Think it's impossible to control your thoughts or change your brain? Think again. Dr. Doug Bench, founder of the Brain Training Academy, has created 16 fail-proof, science-based steps you can use to boost your brainpower. With such an intriguing claim, SheKnows.com sat down with Dr. Bench for a quick chat about one of our most important organs, his brain boosting program, and how you can train your brain.
You can train your brain – and it's easy to do
SheKnows.com: Research has always told us there's no real way to change the brain (once a cell dies, it's gone for good), but new studies are starting to show otherwise. Is it really possible to change your brain?
Dr. Doug Bench: This is a fantastic question regarding one of the most exciting areas of brain research findings. Over the last 10 years, neuroscientists have made some fantastic discoveries about the functioning of the human brain. Why so much in the last 10 years? New brain imaging equipment has enabled scientists to see things in the human brain they never could before.
The most monumental discovery occurred at the Salk Institute in San Diego, where they've been doing a tremendous amount of this new research. Dr. Fred Gage and his colleagues discovered if you stimulate your brain, no matter what your age, your brain will grow new connections that appear as tiny, spider web-like strands called DSPs (dendrite spiny protuberances). These strands will increase the total number of connections in your brain and will greatly increase your brain's capacity for achievement. It doesn't matter if you're six years old, 60 or 106, your brain can change and improve its performance with these new connections.
So you're not hard wired. Your brain has the astonishing ability to transform, replace, and create new connections. A new you!
SheKnows.com: How easy is "brain changing" to do?
Dr. Doug Bench: You would think with this enormous discovery that it would be a very complex and difficult task for each of us to form new brain cell connections, but this couldn't be further from the truth. It's actually relatively easy to do.
Rather simply, stimulating your brain means learning something new, doing something different, driving to work and home a different way each day. Anything that is new information and input will help create these new brain cell connections. To expand your mind's achievement, you must simply absorb new information, perfect new skills, learn new physical movements, understand new systems of thought or master new subjects. The new connections could be virtually anything as long as it challenges you.
Be patient and persistent for brain changes
SheKnows.com: How long will changing your brain take?
Dr. Doug Bench: This may be the hardest part of this great new brain science news to grasp. You have to be patient. Lasting change in your brain doesn't occur overnight or quickly. To change habits, create new skills, master new subject matter, your brain must form thousands, if not millions, of these new connections. This process can take anywhere from 21 to 100 days, with the average being about 30 days. Isn't it interesting to note that we have known for years that it takes about 30 days to create or change a habit? It just wasn't known, until now, why it took that long.
Brain-healthy habits
SheKnows.com: You've devised an incredibly interesting 16-step plan to change your brain. What are some of the tips and tricks you've discovered that positively impact the brain?
Dr. Doug Bench: After reading over 100,000 pages of brain research reports and books, I authored and published my first book entitled Revolutionize Your Brain – Kiss Your Old Brain Goodbye! In that book we lay out for you the 12 most important brain research discoveries of the last decade, and 16 techniques and skills that I call "Brain Apples" that you can use to "Train Your Brain" to create habits that will help you create millions of new brain cell connections to improve your achievement levels in all areas of your life. From learning to supersize your greeting to people, to learning to always stomp the ANTs (automatic negative thoughts), all of my tips are based on these new brain science discoveries.
SheKnows.com: It seems human nature to maintain status quo, avoiding change if possible. How can we address that?
Dr. Doug Bench: Based on recent brain research, part of your brain will intentionally try to keep you from changing. That part of your brain is programmed to keep you safe and alive by maintaining the status quo. By maintaining the status quo, this portion of your automated brain tries to keep you from forming new brain connections. Of course, as we age, old brain connections can literally break apart and die. This can lead to the early onset of Alzheimer's, dementia or other problems. Scientists now know you can even build up a "neural reserve" of new connections that will take the place of some of the older less functional connections. Help your thinking brain to overcome the status quo. Constantly try to learn new things to extend the good health of your brain.
SheKnows.com: Why is so important to protect the health of your brain?
Dr. Doug Bench: There is nothing that now or ever will exist that is more complex than the human brain. We constantly underestimate the power and capacity of the human brain to perform and achieve. There's no greater untapped resource in the world. It is all that we are. Alzheimer's and other brain diseases and brainhealth failures steal our soul, our spirit, our identity and our very life story.
Source: articlesbase.com
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