Learning, taking in knowledge, understanding concepts, and making connections are all a part of improving cognitive performance. These are things that you might often be doing or even every day, but did you know that you can take action to reach peak cognitive performance?
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What is Peak Cognitive Performance?
When you operate at peak cognitive performance, you’re essentially functioning based on the most optimal and effective high cognitive performance capabilities possible. To reach peak cognitive performance, it’s vital to intentionally improve on things like processing speed, memory, and decision-making abilities.
Cognitive performance is an important part of how we perform in things like our jobs. Cognitive performance is often related to success.
Does Cognition Change as We Age?
It’s unfortunate but true that cognition can decline as we age. Processing speed decreases, along with our ability to remember information. It can also become more difficult to focus, plan, organize and problem-solve.
There are usually multiple causes involved with cognitive impairment with age, including deficiencies or metabolic imbalances.
How to Improve Cognition
One of the best ways to fight against cognitive changes as we age is to take action to reach peak cognitive performance.
Here are some of the best ways you can improve cognition.
Be open to new experiences and growth
It might sound too good to be true, but there can be a lot of value in being open to learning and trying new things. That is because practicing new skills helps us to stay sharp as we get older.
It’s important to remain open to things that can encourage you to flex your memory and brain muscles you don’t use regularly. Try not to get stuck in your ways as you age and be open to new experiences instead.
Get active
Physical activity is important for a lot of reasons, but one of the most important is for reaching peak cognitive performance. Hormones that help with cognition are known to increase when you’re physically active, which can help to improve your memory.
Physical activity is also an essential part of staying healthy as a whole, which includes your brain and how it functions!
Exercise your creativity
While you might not always feel inclined to flex your creative muscles, it could be key in improving cognitive function. Things like crafts, practicing music, writing, and reading can all be influential when it comes to working your brain on new levels.
As you stay curious and open to learning new things and being creative, you practice connectivity and work on your imagination. It’s always a good idea to try something new and stay creative no matter how old you are!
Focus on your emotional well-being
If your emotional well-being isn’t intact it can have an impact on your health in a few ways. Anxiety, depression, and stress are each known to impact cognitive function negatively if they go on for too long.
Try to get to the root cause of what may be affecting your emotional well-being and focus on fixing or preventing it. Your cognitive performance is sure to improve with your emotional well-being.
Eat for a healthy brain
Food is medicine! And that statement stands true when it comes to cognition. Healthy foods can be fantastic for brain health. Whether it be green leafy vegetables, berries, broccoli, or fatty fish, there are tons of great healthy foods that can help you thrive in a number of ways.
The more plant foods you include in your diet, the more likely you are to help slow the decline of your cognition. Get those veggies in!
Ensure you’re getting a good night’s sleep
A good night’s sleep is important for a lot of reasons, but one of them happens to be improved cognitive function. When you rest, you restore your energy and allow your brain to reset and reorganize. This then allows you to perform better when it comes to cognition.
If you’re known to be lacking when It comes to getting a good night’s rest then it could be time to make some changes!
Challenge yourself with brain-training games
Brain-training games are not only fun, but they can help you improve cognitive performance too. These games may require you to memorize, think strategically, or learn a new way of thinking which can all be incredibly stimulating for the brain.
Whether it’s chess, sudoku, a memorization game, or sudoku, this type of brain training can help to boost your mental skills.
Try to reduce your stress
While we might experience the occasional stress every once in a while, chronic stress is something that should be reduced, especially for those who want to achieve peak cognitive performance.
Chronic stress can increase your cortisol levels which can have negative effects on the brain. It’s essential to keep your stress at bay as best as possible and work to remove stress triggers from your life.
Practice meditation
Meditation has been known to help with stress reduction. It could even be influential when it comes to diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia as it helps to slow down their progress.
The more you can reduce your stress through meditation, the better your cognitive reserve is likely to be.
Stay social
Are you a social butterfly? Your social connection could be just the thing needed to help you reach peak cognitive performance!
Those who feel lonely could be more likely to have cognitive decline. That’s because isolation can cause you to have a bad sleep, increase cortisol in the morning, increase depression, elevate your blood pressure, and negatively impact your emotional well-being overall.
Call up your friends and family and make sure you’re staying social! It could be the ticket to avoiding cognitive decline and help you work towards peak performance.
We hope these tips have been helpful as you navigate your journey towards peak cognitive performance. Take things slow and learn which ones work best for you. You’ll be well on your way to improving your cognition and are sure to have some fun while you’re at it!
