HEALTH AND WELLNESS TOPIC.47

By likemindblog

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INCREASE YOUR IQ

Simple methods that can be used anytime, anywhere to boost your IQ

Reading is the Fundamental building Blocks to a Good Brain

Reading improves brain function and has a direct correlation with higher IQs. Children who read well have a better chance of doing well in school, and are usually in the “gifted” classes. How do you get children to want to read? You do it by reading to them.

Start reading to your children early and every day. Showing them how magical books can be, make them believe that inside every cover is a magical world that only they can touch. If your child enjoys a particular story, read it again. There’s no harm in reading the same story over, in fact, it reinforces the fact that reading ought to be a habit.

Read at the same time(s) every day. Right before bed is an excellent time because it kills two birds with one stone. It helps boost their visualization and imagination skills and makes them look forward to bed.

What books are best to boost the IQ? The classics like Dr. Seuss help by using poetry. Rhymes stimulate brain activity and promote memorization, another habit to get into

Another way to get children interested in reading is to allow them to pick out the books. All reading is reading, as they say. Just because you want them to read Shakespeare at eight doesn’t mean that it is any better for them than the latest Batman comic. The goal is not to force them, but to instill in them a love of reading and of books. Encourage them to read. Don’t turn them off by forcing them to do it, or forcing them to read something they don’t enjoy. You may prefer the adventures of Elizabeth Bennet to Bruce Wayne, but your child may not.

Many of the bookstores have wonderful children’s sections and you might find that your child will go through many books while there. They usually have games and play rooms so that kids spend more time there (and encourages the parents to shop around for additional books). Allow your child to roam the aisles, opening and reading a few pages until he or she settles on just the right book. This will get them excited about reading.

When they are young, start them on their way by having them help you read their favorite stories. One sentence at a time. Gradually build their skills and vocabulary. Before long they will be doing the reading and you will be doing the listening. Even after your child is reading on his or her own, continue to maintain the story time schedule. Chapter books with their mini-cliff hangers are one way of tricking your child into wanting to read more. More importantly, chapter books drives them to read more and more advanced materials that boost’s the brain’s critical thinking skills, which in turn, improves their IQ.

Work Out Your Brain And Raise Your IQ

Everyone wants to know how to boost his or her IQ scores. Most scientists believe that you can actually raise your IQ between 10 and 20 points through “exercising” the brain. Here is a list of activities that you can undertake to help boost your brainpower and raise you IQ score.

1. First up, and this one is pretty much a given, engage in puzzles and other brain teasing activities. Soduku anyone?

2. Block one (or more) of the senses and then engage in house cleaning activities. This forces the brain to “rewire” itself.

3. On that same note, Nurture ambidexterity and ambidextrous behavior. For example, you the non-dominant hand for dominant hand activities like writing or brushing your teeth.

4. Engage your brain in creative activities like art, music, or writing.

5. Find another use for everything in your house. For example, what other things could you use a nail file for?

6. Learn the nuances of wine tasting; this challenges the brain to utilize other senses than sight.

7. Learn to juggle.

8. Take up an extreme sport like skateboarding or rock climbing.

9. Go to comedy shows and listen to comedians. Laugh. Be funny. Enjoy yourself.

10. Play more. Creative activities stimulate the brain; so don’t be afraid to play action figures or dolls with your children.

11. Get more sleep. The brain needs the downtime to dream and stimulate itself.

12. Throw away the calculator and do simply math yourself.

13. Listen to classical music.

14. Learn something new each day.

15. Take up chess.

16. Play video games (don’t cheer too loudly over that one).

17. Keep a journal or diary.

18. Eat well. Avoid sugars; add more anti-oxidants to your diet.

19. Exercise. Physical exercise is proven to stimulate the brain.

20. Learn a new language.

21. Learn to speed read.

22. Read books.

23. Turn off the television and go for a walk.

24. Drink lots of water.

25. Join a debate society.

These are just a few of the things you can do to challenge you brain. Like an athlete changing the workout program, you must change how you do things, how you think. Don’t let the gray matter atrophy. Think of your own list of things that will make you treat life like a puzzle and you are on your way to stimulating that which you were born with.

Raising Your IQ through Exercise

The brain is a muscle, and like any other muscle it needs the following: nutrients, oxygen, and exercise. Here are some helpful tips for raising your IQ that may surprise you.

Always eat a good breakfast. The brain uses glucose as it primary energy source, so eating breakfast will improve problem solving, concentration, memory and over all mental performance. Not to mention your mood. Without fuel, no engine can run. Make sure that you are taking in Omega 3s, iron, folic acid, and providing it with hydration and oxygen. Remember: stay off the corn syrup and cut back on sugars and carbohydrates. Insulin rushing into the bloodstream to counter the rush of sugars entering it wastes energy and makes you sleepy and lethargic; less able to think.

Make sure to get your supply of antioxidants. Antioxidants protect all the cells of the human body, including those in the brain. Super foods contain the highest levels of antioxidants, such as: blueberries, acai berries, blackberries, plums, garlic, cranberries, spinach, strawberries, and raspberries.

Get out and move. Movement is a key part of the process of development and learning. Sports not only aid in critical thinking skills, but they elevate the mood and boost the brain with chemicals like serotonin and adrenalin. You can fight memory loss, sharpen the intellect, and function at peak by elevating your heart rate. Scientific evidence shows that aerobic exercise fine tunes the brain for peak performance.

Neuropsychologists believe that meditation and meditative practices such as prayer or yoga can actually alter brain structure. MRI scans of Tibetan and Franciscan monks while being threatened with distractions showed that long-term meditators have a greater resistance to distraction and better capacity to problem solve during distractions than people who do not practice this skill.

Play! Games of any kind stimulate the brain and kick it into overdrive. Be it kickball, hide and go seek, or softball, playing sports helps develop critical thinking skills.

6 Puzzle Your Brain into Intelligence

The human brain is a quite remarkable instrument. The workings of the human brain have been subjected to study after intense study by some of the world’s greatest intellects and still we know relatively little about how it works. However, there is one fact that all experts can come to an agreement upon and that is that the human brain benefits from regular exercise just as your muscles do. In fact, your brain not only benefits exercise, it thrives on it. What exercises does your brain enjoy? Deductive reasoning, creative thinking, and puzzle solving are what give your brain a boost and improve your fluid intelligence.

There are two types of intelligence: crystallized and fluid. Crystallized intelligence is when your brain falls back upon knowledge or existing skills to solve a problem, IE your memory. Something worked once before so it will work again. Fluid intelligence relies on your brain’s ability to analyze and understand the relationships and analogies between various artifacts or concepts when solving problems. Fluid intelligence is independent upon prior experience, knowledge, or skill. As IQ is your capacity to learn “new” things, by training your brain in how to learn them, IE exercizing you are boosting your IQ.

Puzzles like Sudoku and games like chess can improve your mental age by up to 14 years and stave off the onset of diseases like Alzheimer’s. Solving a Rubik’s cube can also help to increase the cognitive comprehension aspect of your IQ. The puzzle itself happens to be one of the most misspelled words in the English language, along with the word misspelled. Rubik’s Cube was invented in the 70’s by an architect of Hungarian descent. It is said to be the most amongst the most popular sold toy in the world! It also serves to stimulate that grey matter and get in going. If you can’t find one in your local toy store, then you’re bound to know an individual who has one stored away in a deep dark box stored up in their attic, or thrown behind the sofa in a moment of weighty frustration. If not, grab one up at your local goodwill store for pennies and get shuffling and stimulating that grey matter.

Lastly and on a less stressful note, you can put yourself more in the moment with mindfulness exercises and you’ll give yourself more brain power. These unique exercises put you in a state of awareness, and allow you let go of distractions. Done regularly, these exercises let you think more clearly and help you to concentrate. The most basic mindfulness exercise begins with simply relaxing and breathing deeply. Close your eyes and pay attention to your breathing. After a short time, move your focus to your body, a part at a time, noticing any sensations or anything you can identify. After a few minutes of attention on your body, start listening to the sounds of the room, without judging or criticizing or even thinking about them. Just listen. Your brain just like a muscle needs time to rest

The Mozart Effect

The Mozart Effect is a theory based on results from a research study that showed when students who listened to Mozart before taking a spatial reasoning test showed an increase of up to 9 points in their IQ. Although the increase was only for a short period of time, 10 to 157 minutes, it did show improvement. The term was first called this by Alfred A. Tomatis. He used the music the as a listening stimulus to try to negate certain affects deriving from mental disorders. It was then popularized in 1994 in an article in the New York Times.

The science behind the affect is actually quite simple. The researchers believe that intelligence was improved because it shares the same pathways in the brain as processing classical music tones. One needs to understand that the ear and brain are 2 separate entities but combine to create the listening experience. When a sound wave hits the ear it is then sent via electrical impulse to the brain to be processed. Listening to Mozart or any relaxing music seems to warm up the synapses and pathways in the brain.

This allows the information to be processed correctly and more efficiently. Making it possible to remember and put to use more effectively.

Although many people believe that actually listening to Mozart makes you smarter, this is not true. The affects of the music are more related to spatial–temporal tasks involving mental imagery and temporal ordering and not intelligence. However, boosting those traits increases your ability to absorb information. The best results have shown up in children. Some say it’s because the brain is still developing and allows for such activity in the brain to go on.

Some scientists believe that the only link this research has anything to do with is the mood and arousal that the music puts you in. Even with their thinking it only proves the theory to have validity. Music affects different people in different ways. The research has been put to use in other fields as well. Some recent tests on epileptic patients have shown a decrease epileptiform activity. Much research is being put into the psychoacoustic field for many different disorders and for many advancements of the human brain. Advancements in this field could lead to some major breakthroughs in the understanding of how the human mind works and how we can make it work for us.

To be continued next week…