Do Your Brain A Favor and Keep Learning
It will improve your brain function and your life
You’ve heard the phrase “use it or lose it”?
Well, that goes for brain function too. Your brain needs to work out just like the rest of your body to stay in shape. It needs exercise to stay sharp on problem-solving, memory, incorporating new information, and overall mental health.
When you start studying a new skill, especially a complex one, it stimulates your brain to work to interpret and understand the new information. It creates new communication lines between the neurons in your brain-new synapses. New synapses replace ones that have died due to age, dementia, inflammation, or even stress and depression.
The process of new synapses being formed is called plasticity.
Plasticity is defined as, “the ability of the brain to change and adapt to new information.”
Plasticity is how improvements are made after strokes and brain injuries. It’s like the brain is being re-wired to work again.
Keeping your brain active also strengthens the myelin sheath that covers the nerves and transmits the impulses, or “messages,” throughout the nervous system. Healthy myelin produces accurate and quick messages.
Myelin is also affected by diet and physical exercise.
Pushing yourself to learn new things also improves your overall well-being. Besides increasing your knowledge and skill set, when you focus on something outside of yourself, it gives you a sense of purpose, can lower stress, decrease loneliness, give you more confidence, and change your outlook on life.
The good thing is, there’s practically no limit to what you can learn. You could spend your whole life learning new things.
And that would be a life well spent.