Coffee Talk: It’s Good for Your Brain
Want a fun and easy way to power up your brain? Have a chat over coffee, tea, or even warm milk.
The key here is the chat, not your choice of beverage. Even if they’re brief, occasional bouts of social interaction can help sharpen your wits.
Keep Chatting for Better Thinking
Whether you engage in conversation with a friend, a family member, or the guy behind you in the express line, keep talking. In a recent study of young adults, a mere 10 minutes of face-to-face conversation about a social issue was enough to boost working memory and mental processing speeds. Chitchat was as good as a crossword puzzle, in terms of brain benefits. In fact, the more people socialize, the better their brainpower — regardless of age.
Mental Aerobics
Conversation requires us to pay attention, remember what was said, deduce the other person’s meaning, and come up with appropriate responses — some pretty serious mental gymnastics. And when it comes to mental muscle, it’s use it or lose it.
Pick Up a Book, Bulk Up Your Brain
Don’t deny yourself the luxury of curling up with that murder mystery, tragic tale, or sci-fi thriller this weekend. Consider it self-defense class for your brain.
Being a bookworm doesn’t just make you smart. It makes you mentally tough. It builds so much cognitive reserve that bookworms’ brains may be bolstered against bad things like pollution and toxins.
Calling All Reserves
On cognitive tests, book lovers outperform people with lower reading levels. No surprise there. But the big news is that people who read regularly may develop a “cognitive reserve.” What’s that mean? That they’ve got extra brainpower to keep the mind rolling when brain cells are under attack. In a study of factory workers, the brains of the big readers functioned just fine on cognitive tasks, despite on-the-job exposure to toxic substances, like lead.
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August 16th, 2008 at 3:56 am
I was just reading an article before I found this one called “Drinking Coffee is a Health Lifestyle Choice,” that made some excellent points on the benefits of coffee drinking. I suggest reading it.
April 14th, 2009 at 3:05 am
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