How to Give the Brain a Boost
Whether young or old, doing simple exercises to boost your brain power can help you absorb and process information faster, and may even stave off some age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's. Try these exercises to keep your mind sharp.
Instructions
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Become a speed reader. Find a local school or community center that offers speed reading courses. Learning to read information faster helps you process the information you read at a speedier pace as well as train your brain to pick up visual details easier. Picking up visual details won’t give you a photographic memory if you weren’t born with one to start with, but it can help you pick out details in text quickly and easily, thus sharpening your brain’s function (see Resources below).
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Quiz yourself on anything you read. Reading something for a few minutes and then silently quizzing yourself on what you just read can help you retain the information much better than reading it over and over again but not thinking about or applying the information you just took in. Quizzing yourself can boost your brain power and train it to remember the information taken in so that it can be indexed and used at a later time. Reading something just before you go to sleep will likely be the last bit of information you will process, thus helping you remember it when you wake up.
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Choose brain function supplements carefully. There are many different types of mental supplements on the market, and some of them actually do work, but before taking any, talk to a physician and do a little bit of research on the product. There are supplements for adults and children alike. Some help to boost memory function, while others help to relieve mental fatigue or boost IQ levels in children, helping them to learn more efficiently (see Resources below). Eating a balanced diet can also maximize the supplements' purpose. Avoid bad habits that can destroy brain cells, such as drugs, tobacco and heavy consumption of alcoholic drinks.
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Test yourself on basic math facts. Though it seems like only school-age children should do this, testing your basic math facts can really give your brain power a boost since math is the most basic form of logic and reasoning. Quiz yourself daily with a deck of addition and subtraction flash cards to see if you can remember those easy math problems from grade school. Find brain-boosting quizzes online (see Resources below). Try to do math on paper instead of using a calculator.
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Buy a book of logic tests. As with testing yourself on math facts, buying a book that is full of different abstract logic quizzes can also help boost your brain power. An example of this type of test is seeing pictures or patterns. You have to use your power of logic and reasoning to figure out which object will come next. You can also do a search online for more logic tests and puzzles that are available (see Resources below).
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