Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

Do you enjoy your job and see yourself sticking around after friends and fellow workers retire? Or perhaps you just need a few further funds and it will take a bit longer than the average retirement age to earn these.

Either way… good news about the human brain, now allows you to make far more choices about working later in life.

It’s really a matter of burning strong rather than burning out. The brain disintegrates with disuse. The opposite is also true. Mental workouts keep brain cells alive and functioning well past those golden years. Your mental capabilities stay with you far longer than once thought, and you are not on a mental slippery slope after a certain age.

Increasingly research shows evidence that there can be very little neuron brain cell loss with age. When they compare people in their 20s with seniors in their 70s and 80s, they find very little difference between brain scans.

The key is to maintain your brain in top shape. So why do some brains deteriorate?

Severe decline in memory or other mental operations, usually point to diseases such as Alzheimer’s which affects only about 20 percent of the very old. Most other mental decline is being attributed to very preventable causes – lack of mental workouts.

Dr. Marilyn Albert at Harvard University, for instance,  found that 4 factors determine who will retain their mental acumen – and even develop more far beyond their golden years.

1. Constant learning – which increases the number of dendrite brain cell connections and grows intelligence.

2. Regular exercise – which will improve a person’s blood flow and oxygen to the brain.

3. Lung function -which ensure there is enough oxygen in the blood to supply the brain’s need for 21% of the body’s entire oxygen supply.

4. Self worth – which provides a sense that you have a calling or purpose in life and that what you do on a daily basis will make a difference.

Certainly some parts of an aging brain may dim as we go. For instance, the basal ganglia slows down so an older person’s reflexes tend to slow with it. And memory problems can surface when parts of the hippocampus fade.

Good news is that we can develop brain based strategies and even take prescribed drugs with neurotrophic factors that will rejuvenate brain cells.

Simply put - the brain does an amazing job of repairing itself for things like better memory. That repair is usually triggered by sharpening the 4 factors listed above – and by maintaining the mental activity for ongoing stimulation.

What brain workouts will reverse memory decline, and reboot other mental abilities as you age?