Six Ways to Boost Brainpower: Exercise, Diet, Stimulants, Video Games, Music, & Meditation

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=six-ways-to-boost-brainpower&print=true

by robg • 17 years ago

84 52 17 years ago

Mystalic• 17 years ago

Anything that promotes health or provides active or interactive stimulus to the mind fits. Sci Am just picked out six from a giant bucket. Crosswords, reading Hacker News, and (trying to) solve P = NP all have similar effect.

robg• 17 years ago

But that big bucket is sort of like the old axiom about filling a jar with stones. First you have to put in the biggest ones. And here I think they've ranked them pretty well in the list. Exercise and nutrition come first and are easy to forget especially with classical notions of Reason and what our daily demands are.

They did forget sleep however.

wallflower3• 17 years ago

> and (trying to) solve P = NP

http://www.mathsci.appstate.edu/~sjg/futurama/futuramatalk10...

chadgeidel• 17 years ago

From the section on coffee: "Try to limit yourself to fewer than 100 cups a day."

Ok, I'll try. 8*D

yan• 17 years ago

The thing with drinking that much coffee, most people like sugar in theirs. That much sugar is not good for anyone.

icey4• 17 years ago

That's 25 quarts (6.25 GALLONS) of coffee in one day (assuming an 8 ounce cup of coffee). I'm not sure if it's even physically possible to drink that much coffee in a day.

jackchristopher2• 17 years ago

We hear a lot about the benefits of antioxidants, but I get the sense that people think they're only found in special foods.

Here's an overview of antioxidants, and foods high in them: http://www.ific.org/publications/factsheets/antioxidantfs.cf...

And a well-cited list of the benefits of many common foods: http://www.whfoods.com/foodstoc.php

gravitycop• 17 years ago

We hear a lot about the benefits of antioxidants, but I get the sense that people think they're only found in special foods.

Antioxidants are found in high levels in hundreds of different culinary herbs and spices. The point, throughout human history, of adding herbs and spices to foods, besides flavoring those foods, was to preserve.

silentbicycle• 17 years ago

Also, one of the biggest sources of antioxidants in the foods Americans commonly eat is coffee. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9105892/)

jodrellblank3• 17 years ago

The whole foods list is quite interesting, but I'm getting alarm bells from the contradiction between:

"Healthiest Way of eating as long as it is a whole, natural, nutrient-rich food"

And the "reduced fat cheese, skimmed milk".

Cheese is not "natural" food and skimmed milk is certainly not "whole".

jackchristopher2• 17 years ago

I don't approve of every food there, but it's still a good resource. But I think they're minor aberration, particularly over the meaning of "whole" and "natural".

Point being, while he is promoting a book and website, I don't see an agenda behind the foods he's recommending.

I'm vegan actually, but I don't think it's appropriate to give a personal dietary rundown in HN.

old-gregg• 17 years ago

Can anyone suggest a good resource to read up on meditation? (besides wikipedia). I'm just having a hard time believing that meditation is any different from just sitting idle bored, so I'm naturally curious and excited to prove myself wrong.

baltoo3• 17 years ago

I'd say that idle and bored are not the same thing (http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i21/21b00601.htm).

In the same vein meditation is not the same thing either. From my point of view it's about being mindful about one's surrounding without analyzing it, just observing. It's a state that I find actually quite difficult to really achive.

lanaer• 17 years ago

That is mindfulness meditation, and yes, it is quite difficult.

Actually, any type of meditation is difficult. (The other general type of meditation I know of is where you focus on a specific sound (or mantra) and repeat it over and over, either out loud or in your mind.)

Retric• 17 years ago

You can measure Meditative states on an EEG (Electroencephalography) so something is happening. Granted, that says nothing about how useful meditation is but it is measurable and reproducible.

icey4• 17 years ago

I don't have a good resource for you, but I can definitely say that there is a tremendous difference between just sitting idle and meditating.

Meditation is a form of brain training, requiring a lot of discipline and practice. You are essentially teaching yourself how to alter your brain's function.

The difference is like watching TV versus playing a video game. It may look similar at first, but they are two entirely different things.

This is an interesting read if you're into meditation as it relates to science:

http://psyphz.psych.wisc.edu/web/News/Meditation_Alters_Brai...

zzzmarcus• 17 years ago

I'm currently reading the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. I'm not Buddhist but I was looking for a good book on meditation. This book has been great, it's got the wisdom of thousands of years of mediators in a format that is very accessible to Westerners. Its explanation of different techniques for meditation is thorough and practical.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062508342

dood• 17 years ago

Mindfulness in Plain English: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html

A good place to start.

aaronblohowiak• 17 years ago

Kusula Bishku's podcast is pretty good, too!

inovica• 17 years ago

Hi there. Sorry I can't provide you with a good online resource, but my suggestion would be to find a good teacher local to you. I found meditation via yoga and it has had a profound effect on my mental state - how I deal with crisis, day-to-day tasks and dealing with people. I'm more focused and calm. I started my first business over 10 years ago and quickly (as I worked near the kitchen) ballooned to look like the Goodyear blimp. It took me a few years to recognise that I needed a healthy diet and my girlfriend introduced me to yoga. It was a revelation and, although I'm in danger of getting all evangelical on you, the combination of yoga, a healthy diet and meditation transformed me so that I can run my business more effectively. I would never try an online resource, book or audio book first though. Its much better to experience it with a good trainer until you can do it yourself. Good luck

jwinter• 17 years ago

There was a pretty good discussion on this here on YC:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=454146

pxlpshr5• 17 years ago

I think feeling the benefits of deep meditation is difficult for your first few months to years. It requires a lot of dedication. If your research makes you interested, you may even try Yoga as a good bridge into the practice.

rw• 17 years ago

Seek out a local Buddhist temple. They will probably have public meditation sessions; novices welcome. The religious aspect is almost absent, especially if you do not understand the language(s) of the chanting.

anthonyrubin• 17 years ago

Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn

His talk at Google:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwwKbM_vJc

electromagnetic• 17 years ago

I love the video game section: I just love it when people blame the video games for becoming violent and not the kids. I mean the first sign of a serial killer used to be the abuse of small animals, which is usually why the police take some kid shooting a cat with a BB gun seriously because they want the kids DNA and finger prints before he goes pro.

I prefer to play strategy/god games, RPG's and, where I can find them, a good physics applet. You can do cruel things in them, especially ones like Black & White, but I always associate it more with burning ants because I know there's no one real on the other side. I dislike FPS primarily because there is someone on the other side, so when I play them I nearly always play single player or co-op.

baltoo3• 17 years ago

> Luckily for babies, breast milk is 50 percent fat.

My memory and Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_milk#Composition) disagree. It about a magnitude lower than that. (In humans that is, of course. Not that breast milk is therefore bad.)

And that is so easy to check. Wonder what other tidbits of facts are wrong? Not that the gist of the article is therefore bad, but I think it better not to mention facts rather then mentioning wrong ones.

xiaoma• 17 years ago

Usually when people state that a food is X% fat, they are talking about its nutritional information values, and your link does in fact confirm that about 50% of the calories derived from breast milk come from fat:

"Human milk contains 0.8% to 0.9% protein, 3% to 5% fat, 6.9% to 7.2% carbohydrates"

Excluding alcohol, essentially 100% of the calories of any food come from those three macronutrients-- 4Kcal per gram of protein or carbohydrate and 9Kcal per gram of fat.

9(3 to 5) / (9(3 to 5)+4((.8 to .9) + (6.9 to 7.2))) = 45% to 59%

Assuming the data in the wiki you linked to is correct, 45% to 59% of breast milk is fat, in nutritionist lingo.

mmmurf• 17 years ago

You are correct. One example that makes it obvious:

Take 100 calories of lettuce (which is quite a lot).

Now take 100 calories of oil (which is not much at all).

Combine the two into a salad, which contains 200 calories and 50% of calories from fat.

baltoo3• 17 years ago

You learn something new every day.

Though I must say that "usually" doesn't really ring true to my ears. Perhaps it's the way nutrisionists talk, but is it really "usually" that way?

If someone presents a jug of a liquid and says "luckily for babies, liquid X is 50 percent fat", then I'd think that about half of the jug would be fat. Would most people where you come from think "half of the nutritional value of this liquid is made up from fat"? That's sounds impressively educated! Where do you come from?

pxlpshr5• 17 years ago

I made an iPhone application for me cause most exercise apps are for gym rats, overly complicated and I just don't have time for a gym nor interested in looking bulky and lifting weights. I was inspired after using HundredPushups.

I'm blogging the progress of the "Hacker Workout" — speaking of, today I'm suppose to workout!

Week 1 results http://saltlicklabs.com/pow-3-week-challenge/

Week 2 http://saltlicklabs.com/pow-3-week-challenge-2/

blackguardx2• 17 years ago

XML Parsing Error: syntax error Location: http://saltlicklabs.com/pow-3-week-challenge/ Line Number 1, Column 1:4ffc ^

pxlpshr5• 17 years ago

hmmm that's weird. it's not doing it for me in Safari or FF. Try this:

http://saltlicklabs.com/pow-3-week-challenge/?flush=1

jodrellblank3• 17 years ago

Your iPhone App looks very slick. Have you found that it helps? As useful as you imagined before building it?

pxlpshr5• 17 years ago

It helps me on days I workout because I know I have a target I'm trying to beat. There are many times where I know I would have stopped wayyy short of the daily target... but the determination to meet or beat it keeps me going.

I'm not sure it's the solution for lazy people though, there's not much that will get you over that.

enra2• 17 years ago

I wish it had more depth and some actual references. Especially the diet section is quite lame and inaccurate.

dominik• 17 years ago

I found the Hacker's Diet a useful reference for both diet and exercise. I found its engineering-minded explanation of how the body uses food resonated with me. (I lost about 50 lbs. in 6 months). Link: http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/

There's also a small section on practical daily exercises that can be done quickly, without need for equipment. I'll link directly to that: http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/exercise.html

The key to both diet and exercise, however, lies in consistency -- you have to apply yourself every day.

enra2• 17 years ago

Thanks for the links. I appriciate the exercise advice since it's something that I'm still working on.

My diet homever is in a quite good shape, its mostly paleo/low carb. For almost a year I have completely opted-out grains and sugar and moderating carbs, prosessed foods and omega6. Keeping insulin levels low is linked to longevity and greater neural processing http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16482-eat-a-little-les... http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read/2008/01/13/5617/insulin-l...

I have never been overweight so I'm just trying to maximize my current health, cognitive performance and longevity. With my current diet, I seem to have more clearer mind, can eat less often and don't have desire for snacks or sugar. Green tea seems to have relaxing effect(it's also measured that l-theanine increases alphawaves) on me and alcar+ala has a slight energizing effect.

chris112• 17 years ago

Dragon door has a really good selection of articles on body weight exercises. Most can be done with only your body or common items like dowels, or on things like a tree branch. Linkhttp://www.dragondoor.com/articler/mode2/Workouts

Body weight exercises seem to be really underrated right now by most people. One of my exercise goals, once I start working out regularly, is to be able to pull off planche push-ups. It's like a normal push-up, only your feet are kept off the ground for the entire time.

chris112• 17 years ago

There is some research out that says that the Dual n Back test can increase fluid intelligence.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-back_task So that's another way to increase your brainpower. Cognitive fun has a good free version. http://cognitivefun.net/test/8

nihilocrat2• 17 years ago

Video games activate the brain’s reward circuits but do so much more in men than in women, according to a new study. Researchers hooked men and women up to functional MRI machines while the participants played a video game designed for the study.

I wonder if a video game could be designed that would have the opposite effect; women would feel more compelled by the rewards system in place versus men.

JMiao• 17 years ago

http://www.pogo.com

anovaskulk• 17 years ago

> Of course, all this research does nothing to help explain dumb jocks.

Wasn't expecting to see that there :-)

lallysingh• 17 years ago

I'd account for dumb jocks under my 'understimulated brain' column.

critic• 17 years ago

I knew all that killing and blowing things up wasn't for nothing!

Six Ways to Boost Brainpower: Exercise, Diet, Stimulants, Video Games, Music, & Meditation

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