10 Amazingly Simple Tricks To Turn Your Brain Into A Powerful Thinking Machine

There are two basic principles to keep your brain healthy and sharp as you age: variety and curiosity. When anything you do becomes second nature, you need to make a change. If you can do the crossword puzzle in your sleep, it’s time for you to move on to a new challenge in order to get the best workout for your brain. Curiosity about the world around you, how it works and how you can understand it will keep your brain working fast and efficiently. Use the ideas below to help attain your quest for mental fitness.

1. Read a Book

Pick a book on an entirely new subject. Read a novel set in Egypt. Learn about economics. There are many excellent popular non-fiction books that do a great job entertaining you while teaching about a subject. Become an expert in something new each week. Branch out from familiar reading topics. If you usually read history books, try a contemporary novel. Read foreign authors, the classics and random books. Not only will your brain get a workout by imagining different time periods, cultures and peoples, you will also have interesting stories to tell about your reading, what it makes you think of and the connections you draw between modem life and the words.

2. Play Games

Games are a wonderful way to tease and challenge your brain. Suduko, crosswords and electronic games can all improve your brain’s speed and memory. These games rely on logic, word skills, math and more. These games are also fun. You’ll get benefit more by doing these games a little bit every day-spend 15 minutes or so, not hours.

3. Use Your Opposite Hand

Spend the day doing things with your non-dominant hand. If you are left-handed, open doors with your right hand. If you are right-handed, try using your keys with your left. This simple task will cause your brain to lay down some new pathways and rethink daily tasks. Wear your watch on the opposite hand to remind you to switch.

4. Learn Phone Numbers

Our modem phones remember every number that calls them. No one memorizes phone numbers anymore, but it is a great memory Skill. Learn a new phone number everyday.

5. Eat for Your Brain

Your brain needs you to eat healthy fats. Focus on fish oils from wild salmon, nuts such as walnuts, seeds such as flax seed and olive oil. Eat more of these foods and less saturated fats. Eliminate transfats completely from your diet.

6. Break the Routine

We love our routines. We have hobbies and pastimes that we could do for hours on end. But the more something is second nature, the less our brains have to work to do it. To really help your brain stay young, challenge it. Change routes to the grocery store, use your opposite hand to open doors and eat dessert first. All this will force your brain to wake up from habits and pay attention again.

7. Go a Different way

Drive or walk a different way to wherever you go. This little change in routine helps the brain practice special memory and directions. Try different side streets go through stores in a different order anything to change your route.

8. Learn a New Skill

Learning a new skill works multiple areas of the brain. Your memory comes into play, you learn new movements and you associate things differently. Reading Shakespeare, learning to cook and building an airplane out of tooth picks all will challenge your brain and give you something to think about.

9. Make Lists

Lists are wonderful. Making lists helps us to associate items with one another. Make a list of all the places you have traveled. Make a list of the tastiest foods you have eaten. Make a list of the best presents you have been given. Make one list every day to jog your memory and make new connections. But don’t become too reliant on them. Make your grocery list, but then try to shop without it. Use the list once you have put every item you can think of in your cart. Do the same with your “to do” lists.

10. Choose a new skill

Find something that captivates you that you can do easily in your home and doesn’t cost too much. Photography with a digital camera, learning to draw, learning a musical instrument learning new cooking styles, or writing are all great choices.

20 Useless Body Parts (Why Do / Did We Need Them?)

VOMERONASAL ORGAN
A tiny pit on each side of the septum is lined with nonfunctioning chemoreceptors. They may be all that remains of a once extensive pheromone-detecting ability.

EXTRINSIC EAR MUSCLES
This trio of muscles most likely made it possible for prehominids to move their ears independently of their heads, as rabbits and dogs do. We still have them, which is why most people can learn to wiggle their ears.

WISDOM TEETH
Early humans had to chew a lot of plants to get enough calories to survive, making another row of molars helpful. Only about 5 percent of the population has a healthy set of these third molars.

NECK RIB
A set of cervical ribs—possibly leftovers from the age of reptiles—still appear in less than 1 percent of the population. They often cause nerve and artery problems.

THIRD EYELID
A common ancestor of birds and mammals may have had a membrane for protecting the eye and sweeping out debris. Humans retain only a tiny fold in the inner corner of the eye.

DARWIN’S POINT
A small folded point of skin toward the top of each ear is occasionally found in modern humans. It may be a remnant of a larger shape that helped focus distant sounds.

SUBCLAVIUS MUSCLE
This small muscle stretching under the shoulder from the first rib to the collarbone would be useful if humans still walked on all fours. Some people have one, some have none, and a few have two.

PALMARIS MUSCLE
This long, narrow muscle runs from the elbow to the wrist and is missing in 11 percent of modern humans. It may once have been important for hanging and climbing. Surgeons harvest it for reconstructive surgery.

MALE NIPPLES
Lactiferous ducts form well before testosterone causes sex differentiation in a fetus. Men have mammary tissue that can be stimulated to produce milk.

ERECTOR PILI
Bundles of smooth muscle fibers allow animals to puff up their fur for insulation or to intimidate others. Humans retain this ability (goose bumps are the indicator) but have obviously lost most of the fur.

APPENDIX
This narrow, muscular tube attached to the large intestine served as a special area to digest cellulose when the human diet consisted more of plant matter than animal protein. It also produces some white blood cells. Annually, more than 300,000 Americans have an appendectomy.

BODY HAIR
Brows help keep sweat from the eyes, and male facial hair may play a role in sexual selection, but apparently most of the hair left on the human body serves no function.

PLANTARIS MUSCLE
Often mistaken for a nerve by freshman medical students, the muscle was useful to other primates for grasping with their feet. It has disappeared altogether in 9 percent of the population.

THIRTEENTH RIB
Our closest cousins, chimpanzees and gorillas, have an extra set of ribs. Most of us have 12, but 8 percent of adults have the extras.

MALE UTERUS
A remnant of an undeveloped female reproductive organ hangs off the male prostate gland.

FIFTH TOE
Lesser apes use all their toes for grasping or clinging to branches. Humans need mainly the big toe for balance while walking upright.

FEMALE VAS DEFERENS
What might become sperm ducts in males become the epoophoron in females, a cluster of useless dead-end tubules near the ovaries.

PYRAMIDALIS MUSCLE
More than 20 percent of us lack this tiny, triangular pouchlike muscle that attaches to the pubic bone. It may be a relic from pouched marsupials.

COCCYX
These fused vertebrae are all that’s left of the tail that most mammals still use for balance and communication. Our hominid ancestors lost the need for a tail before they began walking upright.

PARANASAL SINUSES
The nasal sinuses of our early ancestors may have been lined with odor receptors that gave a heightened sense of smell, which aided survival. No one knows why we retain these perhaps troublesome mucus-lined cavities, except to make the head lighter and to warm and moisten the air we breathe.

ATRE