead.

Keep adding intensity or expanding on your efforts as much as possible and continue your progression up the tracks.

Week Eight

As you’ll soon read, excess stress is a major brain shrinker, leading to reduced cognitive function in both the short and long term.

This week, focus on reducing your stress level (if you have excess stress). One way to do that is by identifying your stressors and finding ways to reduce them. My favorite stress-reduction tool is the stress chart. Set aside an hour and create your own stress chart by following the steps I’ve included in the next table.

Create a list with a column for “buckets,” or categories for the different areas of your life. Your buckets might be family, work, finances, extended family, household, or health.

For each bucket item, identify the top five to ten things that cause you stress. You can call this column “What’s stressful.”

Create a column for your goals. (Call this one “My goal.”) Then go through each item and come up with a realistic plan for how you can reduce your exposure to the stressor. Keep in mind that, in some cases, a perfectly reasonable solution may be to decide not to get involved.

Your list might look like this:

Stress Chart