Do you know what Active Brain Recovery is?

Your muscles aren't the only ones that need time to rest. We teach you the best active recovery techniques so that your brain performs more and better. In addition, the psychonutrition expert Sonia Lucena tells us 5 habits to 'create' neurons.

Just like after hard workouts in the gym, you need some rest time for your muscles to recover, the same goes for your brain. 24/7 non-stop tearing it to shreds, and it turns out that the best way to put the pieces back together and restore the brain is to engage in active recovery techniques very similar to those we use after the gym. , which means that we need a little energy and a dose of strategy to preserve and even increase our brainpower .

5 habits to create neurons

How should you pamper your brain? Sonia Lucena, an expert in psychonutrition, tells us 5 healthy habits to create neurons. "Sandrine Thuret, a neuroscientist at King's College London, affirms that the hippocampus, part of our brain, continues to generate neurons throughout life, and this process can be reinforced with healthy habits. Therefore, take note of these 5 tips that will help the production of your neurons:

• 1- Perform aerobic exercises, 30 minutes, 5 days a week.
• 2- Healthy eating: a balanced diet, rich in antioxidants, will help prevent cell degeneration.
• 3- Sex: having sex on a regular basis makes our hippocampus produce new neurons.
• 4- Keep stress and anxiety at bay: for this, meditation, for example, helps to control and eliminate tension by generating new neurons. (How to control anxiety and stress, the best tricks).
• 5- Try to keep your mind active: learning generates connections between the different areas of the brain.
• According to a study published in 2021 and carried out by scientists including Andrew Bennett, doctor in the field and member of the Department of Management at Old Dominion University (Virginia, USA ), just 10 minutes of intense concentration are enough to cause moderate fatigue and decreased attention and energy. There is good news, and that is that short breaks of 1 to 9 minutes provide us with a more than significant restart. But the thing does not end here: the breaks that involve the brain (which implies an active recovery) are more restorative than those that leave it aside.

• "Attention and concentration are finite resources that need to be replenished at regular intervals," explains Bennett. "If you want to re-energize your brain, you need to do something that's engaging, engaging, and doing it often," she adds.

  That 3-pound brain engine demands restorative strategies throughout the day. Without them, you risk exhaustion, burnout, and watching your cognitive power collapse before you, making you less efficient and making more mistakes. And those leaks from your brain also weaken you physically. When they do appear, endurance and performance drop for everyone from soccer players to boxers to swimmers.

  In addition to practicing brain training exercises , try these science-based active brain recovery tactics to be productive and feel more engaged at work.

• The good of the new

  Bennett's study of microbreaks confirmed a uniqueness of the brain that cognitive research had been suggesting for years: it's new experiences that recharge and enliven us, especially those we enjoy. "The new sights, sounds and smells, those activities that we have never done before, are what bring us to life," insists Bennett. Interestingly, watching a funny video counts as a 'novel experience' for the brain in the middle of a workday.

  Last year, a Belgian research group showed that gifting the brain with something new activated the pleasure chemical dopamine in mice, prompting them to learn things faster. Our brains respond so remarkably well to novelty that we don't have to search for extraordinary or unusual options. In fact, people in Bennett's study who watched Saturday Night Live videos during their breaks had significantly higher levels of energy and attention, and lower levels of fatigue, compared to those who just engaged in a relaxing activity, such as It could be stretching or meditating. "Humor is always new, and new is a very powerful way to energize your brain," she stresses.

  Disconnect from work

  According to the conclusions drawn by German researchers, when employees manage to put work obligations aside at the end of the day and do not worry about everything that remains to be crossed off the to-do list, they arrive much happier at work. his post the next morning. We talk about 'unwinding', which means 'cognitively distancing' to give your brain that energy boost it needs. One can disconnect in many ways, such as looking for a vacation rental or creating a new playlist to accompany training. “When conducting experiments to learn more about this disconnect, researchers often ask people to think of a hobby or leisure time activity that they enjoy. The key is to get away from what stresses us or demands too much on a cognitive level, ”advises Adam Gazzaley, a physician and neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco and co-author of The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World. And, of course, don't check the mail. This can take your mind off the task at hand, but it's still work.