Brain Train

Train Your Brain

Brainfit for Life

Curious about brain fitness programs? Is there anything to them besides smoke and mirrors? I have been using four of them, and I like them, and I believe that they work. Dr. Simon Evans and Dr. Paul Burghardt from the University of Michigan have written an informative e-book that explains how brain fitness can be induced or practiced. Their e-book draws on their professional expertise to explain in a humorous way that brain fitness is certainly something we can cultivate.

Want just a chapter, and not the e-book? No problem, but for $17.00, how can you go wrong?

Remember, everything starts in the brain. That is correct, if you want to pick up a fork to eat apple pie, your brain is what moves your body and picks up the fork.Once you have read the book, look for links below to exceptional brain fitness tools used and recommended by me.

"Dr. Simon Evans and Dr. Paul Burghardt draw from their brain science research and extensive speaking experience to mix important health messages with an entertaining journey into your brain and mind.

BrainFit For Life will motivate, educate and delight you on your way to a healthier brain and more enriched life. After all, thoughts are things. They are electrical and chemical pulses that change your brain by their very existence. BrainFit for Life gives you the tools to change your brain for the better and achieve life-long brain health and fitness."

Thoughts about your perceptions do change your life, and fast. You change your hormonal bath with a thought twice as fast as you can blink your eyes. (You may have dated your significant other for a long time, and when you made the words "I love you", your life changed didn't it)?

Brainfit for Life-A Users Guide to Life Long Brain Health and Fitness

The words Brain Train conjure up images of cartoon character bad guys,(remember the evil villian with the swollen, convoluted, cranium) and also a feeling of fear about my own brain and its well being at age 60, and a private desire for knowing the inner secrets and therefore being superior to the rest of you mere mortals.

I imagine the marketers (hopefully not the researchers) of emerging tools will play a bit to those memories, fears and worries.

(I heard a story recently about someone celling 'placebo pills', which is an ingenious scam).

However, there is some very intriguing information emerging about brain training.

We did not know until recently that the human brain was plastic, and not hardwired, and we did not know that it was possible to grow some new brain cells, which is called neurogenisis.

And researchers have developed some brain training tools which are coming to market now, and look promising.

However, they do not appear to make seniors or boomers into super brainiacs, and I will not force my children to undergo the training in hopes of Harvard admission.

And there does appear to be a voice of reason in the brain train, brain fitness, and brain game arena, and that is Alvaro Fernandez who writes a blog called Sharpbrains There appear to be four pillars to brain training, according to Mr. Fernandez, and this is actually very relieving to me.

They are;

1.Stress Reduction

2.Physical Exercise

3.Appropriate Nutrition

4.Brain Exercise, ranging from low tech like meditation to high tech like using brain fitness software programs.

At this point, there are a number of the high tech brain fitness software programs emerging, some of which you subscribe to and use online, others of which you have sent to you for use at home.

But high tech is only part of the solution, remember that exercise and nutrition and stress reduction stuff.

I am reminded of Flow, by Czikzentmihalyi, and what he says about the speed at which the Central Nervous System processes. I process and interpret nonverbal communications and change my internal hormonal bath every 1/18th second, and too much stress hormone actually kills brain cells.

Our stress response system is built to respond to stressors lasting about a minute or two, not stressors that are constant.

The best tool that I have seen for heart beat by heart beat stress management is the emWave by Heartmath, which I have used in my practice for many years. Please take a look.

I like this high tech brain train program because of the free trial and the freedom to use online. If I do not like it, or get tired, I can cancel.

Would you Share What You Are Most Grateful For?

A wise person once told me that an "Attitude of Gratitude" would help me feel better in those moments of fear or resentment. That wise person was correct.

Would you share what you are most grateful for?

It could be just what another person needs to renew themselves.

Thanks.