How do you take care the wellness of your mind? Check here to learn more about the calm mind and how to keep your mind healthy.
Happiness is still, for the most part, an unchartered domain for neuroscience. It sounds like a concealed, evasive mystery.
All the same, once one abides by positive psychological science research advice, “The question shouldn’t be whether you’re happy but what you are able to do to get happier.”
The happiness pursuit begins to become more real and executable according to cutting-edge neuroscience research.
The mind and the body are in reality a single system. We’re constantly discovering more about how our mental health bears upon our physical health.
Over fifty percent of deaths in the U.S. May be attributed to behavioral and social elements.
Moreover, recent research furnishes evidence that stresses that impact the brain may hurt the body at the cellular and molecular level and decrease a person’s health and caliber of life.
But, the research likewise states that maintaining a favorable state of mind may help an individual defeat some of these stress effects, fight disease better and in the final analysis delay demise.
A Calm Mind Is a Healthy Mind
Studies have shown that feeling stress or anxiety on a long-term basis doesn’t just affect your peace of mind. In fact, you’re more likely to suffer from things like digestive issues and a weak immune system if your mind is persistently stressed.
Cortisol, the hormone your body produces when you’re feeling stressed, can take a heavy toll on your physical and mental health.
Because of this, giving your mind time to relax and recover is one of the most important self-care routines that you can practice. Your state of mind has the potential to greatly benefit your health, or degrade it, over time.
Digestion
Your liver produces glucose to give you an energy boost when your body is feeling the effects of stress. Whatever your body doesn’t use is then reabsorbed.
However, if you’re suffering from chronic stress, your body may not be able to keep up with the extra blood sugar your liver is producing. You may be at an increased risk of developing type-2 diabetes if your body is producing too much glucose.
You’re more likely to have heartburn or acid reflux if you suffer from stress. Stress doesn’t cause ulcers, but it may cause pre-existing ulcers to act up.
Sexuality and Reproductive System
Stress affects the menstrual cycles of some women. You may have irregular or even non-existent periods or more painful or heavier cycles.
Too much stress may magnify the physical symptoms of menopause for women. For men, prolonged periods of stress can result in a drop in testosterone levels, erectile dysfunction, and even impotency.
For many, the loss of sexual appetite is a common occurrence as a result of too much stress.
Immune System
Stress is known to stimulate the immune system, which is good if it’s short-term because it helps your body stave off infection and heals wounds.
But if you’re stressed for prolonged periods of time, cortisol compromises your immune system. This inhibits histamine secretion and your body’s inflammatory response to foreign dangers.
People who are affected by chronic stress are more likely to catch viral illnesses like the common cold. It also takes more time for the body to recover from injuries or illness, if you’re chronically stressed.
Relaxation Techniques to Calm Your Mind
There are numerous techniques for calming your mind. For some, exercise is an excellent outlet to give their mind time to recharge.
Meditation is a well-known method for clearing your mind. There are many different styles of meditation, tailored to suit your needs and lifestyle.
Remember to focus on the positives rather than focusing on everything that’s going wrong around you. Practice self-love and compassion and acknowledge your reality rather than criticizing yourself.
Set daily routines that will provide a day-to-day sense of peace and comfort that you can use to escape the stresses of everyday life, even if it’s just for a few minutes each day.
The well-being of your mind plays a very significant role in your health, physically and mentally. Maintaining a peaceful state of mind is one of the best ways to protect your body from the negative effects of stress.
Remember that stress and anxiety are inevitable hurdles everyone deals with. It’s how you manage the stresses of your everyday life that are important. It’s also the key to overcoming them.
Keeping Your Mind and Brain Healthy
Mental activity can keep your mind sharp. Continue to learn and challenge yourself and your brain continues to grow.
Review the following tips to help challenge your brain to continual growth:
- Learn to play a musical instrument
- Play scrabble or do crossword puzzles
- Interact with others
- Switch careers or start a new one
- Start a new hobby with crafts, painting, woodworking
- Learn a foreign language
- Volunteer
- Travel
- Stay informed about world news
- Read
Taking classes that interest you or just reading more can help you maintain memory longer as you age.
Staying physically active increases blood flow to all parts of the body, including the brain; exercise may even promote cell growth in the brain. Exercise makes you feel more energetic and alert.
Antioxidants in fruits and vegetables protect and nourish brain cells. Antioxidants may also help prevent cholesterol from damaging the lining of your arteries and slowing blood flow to your brain.
Foods high in antioxidants include:
- Oranges
- Berries
- Broccoli
- Spinach
- Carrot
- Sweet potatoes
- Tomatoes
You are more likely to gain the health benefits of antioxidants from eating whole foods than by taking supplements.
Heavy drinkers for many years can experience permanent brain damage. They are also at a higher risk of developing memory problems and dementia.
If you drink alcohol, do so moderately. If you do not drink alcohol, do not start.
Moderate drinking means for women anyone 65 or older, one drink daily. For men under 65, no more than two drinks daily.
Some evidence shows that “moderate” alcohol consumption may prevent memory loss; this is not clear how. If you already do not drink, don’t start just for this reason.
Try to keep stress to a minimum. Chronic stress may cause your brain to release hormones that can damage the brain. Chronic stress can also make you feel depressed or anxious. These are feelings that can interfere with your memory.
Protect your head when doing exercise such as riding a bike. Head injury can increase your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Smokers may have twice the risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease as people who never smoked. It is never too late to stop smoking. You can still reduce the risk of memory loss later in life.
If you have a family history of Alzheimer’s disease, talk to your doctor, he or she may be able to suggest ways of preventing the disease that would prove helpful to you.
Keeping regular doctor appointments is a good way to monitor blood pressure, cholesterol level, and blood sugar level as well as to be sure your thyroid gland is functioning normally. These are easy ways to know what is going on inside your body.
Source: Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research
Brain Wellness
According to cutting-edge scientific intellect, what we experience as “mind”, our Frontal Lobe cognizance comes from the physical brain.
Therefore, whenever we wish to fine-tune our minds, we ought to begin by comprehending and training our brains.
A really crucial fact to value: every brain is unparalleled, as it reflects our singular lifetime experiences. Men of science have already shown how even grownup brains hold a significant ability to continually bring forth fresh neurons and virtually rewire themselves.
So, each of us is unparalleled, with our own ambitions, emotional druthers, capabilities, and each of us in continually in flux.
A potent concept to remind ourselves: “you” may become happier means that “you” are the only individual who may take action and assess what works for “you”.
And “you” implies the mind that comes forth from your own, really personal, unparalleled, and perpetually evolving, brain. Which solely “you” may train.
Each man may, if he so wants, becomes the sculptor of his own mind. Each of us has vast potential.
But, just like Michelangelo’s David didn’t spontaneously come along unexpectedly one day, getting happier calls for attention, aim, and literal practice.
Each moment, you decide what to pay attention to. You are able to center on the negative and thereby discipline your brain to center on the negative.
You are able to decide to watch television 5 hours in a row, thereby grooming your brain to become an inactive watcher of events. Or you are able to do the reverse.
Attention works outwards and inwards: you are able to pay attention to your own meaningful emotions or attempt to dismiss them. A lot of times, we’re not cognizant of the selections we’re truly making and their significance, so practices like mindfulness meditation may help.
Our frontal lobes help us to: comprehend our surroundings, arrange goals and define techniques to achieve our goals, perform those techniques well. Getting happier is as noble an endeavor as our training and professional careers, or our efforts to be healthy and thin by exercising our bodies.
Our brains are compiled of billions of neurons, each of which may have thousands of connections to additional neurons. Anything you accomplish in life is going to trigger a particular configuration of neurons.
Envision one million neurons discharging at the same time once you order your next coffee. Now, the more coffee you order, the more those neurons will fire collectively.
And consequently, the more they’ll wire together signifying that the associations between them get, literally, stronger, which then produces automatic-like behaviors.
For instance, attempt this experiment: quickly! Say aloud the color you see in each word in the image on the right. Do not merely read the word. Hard, isn’t it?
Well, that’s because, for a lot of years, you’ve disciplined your brain to read words. You are able to likewise decide to train your brain to state the color with attention, aim, and practice.
This point has a tremendous significance: whatever we do in life is, in the application, training our minds. How do you wish to train your mind next?
Being “pleased” is subjective.
No scientist may look at you, read some machine, and take a happiness measurement. However, there are means to assess, and to train being “more pleased”.
For instance, tension and anxiousness are key obstructions to felicity. Treasuring the nice things about life frequently, and formulating positive emotions, are cardinal allies.
Captivating research is indicating how emotional self-regulation occurs, helping all of us distinguish those states as they occur (tension, anxiousness, gratitude & favorable emotions) and let us step in and “influence” our reaction, as we want.
A few of the brightest applications are biofeedback plans that evaluate body variables affording you good visual feedback instantly on your level of tension, meditation, and cognitive therapy.
Consider an extreme illustration: we likely all would agree that, if you happened to have a non-rational fear of bugs, abruptly facing a bug wouldn’t be among the happiest instants in your life.
Scientists have noted how the fright induced by watching film clips portraying bugs was correlated with substantial activating of specific brain regions. Once tripped, these trigger particular body responses like the “fight or flight” reaction.
After re-training was done, however, watching the same bug movies didn’t fire activation of those regions. Those people were able to “train their minds” and managed to cut down the brain reaction that commonly sparks automatic stress reactions. And we’re discussing grownups with extreme phobias.
The question shouldn’t be whether you’re happy but what you are able to do to get happier, and each man may, if he so wants, become the sculptor his own brain.
In short, you are able to sculpt or train your mind to get happier. Which brings us back around to “you”, what are you executing now to train your “more pleased” muscle?