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Keep Your Brain Alive Book: 83 Neurobic Exercises
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No more punch lines that just slipped away. No more names on the tip of your tongue. No more senior moments! Drawing on cutting-edge neurological research, how to keep your brain alive: 83 neurobic exercises brings help to everyone whose memory is starting to slip. Devised by Dr. Lawrence Katz, a professor of neurobiology at Duke University Medical Center, and Manning Rubin, author of 60 Ways to Relieve Stress in 60 Seconds, here is a regimen of mental cross-training that can be done anywhere, by anyone, at any time of day. The premise is simple: When you exercise the brain, you release natural growth factors called neurotrophins, which in turn enhance the brain's level of fitness. And nothing so easily stimulates the brain as breaking routines and using the five senses in new and unexpected ways. So if you're right-handed, wake up tomorrow and brush your teeth with your left hand. Or close your eyes before you get into the car and then get the key into the ignition. Every time you open a new circuit in your brain, it's like doing a round of mental sit-ups, without the pain. If you've been suffering periodic memory lapses lately and are worried a your middle-aged brain is turning to mush, take heart. Help is here in the form of a terrific little book called Keep Your Brain Alive by Lawrence C. Katz,Ph.D. and Manning Rubin. Based on the latest scientific research from around the world, the book offers a short explanation of how the brain functions, then goes on to describe a unique program called neurobics (aerobics for the brain) which can keep your mind healthy and agile even as you and your brain age The balance of science and exercises is organized and written in a way that let's you understand enough about what's happening in the brain without bogging you down with technical explanations. Basically the system uses the brain's ability to produce it's own nutrients that strengthen and preserve brain cells and applies that to the discovery that nerve cells in adult brains can be stimulated to grow dendrites with these nutrients. As we age our lives tend to become so routinized that we rely too heavily on only one or two senses and many pathways in the brain's circuits become inactive. As a result there is a thinning out of dendrites. Since these threadlike tendrils receive and process information from nerve cell to nerve cell, our minds can begin to feel sluggish. But according to the authors, this situation can be vastly improved by presenting the brain with unexpected combinations of the senses in novel ways, thereby stimulating it to increase the health and complexity of its dendrites and thus giving memory and mental agility a boost. The eighty-three exercises offered in the book are simple, fun and easy to integrate into daily life. Try brushing your teeth or buttoning your shirt in the morning with your less dominant hand. Scramble the location of familiar objects in your office. Take a whiff of pungent spices at an ethnic market. Make your way through your bedroom without turning on a light. You're giving your neural pathways a workout. Soon you'll be thinking up your own neurobic exercises. Growing older doesn't have to mean growing dimmer, say Katz and Rubin, not if you start living neurobically.
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