The brain is an important complex organ in the body. It consists of 100 billion nerves. It exerts a centralized control over the other organs in the body. The brain accounts for about 2.5 percent of your body. It allows for rapid and coordinated responses to total weight and uses up to 20 percent of your total energy and environmental changes.

The brain tends to change as you age and so does the mental function. Mental decline is proved to be one of the most feared consequences of aging. With proper knowledge, care, and use you can keep your brain young, sharp, and healthy. This article will help you understand brain aging and give you some tips on how to keep your brain young even as you age.

How To Keep Your Brain Healthy And Active

Just like the other body parts, your brain tends to change as you age. It adapts, learns, and makes a memory as well as become sharper and smarter through the wisdom that only comes with life experiences. However, as you hit your late twenties, the brain aging process begins.

To understand how to keep brain young, healthy and active and slow down the changes, it is important to understand how the brain ages and what happens to your brain as you age.

The aging process has its deep roots in the molecules and cells that make up your body.

Research has shown that the neurons the cells that make up the brain and nervous system tend to decrease as a result of damage a process known as cell senescence.

Hormones and proteins that repair and protect your brain cells as well as stimulate neural growth also tend to decline with age. The blood flow to the brain also decreases, which can impair your cognitive functions.

This results in various conditions such as Dementia and Parkinson’s among others that are associated with young age. Fortunately, there are various ways in which you can maintain a young brain.

Want A Younger Brain?

Here are eight highly recommended tips that you might want to know to keep brain young, healthy, and active even as you age:

1. Eat Healthly

Adopting a nutrient-rich diet has been by far proven to promote a young brain. Understanding why and what we eat is one of the most critical influences on our longevity and health. There is food such as those rich in omega-3 fatty acids that help to promote your brain health. You should consume a lot of fruits rich in vitamins and antioxidants. Folate has been proven to reduce the risk of acquiring neurodegenerative disorders.

2. Keep Learning New Things

Learning new information and skills keeps your brain young even in later years of life. Activities that seem complex and novel to you have the highest value to your brain. They help to stimulate learning, enhance synaptic density, and decrease the likelihood of developing neurodegenerative diseases. They keep your brain always expanding and sharp.

3. Exercise Regularly

You must have heard about the importance of exercises to your health. Well, studies show that exercises do your brain good as it does to your physical health. Aerobic exercise improves blood flow to the brain and encourages the growth of new brain cell. 30 minutes walk in a day can do wonders to your brain. It not only reduces brain cell loss, but also it significantly reduces the risk of heart attack diabetes, and stroke.

4. Nurture Your Relationships And Have Fun

Social connections with your friends and loved ones help to protect your brain from the negative impacts of aging. By interacting with others, you exercise your brain areas that are involved in memory and attention. You get to share experiences, challenges, emotions, and new things. You can join a dancing class to spend time with pals and challenge your mind as it works to grab all those tricky steps.

5. Stimulate Your Brain

At times it is healthy to challenge your brain as it may help to reverse cognitive decline. Just as lifting strengthens your muscles, keeping your mind engaged increases your brain’s vitality and reserves your brain cells and connections. You can stimulate your brain with some mental exercises that you enjoy such as solving puzzles, memorizing sequences, playing brain games, computers games etc. If you are looking for pointers, try out wooden jigsaw puzzles from Unidragon.com.

6. Learn To Cope With Stress

Stress keeps you on your toes and reminds you that you are alive and need to be careful in certain situations. However, pronounced stress can wreak havoc on your body and the brain as well. It kills your brain cells and makes it to age at a high rate. To keep brain young, you need to find ways to minimize stress in your life. Reduce your brain’s exposure to stress through various ways to tackle stress such as exercising more to reduce the level of cortisol hormone, medication etc.

7. Stay Away From Smoking

Smoking does no good for your health. It affects your body’s ability to deliver nutrients and oxygen to your brain. Studies have shown that it speeds up the natural brain aging process. It increases your risks of acquiring dementia. To have a young brain you need to stop smoking.

8. Listen To Music

Listening to music as shown in a study the journal Neuron, sharpens your brain’s ability to stay focused and anticipate events. As you listen to music, your brain’s areas involved in making predictions, paying attention, and accessing memories are involved. This helps your brain to stay active and young.

Conclusion

The brain is a complex structure, yes, but it tends to change as we age. Research shows that the brain starts slowing down as early as age 24. In the late twenties, we begin losing the neurons that make up the brain and nervous system. By the age of 60, the brain begins to shrink.

Brain aging sounds a bit scary, but it is a natural process that is inevitable to everyone and no one can stop it from changing even the healthiest. The good thing is that you can slow down the changes with the mentioned tips to keep your brain as young, sharp, and healthy as possible. Do not hesitate to do the right thing for the sake of your brain health as well as overall wellness.

Furthermore, if these activities become unyielding you might start using a brain enhancing supplement. You can explore many products such as Neuriva which might boost your brain health.