On a lighter note today – can viewing attractive public personalities be good for your brain? Brad and Angelina can serve as examples for this blog piece to appeal to both sexes. According to a published study (Matsunaga et al., 2008) viewing a person you judge as attractive (a favorite person) causes an increase in…
Category: brain hack
brain hack
Whole body hacks ?
by Ward • • 6 Comments
An example of how it is hard to hack a hacked system follows. Previously I mentioned a quote from Francis Crick (1962 Nobel prize winner for the co-discovery of the structure of DNA (1953)) that biology is a hacked together system rather than engineered from the ground up. This general idea makes sense at an…
brain hack
How would you hack metabolism ?
by Ward • • 2 Comments
On the subject of general hacking. Look at the complexity of metabolism (via sigmaaldrich.com) metabolicpathways_updated_02_072 Not so easy to hack a system so complex. Now the reason this system looks so complex is that it has been well studied (and because it is relatively easy to study). Our brain is likely several orders of magnitude…
brain hack
Brain: is a hacked system hackable
by Ward • • 0 Comments
Image via Wikipedia I guess I better define the word hack – in the 21st century: (via urbandictionary.com) 1. To program a computer in a clever, virtuosic, and wizardly manner. Ordinary computer jockeys merely write programs; hacking is the domain of digital poets. Hacking is a subtle and arguably mystical art, equal parts wit and…
brain hack, brain health
Resveratrol for better brain health ?
by Ward • • 1 Comment
Image by Getty Images via Daylife A new study (freely available because it is published in PLOS one) published today demonstrates that resveratrol (found in wine), in small doses, fed to middle age mice appears to improve the health of the heart and potentially the brain. Previous studies used quite high doses (22 to 186…
brain hack
Viagra for reducing jet lag
by Ward • • 0 Comments
Image via Wikipedia In another post I mentioned that fasting for 16 hours may reduced jet lag, well there are also some other treatments which can help get over long flights. We are all very familiar with the famous blue pill Viagra (sildenafil), and other drugs that are treatment for erectile dysfunction. Research in rodents…
brain fitness, brain hack, exercise
Baby steps up stairs for better brain health
by Ward • • 0 Comments
What are some of the baby steps we can all take to increase our brain health? I have told you that simple exercise and exposing yourself to new things (enriched environment) will improve your brain health in numerous ways. However, too many of us balk at implanting either of these because we do not think…
brain hack
Is there an easy brain hack for jet lag ?
by Ward • • 1 Comment
Many of us have to travel as part of our job, and the rest of us travel for holidays, but all of us would rather not suffer from jet lag. It takes up to a week for a body to adjust to the new time zone (if it is enough hours different to induce jet…
brain hack, brain health
Enriched environment improves your brain health
by Ward • • 1 Comment
I previously mentioned that various forms of exercise are beneficial to the brain and I will go into greater details on the many ways it is good for the brain in a later post, but I also want to introduce another way to improve brain health – enriched environment. Numerous animal studies have demonstrated the…
brain hack
Introduction: hacks for better brain health
by Ward • • 1 Comment
I hope to offer you practical tips and tools that will lead to a healthier brain, which should result in a happier, better, and longer life in general. When I talk about a healthier brain I mean reducing Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, memory loss, and stroke as a few examples. Just reducing these tragic diseases…