Your brain is one of the most vital bodily organs. Since it must last a lifetime, you should try to keep your brain as healthy as possible. Here are some unwise habits to avoid if you want to maintain healthy cognitive function:
Getting less sleep than you need
When you do not get as much sleep as you require, it impairs your cognitive function. If you do not sleep enough, you may struggle to pay attention when necessary, and remembering things could become an issue.
Staying in your comfort zone
Do you wish to improve your cognitive function? If so, do not stay in your comfort zone. Instead, challenge yourself. When you do activities that challenge you, you trigger neuroplasticity, which is the formation of new neural pathways in your brain.
A poor diet
Some foods are beneficial to cognitive function. For instance, a whole-food diet can augment the health of your brain. However, an unwholesome diet that includes lots of sugary snacks, soda, processed goods, aspartame, and trans fats can cause poor cognition.
Too much alcohol
If the health of your brain matters to you, you should consider limiting your alcohol intake. Drinking excessive amounts of alcohol kills brain cells, though the damage is partially reversible. The remaining nerve cells in the brain expand to compensate for the loss. The brain damage caused by drinking too much alcohol is sometimes indefinite.
Using illicit substances
If you believe alcohol is the only drug that damages your brain, you might want to think again. Chronic use of several different drugs can impair cognitive function. These include cocaine, heroin, barbiturates, hallucinogens, amphetamines, and alcohol. If you are addicted to an illicit substance, seeking help in the form of rehabilitation will benefit your mental and physical health and may even save your life.
Always Watching Television
Watching excessive amounts of television is not great for brain health, either. Perhaps this negative impact on brain health happens because watching TV does not generally involve having to do much thinking. Maybe the correlation exists because watching TV involves no physical activity. Do you want to avoid cognitive decline later in life? If so, stay active and keep your brain focused. Instead of watching too much television, try to find new hobbies that require more physical and mental effort on your behalf.
