Dizzy’s 5 top tips for keeping our brains healthy

Dizzy has been pondering on brain health this week, after mislaying one of her packets of ginger nut biscuits! For Dizzy, nothing could be worse than losing a whole packet of ginger nut biscuits, and therefore she is wanting to make sure that this type of occurrence doesn’t happen again! 🙂

On her mission to ensure no other biscuits go astray, Dizzy also discovered that people with MS have brain atrophy (brain shrinkage) from the early stages of the condition, and that it happens faster than in people without MS. All meaning that looking after our brains is super important! 

With these in mind, Dizzy has come up with her top 5 tips for keeping our brains happy and healthy. 🙂

1. Sleep 

Sleep in vital for keeping our brains healthy! When we sleep our brains are super busy: toxins are removed, our memories are processed and our brains restore themselves from the previous day. A lack of sleep can affect our mood, memory and ability for decision making. 

2. Exercise

Exercise can be super beneficially for brain health. 🙂 And this can be high intensity exercising (not one me and Dizzy partake in…) or gentle exercise, such as yoga. 🙂 All exercise produces happy endorphins, which makes us feel better, improves our concentration and makes our minds sharper for completing tasks. 

Moving also stimulates the growth of new brain cells and helps to prevent age related decline. 🙂 

3. Eat Healthy

Our brains do best when they get yummy, nutritious foods. Foods full of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants are super beneficial, and helps to protect our brains. 

The right foods can also help to regulate our moods and can even help with symptoms of anxiety and depression.  

4. Do puzzles/Play games

Doing puzzles and playing games can make for very happy brains, as it reinforces the connections between brain cells, and keeps them all sparky and active. This is great for improving mental speed and memory. 

Puzzles and games can also be great for relaxation and reducing stress. 🙂

5. Keep Learning

Every time we do any kind of learning our brains make new pathways between cells and change the structure of existing ones. This can help improve lots and lots of things, such as memory, speed, concentration, problem solving and can even reduce the chances of developing dementia.

Learning a language can be brilliant for this! But as me and Dizzy are truly terrible at languages, we have been doing other courses instead. At the moment Dizzy is enjoying some creative writing, and her first assignment she has shared below. 🙂

What tips do you have for looking after your brain? Do you have a favourite puzzle, or are you doing a course at the moment too? We would love to know! 🙂 xxxx

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Dizzy’s creative writing assignment: She had to write a short story (1200 words), where the main character has strong motivation. 

Home

Exhausted, Sarah plunged through the undergrowth, which clawed at her like witches’ fingers attempting to drag her down into the very depths of damnation. Behind her, relentlessly pursuing, were the pounding footsteps of her enemies. She felt trapped, trenched with terror, as she scurried through the broken bracken. 

Flying frantically into the cover of the woods, she could not help but fleetingly reflect on how stupid she had been.

She had known not to eat food out in the open; she had known not to be seen. But in a moment of hopelessness, she had slumped down into despair, and taken a tiny nibble of one of her last oatmeal bars. A tiny relic of what remained from life ‘before’. She had not even realised that she had been spotted.

In their desire and need for survival, her predators continued their hunt for her. Their heavy footfalls sending vibrations of violence throughout the forest. Hunger driving them on like deranged devils.

Up ahead, Sarah continued to flee. Jumping over a tree branch, she realised that she would never be able to sustain this level of intensity: her frail, weak body would never allow it. 

Swiftly, she threw herself behind a tree, praying that it would offer her salvation. Clinging wretchedly to the towering soldier, which seemed to be standing sentient over her, she heard the screams of anger from her aggressors, snapping and snarling like furious beasts.

Heart beating wildly against her chest, Sarah clutched her hand over the mouth, petrified to even make a whimper in case it was heard.

Time seemed to stretch on into eternity as she crouched there shaking, and as the predators circled the area.

But eventually, after what seemed like forever and as darkness began to descend, they scuttled away, back to their own sanctuaries of evil. 

Cautiously, Sarah staggered to her feet, and began to dispiritedly hobble back to the small, fragmented barn. She had found it not long ago. She never stayed in one place for long, especially not long enough to call it a ‘home’. Her mind was always consumed with questions that prevented this: what if he was out there waiting for her? What if he was sick or injured? Despite this though, it had become her refuge for a few short days. 

After entering her own quiet sanctuary, she collapsed limply to the cold, hard, damp ground. A sense of loneliness and isolation suffocating her, as she tried to stop the anxiety of the situation engulfing her. This was yet just another reminder of what society had become: cruel, egotistical and hateful. Most now ran on their own brutal instincts: their own selfish desires for survival.

Yet she could not blame them for it. There was so little left now. So little reason to live.

It was still incomprehensible to think that only two years ago life had been normal. Happily married, she, just like the rest of the population, were blissfully unaware of the devastation that was to follow. Who would have thought that the first bursts of a flower’s bloom could cause such misery? Surely new life should bring joy, contentment and happiness, not agony, torture and death.

As the cold dark depths of fatigue began to close in around her, she prayed for a night of peace. A night without nightmare. A night without being haunted by her husband. A night without his gentle face and soft dark hair twisting into an image of a demonical ghost…

———————————————————————————————————–

Brutally, Sarah was thrown harshly back into reality. Her husband had again returned into her nightmares, and she felt guilt crash down upon her. 

Compassion, warmth and love were all he had ever shown her, but the evils of the world seemed to have infected even this. She often wondered if deep down she blamed him, maybe even hated him, for going away just before the horrors began. He could not have known on that bright, clear, blue morning, when he left for his early flight, what would follow. But she could not help but feel as though he had abandoned her. 

Stumbling to her feet, Sarah counted her oatmeal bars, and permitted herself a small morsel. Only four left. Hardly enough to see her through another week.  

 Resigned, she knew she would have to leave her temporary haven again today and head outside in a useless search for food. The mutant plants had seemingly sucked the very life force out of the earth. No other plants had stood a chance against their onslaught. The only parts of nature which had seemed unaffected, were the tall trees that scattered the landscape. Sometimes, if one were incredibly lucky, they would stumble across a handful of berries or an apple.

After gathering her tiny belongings together, she slipped out into the bleak landscape. She had to keep going.  At least then she felt she was fighting; felt she was fighting for the chance to see her husband in the flesh again.

Trudging through the coarse undergrowth, she searched steadily for any edible signs. Her feet dragged along the ground, with the all too familiar feeling of fatigue overwhelming her.

After a few hours, Sarah began to admit defeat for the day. It was not unusual for her to have days go past where she was unable to source any tiny droplets of nutrition.

It was not unusual for her to have days where she felt like giving up.

Suddenly, a large bang erupted from behind her. Horrified, Sarah turned as large black demons swarmed over her.

She screamed.

Kicking out wildly, she realised they were not demons, but the men from the day before. They had continued with their hunt, and this time they had found their prey.

One of them lurched towards her grubby bag, and furiously began tugging it out of her weakened hands. She fruitlessly hanged on, desperate to cling on to her last remaining possessions. These were all she owned, they were all she had left, and her only physical reminders of the old world.  

The beast was unabating though and seemed to grow stronger and stronger by the second.  With a sudden, forceful blow from one of the beast’s accomplices, she crashed to the ground.

Feeling elated, and with the small, scruffy bag held high, the men rapidly scampered away with their prize.

Sarah, defeated, was unable to do more than see her last fragments of hope torn from her. She cried out pitifully until her last ounce of energy drained from her.

Hours past.

Sarah lay shivering, defeated on the ground.

She could not summon the energy to rise.  

In those moment, she realised that all hope was lost; she did not know how to go on any longer; life was too hard.

She could not fight anymore.

Glancing up, for one last futile glimpse at ‘Earth’: what use to be ‘home’, she noticed a tall man approaching.

Her heart thudded in fear. What did they want from her now?

But no, through her blurred tear-filled eyes, she recognised the soft, dark hair. The soft, dark hair which had haunted her dreams for years. A gasp of hope, a feeling which she could hardly recognise, escaped from her. After all this time. Maybe she was dreaming… But deep down she knew she has finally found…

“Sarah…”

Home.