A State of Mind
A human mind reaches its peak performance around the age of 22, and it'll stay at that peak for 5 more years. Around the age of 27 is when our mental powers start to dwindle. Your speed of thought and spatial visualization all start to decline in your late 20s. Sitting in my living room, reading up on studies on how your brain starts to decline in your late 20s is scary. Even scarier when you're already in it.
But studies have proven that one can help slow down the process. A way of keeping your brain fresh and active. It's part being healthy, exercising with the correct diet, and part feeding your brain activities to keep it thinking.
Confuse your brain by doing something ordinary or repetitive a different way. If you brush your teeth with your right hand, switch to using your left hand the next time you brush. Take the same route to work every day? Choose a different bus route, or take a different turn. Think about something you know nothing about and spend a few minutes researching that topic.
The other aspect of a healthy mind, is a healthy body. Have a good breakfast to start the day. Drink water often. Work on opening up some free time for a run, or a good long and brisk walk. And, one of the more important aspects, get enough sleep.
There are 5 stages of sleep.
Stage 1 consists of relatively light sleep, this is where you will drift in and out. This is where some might experience muscle contractions (falling!).
During stage 2 your eye movement stop and your brain waves starts to slow down, with occasional bursts of rapid brain waves. This leads into stage 3, and stage 4 where the brain produces delta waves almost exclusively. Stage 5 is the part your brain needs, REM sleep.
The brain isn't the only part involved in REM sleep. Your breath and heart rate quickens, your blood pressure rises, and your brain activity increases to the same (alpha) level as when you are awake. The rest of your body is paralyzed, until you leave REM sleep. This paralyses is caused by glycine, an amino acid released by the brain stem. Getting to this point of the sleep cycle (remember, the brain can cycle through the stages multiple times in a night's sleep) can help with memory, it also helps with restoring energy thus improving your general life style.
The average adult only needs around 7.5 to 9 hours of sleep a night. But it's sometimes difficult to promise yourself that many hours a night. And you won't be able to "make up" sleep over the weekends. Sleeping later on weekends can actually affect your sleep-wake cycle, making it difficult to maintain a proper cycle during the work week.
So promise yourself to make an effort to keep your brain healthy and active by maintaining a proper sleep-wake cycle. Exercise and take care of your body. It's worth it.
