Best Mental Exercises to Promote BDNF Levels – The brain is a wonderful organ that keeps on reorganizing itself and rebirthing neural connections all through a human’s lifetime. The creation of new neurons is known as neurogenesis. Have you heard of BDNF? Well, Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) is the care your body offers your brain to help your brain nerve cells regain their health and form new synaptic connections regardless of the stress it goes through every day for the rest of your life. Having a high BDNF level helps you function at the peak of your mental health. Here are a few benefits according to www.bosterbio.com associated with having a higher level of BDNF:
- Protection Against dementia and Alzheimer’s disease
- Better sleep
- Healthy weight loss
- Eases off depression
The higher your BDNF levels, the better chances you have to function optimally because your brain, which is the major organ that takes care of every part of your body, is taken care of. There are a lot of ways one can improve their BDNF levels, but one of the best ways is engaging in mental exercises. BDNF Elisa test can help you know your BDNF levels so as to know what mental exercise you can engage in to keep it at the accurate level your body needs.
Mental Exercises to promote your BDNF levels
It is important to engage in exercises especially mental exercises, to promote your BDNF levels—these mental exercises go ahead to stimulate the production of appropriate amounts of BDNF by the BDNF gene. There are lots of mental exercises you can engage in to keep your bdnf levels at their highest. Here are some of the mental exercises considered the best for your BDNF levels.
Dance
Dance has proven always proven to keep body and soul at the topmost level of their abilities. Research has it that learning a new dance move every day promotes your BDNF levels, thereby improving your brain’s processing speed. So grab some friends and go line dancing, bust a move on the dance floor, and your BDNF levels will thank you.
Learn new words
Enriching your vocabulary might make you knowledgeable and smart; it can also shoot your BDNF levels to the roof. Do not just look up words in the dictionary; turn that vocab lesson into a creative brain game. If you are not sure if memorizing works for you, you can play word games like scrabble, dictation, etc.
Vocabulary tasks that involve the cognitive areas of the brain can help to stimulate those brain cells and, at the same time, initiates the subtle release of BDNF. Therefore the next time you flip through a new book or dictionary, here’s what you must do;
- Have a notebook at the ready.
- Write down new words and check out their meanings.
- Go back to your notebook the next day and try to use the new words in a sentence as many times as you can.
Play a board game
Board games such as chess and jigsaw puzzles go a long way to enhance the brain’s activity. Chess is a memory and mind game that has you trying to think eight or more steps ahead of your co-player in order to save your castle. Thinking up a thousand ways to stay ahead of the other player causes your mind to function at a higher rate of alertness. All your cognitive abilities are recruited to recognize the chess pieces, incoming threats, and the moves your chess pieces must and must not make.
Meditate
Sometimes our minds are stuffed up with lots of worries and anxiety resulting from our daily struggles. Remember, stress is no friend to your BDNF as it reduces it. However, de-cluttering your mind with the help of meditation helps to increase your BDNF levels. Daily meditation helps calms your body, lets out all the bad energy, and disengages your mind from stressful events. That 5 minutes meditation in a serene environment with soul-lifting music in your ears can be all that the magic you need to work up your BDNF levels.
Conclusion
Your BDNF levels respond to the mental activities that you subject your brain to. They might not all seem interesting, but picking up one of the mental exercises above that puts a smile on your face can do a lot of good to your brain cells.