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How to Improve Your Memory

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What is the best way to improve my memory?

Memory is the process of taking in information from the world around us, processing it, storing it and later recalling that information, sometimes many years later. Memory is essential to all our lives. Without a memory of the past, we cannot operate in the present or think about the future.

Types of memory

There are three main types of memory:

  1. Working memory: Working memory refers to the processes for temporarily storing and using information. Sensory information is stored for a few seconds in our brain.
  2. Short-term memory: Short-term memory allows us to remember pieces of information. It allows a person to recall information for a short time like 30 seconds.
  3. Long-term memory: Long-term memory refers to the storage of information permanently in our brain.

How does the brain store long-term memory?

Brain stores long-term memories outside the hippocampus and neocortex. Repeated or rehearsed information is stored in the brain in memory shelves, and it is recalled when needed. Memory refers to the psychological processes of acquiring, storing, retaining, and later retrieving information. There are three major processes involved in memory: encoding, storage, and retrieval.

Encoding: At first, the information presented to the brain is coded in the brain just like binary digits. Encoding is important as it makes memory capable of being stored.

Storage: After encoding, memory is stored in certain areas of the brain specified for the storage of information, that is called memory shelves.

Retrieval: Retrieval refers to getting information out of brain storage and recalling it. Retrieval can’t occur if memory is not stored in the brain as long-term memory. [Read more…]

What is the Difference Between the Brain and the Mind? 

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What is the Difference Between the Brain and the Mind? 

We often hear, “he has a brain tumor, he has lost his memory and thinking, Alas! He used to have a sharp memory.” If we ponder over this line. Where did he have a tumor? How did it affect his memory and thinking? Is there any relation between a physical thing (brain) and an intangible (memory and thinking)? 

Suppose we say both are the same, then we must say he had a tumor in memory, but it seems weird. Isn’t it? It is obvious that both are different terms but correlated with each other somehow. 

This blog will help you understand major differences, similarities, and how to enhance your mind and brain. 

The Brain and the Mind

The brain and the mind are the two most common terms used interchangeably. Both the brain and mind control each other and are dependent on each other. We can take an example of a loudspeaker. The loudspeaker is a physical or tangible thing. It produces an intangible sound, we can not see and touch the sound, but we can hear it and sense it. 

Similarly, the brain is a physical or tangible thing, and it can be touched and seen. But the mind is an intangible thing; we can’t touch our mind or see it.  [Read more…]

Is Excessive Weight Aging Your Brain?

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Obesity and Brain Health

There is no question – obesity has negative effects on health, overall. Most of us know this already. But maybe less known is its role in brain health. Science continues to conduct research studies to measure the impact of elevated weight on brain function.

It is normal for us to think about the brain and its well-being when it may be after a traumatic brain injury – or repeated impacts arising from contact sports. Indeed, these events have been linked to chronic problems in brain function; other factors seem to just make sense on the disease continuum – from high blood pressure to the increasing prevalence rate of Alzheimer’s disease, the latter being exacerbated by lifestyle habits that are omnipresent in our daily lives. This can include a long list, such as harmful diet, excess alcohol consumption, and chronic sleep deprivation. We commonly think about these disorders once symptoms arise. however, the underlying neuropathology has been present for years – even decades – prior to any symptomatic onset.

[Read more…]

Enhancing Support for Brain Functions with Supplements and Nutraceuticals

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Enhancing Support for Brain Functions

Note: the nutraceuticals and supplements discussed in this post is not intended to be understood as an endorsement of their usage. Any changes to intake in the form of supplementation should be discussed with a physician prior to use.

As a Certified Brain Fitness Coach, the need to expand your knowledge of nutraceuticals cannot be overlooked. Often credited with serving to support optimal cellular functioning, nutraceuticals play an important role in ensuring your clients have the foundational building blocks that allow them (and their physical form) to continually produce neurotransmitters and co-factors at levels essential to supporting optimal brain health.

Aging occurs when cellular death from reactive oxygen species occurs at a faster rate than cellular growth. What is interesting is the science that allows us to see the brain as the most metabolically active organ in the body, causing it to generate a large amount of reactive oxygen species in the process. The brain is also quite vulnerable to oxidative stress; these reactive oxygen species often get neutralized by the brain’s natural antioxidant systems in a healthy individual.

These systems operate efficiently for most of our lives but in an aging individual, the reactive oxygen species are often in excess of the antioxidant capacity…resulting in cellular aging. The solution is to incorporate nutritional solutions to support the brain’s antioxidant capacity.

[Read more…]

What’s Unique About Dialectical Behavioral Therapy?

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What’s Unique About Dialectical Behavioral Therapy?

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is a type of cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy to help people with mood disorders, traumatic brain injury, eating disorders, and substance abuse.

DBT was originally intended to treat borderline personality disorder (BPD), but it has been adapted to treat other mental health conditions. It can help people who have difficulty with emotional regulation or are exhibiting self-destructive behaviors (eating disorders and substance use disorders).

[Read more…]

Hydration and its Impact on Brain Function

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Hydration and its Impact on Brain Function

Humans can survive without food for several weeks but without water, life would end in three to five days. Our brain is comprised of approximately 75% water. That fact, alone, tells us how critical hydration is to the brain and body.

While we often think of food and nutrients as critical to life (they are), water is even more so. The average person can live only three to five days without water. Most can survive about three weeks without food.

Now that we’ve established water is important, let’s look at how it impacts you.

[Read more…]

What is the Relaxation Response?

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What is the Relaxation Response?

The counterpart to the fight-or-flight response, the relaxation response, occurs when the body is no longer in perceived danger, and the autonomic nervous system functioning returns to normal. As a form of meditation, the relaxation response tends to be well received by those with busy minds.

Physician Herbert Benson was a pioneer in studying the physiological changes that occurred during meditation techniques. Benson can be largely credited for demystifying meditation and helping to bring it into the mainstream, by renaming meditation the “Relaxation Response.”

[Read more…]

How to Improve Your Brain Fitness

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What is Brain Fitness?

We often hear the phrase “use it or lose it” in reference to brain fitness. With the growing awareness of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, there is a greater concern for maintaining brain function and avoiding disease.

Brain Fitness is the state of brain health and mental well-being that makes you “fit” for life and work demands. It’s a fundamental measure of the brain’s ability to function efficiently and effectively during work and leisure activities, to be healthy, to resist disease.

Brain fitness can be protected and nurtured by lifestyle, by formal education, by being actively mentally engaged in life, and by targeted practices designed to challenge important mental skills.

Healthy lifestyle habits including mental stimulation, physical exercise, good nutrition, stress management, and sleep can improve brain fitness. On the other hand, chronic stress, anxiety, depression, aging, decreasing estrogen, excess oxytocin, and prolonged cortisol can decrease brain fitness as well as general health.

[Read more…]

How to Listen to Your Brain and Give It What It Needs

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Written by Mark Teahan Director of Education Programs

Giving Your Brain What It Needs

It has been said that real change has to connect with the heart for it to occur or endure. That sounds really nice, but it’s not the whole picture. The truth is, change starts just as much in the brain than anywhere else in the body. Referencing the heart addresses our need for a warm feel-good requirement in our coaching sessions but the truth is, there is a lot of science behind the change. And it mostly comes from the brain. [Read more…]

How Your Brain is Optimized With Quality Sleep

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How Your Brain is Optimized With Quality SleepAs a Certified Sleep Coach or Brain Fitness Coach, you know that a clear and rested brain works at peak efficiency after quality sleep. A well-functioning brain creates more opportunity for success in each aspect of life.

Quality sleep is 7 to 8 hours of restful, uninterrupted sleep. The National Sleep Foundation defines quality sleep as:

  • Sleeping more time while in bed (at least 85 percent of the total time)
  • Falling asleep in 30 minutes or less
  • Waking up no more than once per night; and
  • Being awake for 20 minutes or less after initially falling asleep.

[Read more…]

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