When they talk about getting strong, most people think of strength in terms of muscular performance or cardiovascular health. But while taking care of your body is important, so is taking care of your mind.
Indeed, cognitive health is arguably even more important than lifting heavy weights at the gym. But far too few people prioritize cognitive health and let their mental strength decline as they get older.
Fortunately, mental decline is not a guarantee. In fact, there are seven major ways you can boost mental strength starting today. Best of all, you can maintain these healthy cognitive habits for years to come. Let’s check them out one by one.
Why Is Cognitive Health Important?
Put simply: your mind’s health is just as crucial as your body’s. As we get older, our bodies naturally slow down and lose some of their physical capabilities. While this also happens to our brains to some extent, it doesn’t have to be nearly as dramatic.
Furthermore, older individuals who maintain high cognitive health have a higher quality of life overall and are able to enjoy more aspects of their lives even as they get older. In contrast, failing to maintain cognitive health as you get older could lead to:
- Slower response times
- Lower memory fidelity
- Difficulty concentrating
Cognitive health is crucial for everyone at all stages of life, but especially as you get older. Like bodily health, the earlier you get a jumpstart on cognitive health, the easier it'll be to maintain, and you may experience fewer signs of aging with time.
How Can You Improve Your Mental Strength?
Given the benefits of increasing mental strength and maintaining cognition, let’s now dive into seven ways you can improve your mental strength starting today.
Eat a Good Diet
Your diet affects the shape and weight of your body, your energy levels, and your overall health. Indeed, maintaining a healthy diet can strengthen your mind and maintain good cognitive levels as you get older. It’ll also help you maintain excellent cardiovascular health, minimizing the risk of things like heart disease. A good diet can even boost your immune system, especially if you take supplements with immune-boosting herbs.
For mental health, you’ll want to prioritize vitamins and minerals like:
- B vitamins, particularly vitamin B12 for energy and vitamin B9 for brain health
- L-theanine, a key amino acid that helps your mind calm down and reduces inflammation. When combined with caffeine, L-theanine may also help you focus throughout the day
- Omega-3 fatty acids, which are often found in fish dishes. Omega-3 fatty acids are needed for muscle growth and organ repair, as well as brain health
- Vitamin E, an antioxidant that fights free radical molecular damage that could otherwise damage neurons and other brain tissues
- Ginkgo Biloba, a staple of Chinese medicine and a supplementary ingredient that may help with cognition and memory performance in older adults
While eating a diverse array of carbs, fruits, vegetables, and lean meats is wise, you can also round out the rough edges of your diet through supplements.
Hope Health’s Immune + Organic Gummies and Mind Capsules are excellent solutions thanks to their 100% organic ingredient lists and potential health benefits. Plus, since both supplements are made with cruelty-free practices, you can rest assured that you’re bolstering your mind and body without causing harm to any other creature.
Get Plenty of Sleep
Brain health is directly linked to how much sleep you get every night. Although your sleep needs decrease slightly as you get older, you need between seven and eight hours of sleep for most of your life.
Far too few Americans get the full sleep cycles they require for mental and physical health. If you don’t get enough sleep, your memory could suffer, you may experience “brain fog,” and you’ll feel chronically fatigued.
Mental health is bolstered – and even dependent on – physical health to a startling degree. To that end, plan to exercise every day if possible for at least 30 minutes.
Regular exercise not only improves your body’s health and your muscle mass, but it also improves your mind's health by burning through cortisol: a key stress-causing hormone normally used to focus through tasks or escape tense situations.
Over time, cortisol can build up in the body and harm the mind. Exercising gets rid of this hormone and provides other well-known benefits.
Cultivate Self-Care and Hobbies
A key aspect of mental health is selfishness, at least in limited doses. It can be easy to lose track of what you love and not leave enough time for self-care and the development of fulfilling hobbies in today’s workaholic, go-go-go world.
It’s a good idea to set aside at least a little time every day for yourself, whether it’s time to read a book, paint a model, or even watch a favorite film with your family members. Self-care will help you feel better about yourself and allow you to face each new challenging day with vigor and mental clarity.
Learn Something New Each Day
Many individuals who suffer from lower cognition have one major thing in common: they stopped learning long ago. Neuroscientists now know that the brain is still more than capable of learning new information and growing even in full adulthood.
If you want your mind to remain sharp and flexible, you need to feed it new information. To that end, you should try to learn something new every day or as often as possible. Take a college course, take an online class, or simply read a book on a subject you aren't familiar with to feed your mind and give it a steady diet of new knowledge.
Puzzles can increase mental strength and cognitive ability in the same way as learning from a book or class. Puzzles are like exercises for your brain; if your mind is a muscle, puzzles are the weights it uses to bulk up.
Puzzles are fundamental as you get older and don’t face as many challenging scenarios from work or your family life.
Prioritize Your Relationships
Speaking of family life, you can take care of your mental health and boost your mind’s resiliency by prioritizing your relationships.
How does this help? In short, by giving your brain something positive to focus on. Motivation can be tough to cultivate without something worth living for, and individuals with strong family units or relationships with other people usually have higher mental resiliency.
Ultimately, your cognitive health is not totally under your control. Genetics, environmental factors, and luck can all play a role in how cognitively healthy you are and feel as you get older. But you can do a lot to tip the scales in your favor by following the strategies above, maintaining a healthy diet, and prioritizing certain vitamins and minerals known to be excellent for brain health.