Make Your Brain Work Better

 May 20, 2009

Interview with Richard Restak, M.D.author of Think Smart: A Neuroscientist's Prescription for Improving Your Brain's Performance
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Mike Carruthers:
For your brain to work well you have to take care of it.

Richard Restak, M.D.:
The brain's a very dynamic organ and it's either improving or it's slipping back.

Dr. Richard Restak

Dr. Richard Restak, author of the book Think Smart: A Neuroscientist's Prescription for Improving Your Brain's Performance, says there's a lot of new research into how the brain works and one surprising new finding is…

Obesity has a tremendously destructive affect on brain functioning so now we're finding out that dementia actually is becoming quite common among people who don't control their weight. It's really quite a new insight but now we know that some of the things that we used to say about good health for the heart is turning out to be the same thing for the brain.

 Staying optimistic and positive also seems to help your brain work better and surprisingly so does using your fingers.

 There's a relationship between finger dexterity and longevity and brain functioning. Most of us aren't really taken up by honing our fine finger skills and we should. I use card manipulations and coins and things like that but people can take up anything they want - (for example), building ship models.

And your brain really does work better if you pay attention to what you're doing.

 I don't think we know how to pay attention, I think we're very scattered. Microsoft has actually done a study showing that when people are distracted from their work by email or something like that it takes them fifteen minutes to really get back on schedule.

 Tomorrow more surprising ways to make your brain work better.

 To hear the complete unedited interview, click here