After a heavy lunch, how do you feel? Sluggish and unmotivated? Are you looking to take a nap? Sometimes food, at least too much of it, will drain your brain. What else saps your gray matter so that you can’t run at your level best? Let’s take a look at the main culprits.
Dining on Sugars and Fats
They may taste good and they certainly seem to be a mainstay in the average American diet, but they wreak their havoc to both your body and mind. Refined sugars and unsaturated fats will produce sugar spikes in your system, so that your energy stops and starts and takes you lower than when you began. How can you eat to avoid that? Dine on a diet based on proteins and complex carbohydrates. A diet like that provides a feast for both body and mind with a steady supply of energy, helping to maintain optimum health and to reduce stress. Eat better and you will think better.
Losing Focus
Are your thoughts scattered? Do you forget what you were trying to say? Having trouble solving a puzzle or winning a game? It’s like flexing a muscle. Body strength comes from exercising, consistently and routinely. Here and there, now and again – that sort of sporadic attention to fitness does not help that much. The same thing goes for the brain. How do you practice? Games can enhance brain power – like Sudoku and Mexican Train, crossword puzzles or anacrostics. These activities actually exercise your thinking, improving concentration, short term memory, and your ability to reason, and keep your brain in better shape.
Managing Stress
Sometimes it takes a day away or a longer vacation for us to realize how tense we are. Stress is deadly, and when not managed, can cause all sorts of damage to your mind and your body. By managing your stress, your mind can be sharpened. When stress is running your life, your mind will become weak and overloaded. How do you reduce stress? Sleep more. Exercise often. Drink water. Get a massage. Recharge your cerebral battery by taking a break from rigor and routine and keep you mentally refreshed.
Doing Passive Activities
Many people will while away their evenings on the couch, ears and eyes focused on a television screen. Nothing is required. An occasional laugh. A moment of comprehension. Otherwise, it’s an activity where you can be in veg state. Your brain can become lazy when it’s not more usefully used. How do you become more active? Read – books, magazines, newspapers, short stories. Learn more and put it to good use. Do something different. Drive home another way. Meet a new person. Join an interest group – like hiking or cooking or reading. Sharpen your senses by removing one – for instance, listen to music with your eyes closed. Take charge of your brain and put it to good work and it will work better for you.
Your brain only weighs about three pounds but it runs the show. Vital to the brain is oxygen, so be sure to take deep breaths when you’re feeling sluggish. You’ve got 100 billion neurons that brain of yours. If you stretched out all of the blood vessels in the brain, those would reach a distance of 100,000 miles – and that’s four rotations around this earth of ours! Keep your brain at optimal function by avoiding the things that compromise it. As for your business – use your smarts to keep it healthy and moving forward. Learn from us at Online Sales Pro and benefit from the knowledge we have about e-commerce and online marketing. That will certainly keep your gray matter charged up!