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Marie Lanen
Head of parenting sections (baby, pregnancy, family), psychology and beauty
To preserve and improve our cognitive abilities, it is essential to adopt a global approach that encompasses various aspects of our lifestyle. Whether it is through maintaining social ties, practicing regular physical activities, a balanced diet, quality sleep, or intellectually stimulating hobbies, every action counts. Discover in this article simple and effective tips for maintaining your brain on a daily basis.
Taking care of our cognitive health is not limited to mental exercises or specific diets. On the contrary, it is an approach that includes different aspects of our social life, our physical well-being, and our daily habits. In a world where stress and the hectic pace of modern life put a strain on our mental capacities, it is more crucial than ever to cultivate habits that benefit our brain. This article offers you five practical tips to boost and preserve your cognitive functions, while bringing relaxation and pleasure to your daily life.
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Tip #1: Maintain social ties
Social connections should be seen as a source of intellectual stimulation in their own right. Volunteering in an association, planning a meal at home, regularly checking in with friends, are all activities that will strongly solicit planning skills, language skills and different types of memory (short-term, long-term, or prospective) without forgetting the most important fact, the fact that they are sources of relaxation and pleasure.
Tip #2: Practice regular physical activity
It is now well established that regular physical activity is associated with better cognitive and memory performance. The benefits would be even greater for sedentary people who start practicing physical activity. Also, it is never too late to start doing a little sport, at your own pace and according to your abilities.
Tip #3: Get good quality sleep
The quality of sleep also has an impact on the level of cognitive performance. Good quality sleep is defined by the alternation between phases of deep sleep and phases of light sleep. Deep sleep has this extraordinary ability to evacuate toxic proteins accumulated during the day in our brain. Thus, sleeping well allows for good attention and memory function during the day, and in the long term, protects our brain from the harmful accumulation of certain proteins.
Tip #4: Pay attention to what you put on your plate
There is a close link between diet, brain function and memory. Several studies have shown that people who opt for a Mediterranean diet, i.e. a diet rich in olive oil, fish, fruits and vegetables, and low in meat and dairy products, show a less significant decline in memory functions as they age compared to people who do not follow this type of diet. The recommendation is simple but nevertheless essential: you need to have a balanced and varied diet to stay healthy.
The gourmet tip: eat (a little) chocolate!
Chocolate, like coffee and tea, is rich in methylxanthines that are beneficial for cognitive functions. The cocoa bean, for its part, contains flavanols which, through their actions on peroxidases, insulin and cerebral blood circulation, are said to have a positive effect on memory, learning abilities and also the immune system. However, it is not a question of rushing to buy a bar of chocolate, a small square from time to time is enough to benefit from its virtues, and preferably dark chocolate (with at least 70% cocoa). It is the flavanols that are beneficial for memory and not sugar and cocoa which bring us pleasure and good humor.
The hoax revealed : we regularly hear that turmeric and/or red fruits participate in improving memory encoding (information capture). No scientific study has proven the veracity of this belief, even if these two foods are rich in antioxidants.
Tip #5: Have intellectual activities and hobbies
Leisure activities that stimulate our cognitive functions contribute to good mental health, provided that they are carried out without stress and that they constitute a source of relaxation and pleasure. We should not force ourselves to do sudoku or crosswords if this activity bores us. No activity in particular is recommended more than another, the important thing is to have diverse and varied leisure activities which will have the consequence of stimulating various facets of our cognition. Studies show in fact that the long-term practice of many activities is associated with a lesser decline in cognitive functions over time.
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