Regardless of which muscle in the body is misused or abused, it will become weakened or damaged, as nothing ever remains the same. It begins with the core director of your body, your brain, which is the most vital organ for a functional life, but it’s still a muscle.
So if you’ve noticed that you’re making more mistakes lately, starting to forget things, making executive errors, losing track of memories or time, not being as creative as in the past, it may not be because of the aging process, but too much stress on the cortex.
What’s known is that anything can activate the stress process. From the moment we wake up, drag ourselves out of bed, and then ready ourselves for the busy day ahead, can be strenuous.
Then the pressures of balancing the kids and spouse, driving to work on time, can take immense toll on our minds. The first thing that’s compromised is our brain health.
Then we try to reverse the harm, by slowing down, realizing that our most valuable asset is becoming compromised in the long run. So self-care begins there.
Get Adequate Sleep
Staying awake longer has become a routine habit for many. The stress of the day, the late night Internet surfing or TV show, we find reasons to stay up later, getting less sleep.
Then going to bed earlier becomes difficult to do, which directly affects the hours of sleep we get, this because we usually still need to get up at the same time next morning.
What this does is it wreaks havoc on the brain, as a lack of sleep is the leading cause of our brain cells beginning to deteriorate.
Not Having A Healthy Breakfast
Then the temptation is rushing out the door with a doughnut and coffee in hand, skipping a nourishing breakfast, thinking that you’ll feed on something later.
What the brain needs first thing in the morning is to replenishment itself from a long night of recharging itself. Skipping breakfast deprives the brain in the morning, forcing it to function in a malnourished state.
What not eating a healthy breakfast does is it lowers blood sugar levels, which depletes the brain of the essential nutrients it needs to function and remain healthy, which will dumb you down.
Then You Overeat
What then happens once you skip breakfast or lunch is you overeat, which is hardly the solution. In fact, overeating has proven to do no favors for the brain.
Once you eat too much at one sitting, doing so confuses the brain, which as a result causes an abnormal spike of insulin production.
The end result is it can lead to obesity or worse, diabetes. Overeating also can cause the arteries to harden, which chain reacts to a decrease in mental function. A fit body is a fit mind.
Dehydrating Yourself Of Water
What our brain consists of is primarily water, which constantly gets drained out, so we need to replenish it. The longer that we deprive ourselves by not drinking water, the brain cells begin to shrink.
Once the body becomes in short supply of water, what it’s forced to do is extract water from the brain, which causes the cells to contract, which causes those headaches.
Absorption Of Refined Sugar
Refined sugar is like a drug that’s found in cheap convenience foods, which gives the brain a temporary high. The easiest cure is cutting down on this empty sugar intake.
Studies show that consistently high levels of high blood sugar, is harmful and damages our memory and learning capabilities.
Reduce Stress
We need certain amounts of stress in our lives to keep us motivated, but there’s a tipping point where it becomes hazardous. The biggest damage is on the brain.
Once we stress out, what our kidneys produce is cortisol, which eliminates our brain cells if there’s excess production. That’s why if you’re stressing too much over that presentation tomorrow, you might screw it up.
Recreational Vices
What smoking, alcohol, and medication abuse does is it messes up our bodies, and more specifically the brain. It’s found that smoking especially causes thinning of the cortex.
What smoking along with other common vices causes is our memory and language skills to falter in the short-term, and disable in the long run.
Overusing The Brain When Sick
The reason why doctors recommend rest when sick, is because the brain needs to work in overtime during any illness. If it’s an infection, the brain then needs to send signals to the lymph nodes to actively fight off the infection.
So overworking your brain during this process leads to the destruction of cells. During a fever, the body temperature becomes high, and if you overtax the brain, it just elevates the temperature higher. So the best remedy is to take a nap.
Not Using The Brain Enough
Although what’s common is stress, there are those who don’t use their brain cells enough, thus becoming rusty because of stagnation and dormancy.
The brain is one organ in the body which develops and grows stronger with stimulated usage. Similar to our arms needing weight bearing exercises to remain toned, the brain needs activity to remain sharp.
So leading a dull sedentary life which doesn’t force feed you to think on your feet, does is gradually makes you less alert.
So if too much TV is on the agenda, then instead, get out those crosswords, read more, or play brain expanding video games online, which has proven to help.
Brain dysfunction can be subtle yet gradual, which will then restrict the immediate executive functioning of the brain, all this while we may not even notice.