Brain Rules

Brain Rules teaches you how to become more productive at work and life by giving proven facts about how your mind works better with good sleep, exercise, and learning with all the senses.

It’s interesting to look at our brain’s development from the perspective of our early ancestors. After all, their daily activities had an impact on the way their brains evolved into what we’ve got today.

Each day the average Homo sapiens would walk or run 10-20 kilometers. What does that mean for neural development? It had to happen during exercise, which means our brains today do best when we move more.

Your mind needs fuel from the food you eat to run properly. When you exercise, all parts of your body, including your head, get better at taking in nutrients from eating.

This healthy habit also improves blood flow around the body, which helps create new blood vessels. Vitamins and minerals can then move around more easily, and waste is easier to discard.

Think of this like early civilization’s road systems. At first, the pathways were bumpy and difficult to travel. But when one engineer saw the need to smooth them out, the movement of goods became more efficient. With this came better access to all sorts of supplies. The same happens to your body when you exercise as your blood flows more smoothly as well!

Another huge benefit of exercise is that it stimulates the creation of hormones, many of which improve your body’s tissues. One of these is the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which helps in the creation of new cells. It also keeps neurons and the connections between them healthy.

For our early ancestors, sleeping was dangerous. You could easily be eaten by a predator if you dozed off at the wrong time! So the fact that they took the effort to make it possible and that we still do it today means that it’s vital to our health. In the simplest terms, sleep rejuvenates our body and brain. Without sleep, you begin to suffer. Not getting enough rest has such an impact that doing it one week will give you a “sleep debt” the next. And if you only get six hours or less of sleep a night for five days, you’re just as cognitively impaired as if you’d gone 48-hours straight without sleeping! While you might be thinking “I know I need to get to bed earlier” you actually might have a sleep cycle that’s just later. Understanding this and adhering to it is vital for good mental and physical health. According to research, people that know their schedule and follow it generally are intellectually stronger. About 10% of people are night owls…