Build Your Brain Power

The Art of Smart Thinking

Simon Wootton, Terry Horne

• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781473611801
• eBook ISBN: 9781473611818
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Self Improvement

This new edition of a popular guide to improving your mental agility will help you improve your performance at work and sharpen your thinking skills in all areas.Based on the latest scientific findings and including up-to-date coverage of how meditative skills such as mindfulness can enhance your brain power, this book gives you everything you need to get a mental edge.It challenges you to think on your feet with hundreds of puzzles, quizzes and problem-solving games, while giving you lifestyle advice on diet, exercise and lifestyle choices. Showing you how to put your new, more powerful brain to the test at work, home and play, this is a smart guide for any smart professional who wants to be brighter, quicker and in the lead at all times.

PART ONE

AT HOME

1

Powering up your brain

In this chapter you will learn:

• to eat the food your brain needs, when it needs it

• to minimize damage to your brain from alcohol, tea, coffee, cannabis, cola, ticks and cigarettes

• to use sleep, exercise, smart drugs, dark chocolate and sex to rejuvenate your brain.

• about our ‘other brains’

The state of your brain is as much a lifestyle choice, as a genetic inheritance.

Terry Horne, 2003

Introduction

Your brain can change in response to the way you exercise and the way you breathe. It can also change in response to what you eat, drink and smoke. It is changed by what you do and don’t do. Your brain, it appears, can change its structure in response to your lifestyle. Your brain is able to adapt in this way because, according to the previous Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the UK Medical Research Council, Colin Blakemore, your brain is not only a chemical factory, it is an extremely busy chemical factory. Your brain needs energy for more than 1 million chemical reactions every second!

Your brain can be changed by what you do with it – hence we have designed exercises for you to do and puzzles and problems for you to solve. However, your brain is not only changed by what you do with it, it is also changed by what you do to it. Here, in Chapter 1, we look at what you do to your brain when you feed it, and what you can do to revive it. We will look at diet, exercise, sleep, sex and the effect of dark chocolate.

The need for vitamins and minerals

At least ten different B vitamins can affect the neurotransmitters in your brain. The B vitamins help in the formation of new neurotransmitters. Anderson found that people had difficulty in thinking and concentrating when their vitamin B1 levels were low.

VITAMINS: TO SUPPLEMENT OR NOT?

Any beneficial effects from vitamins C, B1 and B5, and the minerals boron, zinc and selenium, are better obtained through a long-term adjustment to the diet than through taking supplements. You can usefully increase the proportion of berries such as blackcurrants, redcurrants, bilberries, strawberries and especially blueberries in your diet. Also try increasing the proportion of spinach, green cabbage, broccoli and watercress. Do not take iron tablets (unless your doctor advises you to do so due to, say, anaemia). Although in general your body will tell you what’s good for you, when in doubt, you should consult your doctor.

Remember this: Better than popping pills

Many of the chemical reactions involved in thinking are sensitive to traces of certain minerals and vitamins. Chronic deficiencies of these minerals and vitamins can seriously impair performance. Taking action on what you routinely eat and drink is a more effective remedy for deficiency than taking tablets or vitamin supplements.

Food for thought

✽ Under normal circumstances, the brain uses mainly glucose for energy. With the aid of oxygen, B vitamins and minerals, the glucose is oxidized to produce water, carbon dioxide and energy – enough to fuel a million chemical reactions a second!

✽ Neurons, and the sheaths surrounding their axons, need to be kept in good condition and phosphatidyl choline is essential for that maintenance. But to work, Maguire discovered that phosphatidyl choline needs certain B vitamins.

✽ Folic acid and selenium have been found to boost cognitive functioning. Folic acid is found in dark leafy green vegetables. Selenium is a mineral found in seafood, wholegrain breads, nuts and meat.

✽ Connors reported that boron, iron and zinc improve mental activity. The mineral boron is found in broccoli, pears, peaches, grapes, nuts and dried beans. Zinc can be found in fish, beans and whole grains. The vitamin C in citrus fruits and salads enhances the absorption of iron. Iron helps to form ferroxyhaemoglobin, which is used to carry oxygen in the blood, through the body, to the brain.

✽ In humans, neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine are essential for mental alertness and acuity, and for high speed calculation, evaluation, and critical thinking. Eating protein increases the supply of neurotransmitters. The implication is that we should eat more protein if we wish to be mentally alert and quick-thinking. (Some of the lowest rates of dyslexia in the world are found in Japan, which has the highest per capita consumption of fish.)

✽ In 2004, Steve and Burgess found that children with higher scores in mathematics had higher amounts of long-chain fatty acids omega-3 and omega-6 in their blood (although this may also correlate with the IQ and economic and social status of their parents!).

✽ Eating blueberries, strawberries and spinach can reverse deterioration in thinking ability, but dark chocolate has ten times the level of the flavonols that are responsible for this beneficial effect.

THE DANGERS OF FAT-FREE DIETS!

By all means eliminate solid, saturated transfats from your diet. Transfats have no unsaturated bonds in them and so it is very hard for your body to break them down and get rid of them. They tend to hang around in your body, eventually clogging up your arteries and destroying your waistline. Transfats deprive your muscles and your brain of the oxygen they need to work effectively. They also interfere with two unsaturated fats, omega-3 and omega-6 that your brain really needs. Without unsaturated fats in your diet, your brain can’t produce acetylcholine and without this, your brain cells will become ‘stiff’ and brittle. You will suffer memory loss and your thinki...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title
• Acknowledgements
• Contents 
• Meet the authors
• Foreword
• First thoughts
• Part One: At Home
• Part Two: At Work
• Part Three: At Play
• Final thoughts
• Appendices
• Glossary
• Answers
• Taking it further
• Copyright