Diet

Food Combinations Sharpen Mental Focus

One technique for improving your brain and mind is tuning your diet.   There have been many studies making claims about how certain nutrients impact cognitive performance.  Dietary techniques – eating specific foods, food combinations, avoiding foods and the use of supplements – will be a frequent topic on the Next Brain blog.

For example, check-out this AARP-endorsed 3-minute video outlining tips for eating in a brain smart way.  Here is the basic claim:

“Want to be more mentally alert? The right fruit and vegetable combinations can help you think more clearly —especially if those combos are raw, with their nutrients intact, says AARP health and fitness ambassador Martina Navratilova in this video.”

I like this video because it offers simple but clinically supported ideas for making simple substitutions in your diet.  For example, snacking on pumpkin seeds and using dark leafy vegetables in your salad.   Making significant dietary changes is hard. We have a much better chance with simple additions or substitutions.

Amount of Sugar in Your Blood Impacts Decision-Making Big Time!

You get a lot of advice on how to make better decisions – sleep on it, shop around, go with your gut and so on.  Although a lot of this type of advice sounds like common sense it can be loaded with cognitive biases and decision traps.

Learning to make better decisions is a big part of what YourNextBrain! (improving your mind and brain) is about so it will be a frequent topic on this blog.  We will look at two aspects:

1. Uncovering the biases and traps in everyday decision-making and talking about how to manage them.
2. Discussing what decision-making advice holds up under scientific study and how to put it to use.

For example, a recent study reported on the Physorg blog, Got a Decision to Make? Get Some Sugar in Your System, found that our ability to delay gratification is improved if we have sugared up.  More specifically, they found that taking a sugary drink actually improves our ability to focus on a larger future payoff versus a smaller but more immediate payoff.  This is key for making many types of decision especially about managing money and health. It also supports the common sense advice of never go food shopping hungry.

Higher blood sugar levels means you are less likely to decide impulsively.

Read more…

Two Cups of Blueberry Juice Daily Significantly Improves Memory

What we eat and drink as well as the medications and supplements we take can strong determine the effectiveness of our cognitive functions and how long we have a health brain.   Expect to see many posts on ingestibles and how they can be used to develop YourNextBrain! in this blog.

Sometimes we will debunk findings.  For example the post, Herb Fails to Prove Out as Cognitive Enhancer, reviews evidence that Ginko Biloba the popular memory supplement does not work. Other times we will present brand new but preliminary positive findings. For example, the recent news release from the American Chemical Society that presents First Ever Evidence that Blueberry Juice Improves Memory in Older Adults. This is an exciting finding.

[Source]

To quote:

“In the study, one group of volunteers in their 70s with early memory decline drank the equivalent of 2-2 l/2 cups of a commercially available blueberry juice every day for two months. A control group drank a beverage without blueberry juice. The blueberry juice group showed significant improvement on learning and memory tests, the scientists say. “These preliminary memory findings are encouraging and suggest that consistent supplementation with blueberries may offer an approach to forestall or mitigate neurodegeneration,” said the report.”

A preliminary result but it does encourage some sensible personal experimentation. It would not be too hard to swap out a daily drink such as orange juice or a bottled water with blueberry juice. Simple before/after memory tests can be used to see if you are making any headway.

I am very interested to hear from readers with ideas or examples of personal experiments with blueberries as memory enhancers.