Unless you want a career selling tissue paper outside public toilets, there’s a good chance that your next promotion, pay raise, and even your dating prospects will depend on how smart you are. 2008 is the year for unleashing the power of your gray cells. Here are some tips for getting smarter than don’t involve going back to school.
1 Do it blind-folded with one hand tied behind your back
That thing about not ever forgetting how to ride a bicycle, it’s true. Routine functions like walking, eating or brushing your teeth are ingrained in your brain, so it doesn’t take any work to do them. But don’t let your brain sleep during those moments. In the bathroom, for example, you can awaken your brain to new ways of controlling your movements. Brushing your teeth with the wrong hand and showering with your eyes closed will do just that.
2 Cut out the sat-fats
Researchers at the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care and the University of Toronto put some rats on a saturated fat diet and—guess what—while lean rats could remember things for up to 80 seconds, the fat rats couldn’t remember things for more than 20 seconds. Basically, your brain needs oxygen and glucose. Fat can slow down the transport of the first and the metabolism of the latter.
3 Put on the saffron robes
Temples are often centers of learning, but it’s the meditation that could make you smarter. Researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital found that people who meditate daily have a thicker cortex, the area of the brain responsible for “executive functions” such as planning and decision-making. Meditation could even slow thinning of the cortex, which occurs with age. Another study compared the benefits of meditation with taking a midday nap. People who meditated scored higher on brain reactivity tests.
4 Look harder
Your visual sense alone takes up 60 percent of your brain area. So if you want to remember something, try to turn it into one or more visual icons—don’t just focus on the words.
5 Eat your boron
Apples, carrots, grapes and most vegetables and nuts (but not citrus fruits) contain a mineral, boron, which USDA researchers believe can improve coordination, attention and memory. In their study, subjects given 3.2 milligrams of boron a day were found to have improved brain function and cognitive performance.
6 Distract yourself
When working on a project that requires optimal mental effort, taking a walk or having a coffee break might help. Distraction loops are activities that will physically and mentally take you away from the task you are doing, so when you return, you are more refreshed and can look at what you’re doing from a new angle.
7 Play geek games
Sudoku, Rubik’s Cube, chess, Scrabble—not the sexiest games, but they work. A BBC study showed that, along with other health and fitness tips, you could improve your mental abilities by up to 20 percent thanks to brainy exercises. You better start now, though. Neurologists say picking up Sudoku after you’ve begun to lose your marbles won’t work.
8 Befriend the water cooler
Seventy-five percent of your brain is water. You know the headaches you get from a hangover? That’s from dehydration. Don’t expect to be at your full potential if you’re not drinking your eight glasses of water a day (or more if it’s very hot outside).
9 Fix yourself some beef liver with egg yolks and soya sauce.
If you don’t throw up, you might learn something. In a study where college students took a memory test, those who had been given three to four grams of choline one hour beforehand tested higher than those who were given a placebo. Beef liver, soya and egg yolks are the best sources of choline, which is required for the synthesis of acetylcholine—a major neurotransmitter long known for its role in controlling muscular contraction but also found to be lacking in sufferers of Alzheimer’s.
10 Catch a fat fish
Sixty percent of your brain is fat (no, our math isn’t wrong—fat contains water) and 30 percent of it is essential fats. According to research by Tufts University in the US, eating two or more portions of oily fish (like salmon, herring, anchovies, mackerel or tuna) can seriously reduce your risk of developing dementia by 49 percent and Alzheimer’s by 39 percent. This is because oily fish contains Omega-3 fatty acids that are the only kind that can feed your brain the fat it needs. Furthermore, research on pregnant women also shows that the kids of those who eat fatty fish score higher on IQ tests—six points more compared to the kids of those who don’t.
11 Put on some Spandex
Maybe you already hit the gym three times a week, but what are you doing for your brain? Well, if you’re exercising, you are doing something. Researchers at the Beckman Institute in Illinois have found that even mild aerobic exercise, like going for brisk walks, improves decision-making and focus by 11 percent, and in a controlled test, it increased the activity in the middle, frontal and superior parietal regions. The test compared people who did stretching exercises for 45 minutes with another group given mild aerobic exercise.
12 Take the noo pill
For the lazy ones, there are pills out there to boost your gray cells. Called nootropics, or smart drugs, they include anything from over-the-counter nutrients and plant components to drugs used to fight neural degradation or mental illnesses. The one drug that started it all is Piracetam, developed in the 1960s. Current drugs, like Pramiracetam, are up to 30 times more potent, but not everyone agrees what effect they have on already healthy brains. Some studies suggest benefits of up to 20 percent on IQ tests—others say that there is no effect at all.
13 Go on a carb fest
Your brain runs on sugar—but if you start gobbling up sweets, your sugar levels will sky-rocket, then plummet, leaving you feeling tired and unable to think. Fats (see #2) are not good either. Carbs are what you need. They transform into sugars very quickly, and then provide a steady stream of them to the brain.
14 Keep the cells fresh
Your brain cells, like the skin cells that make up your cute face, must be kept fresh and lively with antioxidants like vitamin A, C and E and coenzyme Q10. How to get them? Eat dark vegetables and nuts.
15 Regress with a Japanese doc
Released for the Nintendo DS, Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Age sold 8.6 million copies worldwide, topping video game charts for weeks in many countries. It aims to rejuvenate your brain through a combination of Stroop tests, memory games, and calculation exercises to help your brain reach its ideal age: 20.
16 Stay in bed
This one is really easy—sleeping a full eight hours (and that means spending nine hours in bed) can hugely boost your performance. At Luebeck University, in Germany, fully rested volunteers were pitted against others in various stages of sleep deprivation. The sleepers were twice as likely to pick up on a hidden clue that was slipped in a problem handed to all the participants.
17 Take it easy on the java
While one cup of coffee yields some benefits in attention tests, recent studies reveal that regular use of caffeine is actually not good for the brain. In fact, in one BBC-sponsored experiment, it was proven that the only reason caffeine feels like it’s giving you an edge is that your body suffers from withdrawal when you don’t get it. In short, coffee drinkers are merely returning to a normal condition when they get their fix—not getting an edge. So keep it down to one cup a day or when you need that short boost before a meeting, or perhaps, to finish a report.
18 Go to Zanzibar or Ushauaia
The early Homo sapiens (our ancestor) lived a nomadic lifestyle while the Neanderthal Man traveled a lot less. Neanderthals died out; we rule the world. Travel combines lots of the above tips: Map-reading, foreign languages and exposure to new people, as well as new activities, tastes, sounds and smells.
19 Start a band
It works on kids: Munchkins who studied an instrument or took voice lessons had a seven-point edge on IQ tests in one study compared to those who didn’t. Coordination, memorization, imagination—playing music can really switch on your brain. The bad news: Just listening to it is not enough. The much ballyhooed Mozart effect (a claim that listening to complex classical music gives a mental boost) has been disproved.
20 Talk to strangers in the elevator
The above tip was to break your “muscle brain” routines, but you can also break other routines involving other parts of your brain. Try a new way to go to work, speak to someone you don’t know or learn two new words a day in order to tickle different parts of your brains in new ways.
Measuring The Brain
IQ
The two most popular IQ tests are the Stanford-Binet and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS). WAIS-III (the latest version) includes verbal comprehension, perceptual organization, working memory, and processing speed tests. Similarly, the Stanford-Binet tests verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, abstract/visual reasoning and short-term memory. Many websites inflate scores to encourage users to forward them to their friends, so try www.iqtest.dk for scores that seemed more reasonable to us.
STROOP
Say out loud the color in which each word below is printed:
Green Red Blue Yellow Blue Yellow
Now try these:
Blue Yellow Red Green Yellow Green
The second batch probably took you a lot more time. Stroop tests demonstrate how reading is an automated function, while determining the color of something isn’t. The tests can be used to detect attention deficit disorder, Alzheimer’s, dementia or schizophrenia.
EQ/EI
Emotional intelligence, rated as EQ or EI, is a fairly new concept with little standardization. It measures the ability to perceive, use, understand and manage emotions. Online, you might want to try http://tinyurl.com/2vcghj.
BRAIN IMAGING
To see how well your brain is doing, sometimes the doctor needs to go beyond pen and paper tests. CT, CAT, MRI, PET—all these acronyms stand for high-tech scanning methods used to seek out brain tumors and the effects of stroke or diseases like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.
