10 Biggest Brain Damaging Habits
1. No Breakfast
People who do not take breakfast are going to have a lower blood sugar level. This leads to an insufficient supply of nutrients to the brain causing brain degeneration.
2. Overeating
It causes hardening of the brain arteries, leading to a decrease in mental power.
3. Smoking
It causes multiple brain shrinkage and may lead to Alzheimer disease.
4. High Sugar consumption
Too much sugar will interrupt the absorption of proteins and nutrients causing malnutrition and may interfere with brain development.
5. Air Pollution
The brain is the largest oxygen consumer in our body. Inhaling polluted air decreases the supply of oxygen to the brain, bringing about a decrease in brain efficiency.
6. Sleep Deprivation
Sleep allows our brain to rest. Long term deprivation from sleep will accelerate the death of brain cells.
7. Head covered while sleeping
Sleeping with the head covered increases the concentration of carbon dioxide and decrease concentration of oxygen that may lead to brain damaging effects.
8. Working your brain during illness
Working hard or studying with sickness may lead to a decrease in effectiveness of the brain as well as damage the brain.
9. Lacking in stimulating thoughts
Thinking is the best way to train our brain, lacking in brain stimulating thoughts may cause brain shrinkage.
10. Talking Rarely
Intellectual conversations will promote the efficiency of the brain
How To Cope With Stress and Become More Resilient
Emotional resilience is partially inborn, but it can (and should) be learned and developed. If you’d like to be able to handle life’s challenges (both major and minor) with greater ease, to grow from adversity, and to turn potentially negative events into positive ones, the following steps can help you to become more resilient to stress. Here's How:
A. Develop The Right Attitude
Resilient people tend to view life’s difficulties as challenges and respond accordingly with action, rather than with fear, self-pity, blame or a "victim mentality." While life can be very challenging, an important step in becoming more resilient is to develop positive self-talk and to remind yourself that you are strong and can grow stronger and more wise as you handle life’s challenges.
B. Become Aware
Part of resilience is emotional awareness; it’s important to understand what you’re feeling and why. Sometimes people feel overwhelmed with their emotions, and this frightens and immobilizes them. Knowing why you feel upset can provide valuable information about what needs to change in your life. It’s also important to do research on how to meet the challenges you face. Maintaining a journal can help you explore your inner world and come up with a plan of action.
C. Develop An Internal Locus of Control
Resilient people believe that they’re in control of their lives, and it’s true: while we can’t control our circumstances, we can control how we respond to those circumstances, and that makes a big difference in our attitudes and in the course our lives take. Fortunately, you can develop an internal locus of control. The term ‘locus of control’ refers to whether you feel your life is controlled by you or by forces outside yourself. Those with an internal locus of control feel that they have choice in their lives and control over their circumstances; conversely, those with an external locus of control feel more at the mercy of external events. As you may have guessed, those with a more internal locus of control tend to feel happier, more free, and less stress. They also enjoy better health (likely because they experience less of the damaging chronic stress that can come from feeling powerless), and are more satisfied with life in general. Perhaps not surprisingly, those with an external locus of control are more susceptible to depression as well as other health problems, and tend to keep themselves in situations where they will experience additional stress, feeling powerless to change their own circumstances, which just adds to their stress load. Your locus of control can be shaped by events in your childhood or adulthood (whether you were able to have a strong impact on your environment can lead to a sense of empowerment or of learned helplessness) and perpetuated by habitual thinking patterns. If you feel your locus of control could use a shift, these techniques can help:
· Realize that you always have choice to change your situation. Even if you don’t like the choices available at the moment, even if the only change you can make is in your attitude, you always have some choices.
· When you feel trapped, make a list of all possible courses of action. Just brainstorm and write things down without evaluating them first.
· You may want to also brainstorm with a friend to get more ideas that you may not have initially considered. Don’t shoot down these ideas right away, either; just write them down.
· When you have a list, evaluate each one and decide on the best course of action for you, and keep the others in the back of your mind as alternative options. You may end up with the same answer you had before the brainstorming session, but this exercise can open your eyes to the amount of choices you have in a given situation. Seeing new possibilities will become more of a habit.
· Repeat this practice when you feel trapped in frustrating situations in your life. In more casual, everyday situations, you can still expand your mind to new possibilities by doing this quickly and mentally.
Tips:
· Notice your language and self talk. If you tend to speak in absolutes, stop.
· Phase out phrases like, ‘I have no choice’, and, ‘I can’t…” You can replace them with, ‘I choose not to,’ or, ‘I don’t like my choices, but I will…’ Realizing and acknowledging that you always have choice (even if the choices aren’t ideal) can help you to change your situation, or accept it more easily if it really is the best of all available options.
· Your attitude affects your stress level more than you may realize. This article can help you to learn more about mental and personality factors that influence your stress level, so you can make changes to keep stress down.
D. Cultivate Optimism
Being an optimist is more than looking on the bright side (though that helps). It’s a way of viewing the world where you maximize your strengths and accomplishments, and minimize your weaknesses and setbacks. Developing a more optimistic world view can help you become more resilient. Rally Social Support
While we ultimately face our own challenges, a supportive friend or group of friends can help lighten the load. Those with strong networks of social support tend to stay healthier and happier throughout life, and tend to cope well with stress. Conversely, those with little support may find themselves more vulnerable, and those with conflicted and unsupportive relationships tend to fare even worse.
E. Maintain Your Sense of Humor
If you’re able to laugh at life’s frustrations, you can have increased immunity, if you will, to stress and adversity. Those with a sense of humor about life tend to experience life as less stressful, are able to bond with others during difficult times, and experience the numerous benefits of laughter. If you can take a step back from difficult situations long enough to maintain your sense of humor, you will be more resilient, too.
F. Exercise
Yes, you read right. Exercise has been correlated with stronger levels of resilience. This may be due to the effects of endorphins on one's mood, or the physical health benefits to those who exercise, or both. Regardless, adding a regular exercise habit to your lifestyle can benefit you in more ways than one. As our society becomes more health-conscious, there has been an increased focus on the importance of exercise. Many people exercise to control weight and get in better physical condition to become more healthy or physically attractive, but exercise and stress management are also closely linked. Exercise can be an extremely effective stress reliever for several reasons:
§ Outlet For Frustrations: When life’s annoyances or frustrating situations build up, you can feel stressed or experience low-grade anger. More high-energy forms of exercise like boxing, martial arts or weight training can also provide an effective release of these negative emotions, turning these otherwise potentially unhealthy emotions into motivation for increased health and well-being.
§ Exercise and Stress Hormones: Exercise can decrease ‘stress hormones' like cortisol, and increase endorphins, your body's ‘feel-good’ chemicals, giving your mood a natural boost. (This is the chemistry behind a ‘runner’s high’.)
§ Distraction: Physical activity itself can take your mind off of your problems and either redirect it on the activity at hand or get you into a zen-like state. Exercise usually involves a change of scenery as well, either taking you to a gym, a boxing ring, a park, a scenic mountain, a biking trail or a neighborhood sidewalk, all of which can be pleasant, low-stress places.
§ Looking Good: I have to include this possibly superficial, but significant, benefit of exercise: it helps you lose weight, tone your body, and maintain a healthy glow and a smile. You may feel a subtle but significant boost as your clothes look more flattering on, and you project an aura of increased confidence and strength. Call me shallow, but this does impact many people, and can relieve stress for those who are concerned with their appearance and worry that they don’t look as healthy as they could.
§ Social Support: The benefits of social support are well-documented and manifold. Because exercise and physical activity can often involve others, you can enjoy a double dose of stress-relief with the combined benefits of exercise and fun with friends. Whether you’re in a class with others, working out in the gym with a buddy, playing softball in a league or taking a walk or hike with a friend, having others work out with you can make you feel good as well as help motivate you to push harder to get a better workout without it feeling so much like ‘work’.
§ Increased Health: While stress can cause illness, illness can also cause stress, with the physical pain, missed activities, feelings of isolation and other costs that come with it. So improving your overall health and longevity with exercise can also save you a great deal of stress in the short run (by strengthening your immunity to colds, the flu and other minor illnesses) and the long run (by helping you stay healthier longer, and enjoy life more because of it).
G. Get In Touch With Your Spiritual Side
Studies have shown that those who are more spiritual tend to be more resilient as well. This doesn't mean that you can't be resilient if you are atheist or agnostic. But if you are open to it, reconnecting or strengthening your connection to your spiritual side can provide you with strength. While people use many different religions and paths to find their God or Higher Source, research has shown that those who are more religious or spiritual and use their spirituality to cope with life, experience many benefits to their health and well-being. For many, this news would come as no surprise; spirituality and religious activity have been a source of comfort and relief for multitudes of people. In fact, according to a study from the University of Florida in Gainesville and Wayne State University in Detroit, older adults use prayer more than any other alternative therapy for health; 96% of study participants use prayer specifically to cope with stress. Here are just a few more of the many positive findings about spirituality and its influence on physical and mental health:
· Canadian college students who are involved with campus ministries visited the doctor less, scored higher on tests of psychological well-being, and coped with stress more effectively.
· Older women are more grateful to God than older men, and they receive greater stress-buffering health effects due to this gratitude.
· Those with an intrinsic religious orientation, regardless of gender, exhibited less physiological reactivity toward stress than those with an extrinsic religious orientation. They were also less afraid of death and had greater feelings of well-being. (Those who were intrinsically oriented dedicated their lives to God or a ‘higher power,’ while the extrinsically oriented ones used religion for external ends like making friends or increasing community social standing.)
· Prayer works for young and old alike. Prayer and spirituality have been linked to:
Ø Better health
Ø Less hypertension
Ø Less stress, even during difficult times
Ø More positive feelings
Ø Less depression
Ø Greater psychological well-being
Ø Superior ability to handle stress
Whether this information inspires you to rediscover a forgotten spiritual path, reinforces your commitment to an already well-established one, or simply provides interesting food for thought, this is just a sample of all the encouraging research that’s been done on the topic. Spirituality is personal, and everyone’s spiritual path may be unique. However, some spiritual stress relief strategies have been helpful to many, regardless of faith. Check them out, and see which may work for you.
H. Don’t Give Up
While many people know of coping strategies that can help with stress, as with diets and exercise programs, the most successful individuals are those who maintain the effort for the long term. Don’t give up on your situation; don’t stop working toward getting through it. Trust the process.
Tips: Be patient with yourself, and just do your best.
Too Blessed to be Stressed
No matter how much you meditate, breathe, pray and practice emotional mastery the real test of whether you are the master of your emotional domain is how you respond when its 100 degrees in the middle of July and your kids are experiencing an emotional breakdown! But now I have a different approach and it works when I remember to use it. It's called Too Blessed to be Stressed and the reason this simple, powerful saying works so well is because it is physiologically impossible to be stressed and thankful at the same time. It's the way our brains our wired. When we focus on gratitude and blessings we can't be focusing on the stresses in our life. Instead of flooding our body and brains with stress hormones that age and drain us, we fuel our mind and body with emotions that make us feel great and help us overcome the daily challenges that so often sabotage our joy, success and happiness.
So when the work is piled high on your desk, think about how thankful you are to even have a job while so many are unemployed. When work is driving you crazy think about the fact that you are healthy enough to work. And when busyness and stress starts to impact your performance and interactions with others at work, simply stop, take a deep breath and say I'm too blessed to be stressed. Some might say it's corny. But those who try it know it makes them a better leader, sales person, customer service provider, team member and parent.
Just as the sun is always shining behind the clouds, there is always something to be thankful for in the midst of a stressful moment. When you remember you are blessed you won't be stressed. When you're feeling down and blue remember the words "Thank You." This will help you not only find joy and peace but also experience the magic in every day life.
