Brain Training Basics (Mental Health Guru)
Brain training starts with brain games, like solitare and sudoku, and continues with a brain food diet. http://mental.healthguru.com/
Tag: brain games
Brain Foods (Diet & Fitness Guru)
Boosting brainpower and performing at your best is as simple as snacking on the right nutrient-rich foods. Find out what they are! http://dietfitness.healthguru.com/
How Brain Games Can Reduce Your Anxiety and Depression
Did you know that uncontrollable worry is an anxiety disorder that typically starts in childhood? It’s a disorder that is usually life long and comes and goes over the course of your life.Uncontrolled worry is one of the hallmarks of Generalized anxiety disorder. This is different from obsessive compulsive disorder where you have obsessional thoughts and or rituals you have to perform. It’s also different from panic disorder where you have sudden attacks of anxiety with a lot of physical symptoms.A sign that your anxiety is causing functional impairment or interfering with your daily activities is when it races out of control at night and keeps you awake. So there’s a loss of control of your ability to tune out these thoughts or distract yourself from them.If you’re one who has worked hard at meditating and using exercise to reduce your anxiety, you may be able to turn down the volume on these thoughts, but it’s like a script running in the background that you can’t completely quiet. That negative commentary that you can’t make go away, can start to make you feel depressed and hopeless.A current theory for why you can’t control your anxious thoughts is that uncontrolled worry comes from deficits in attentional control and it’s effect on your working memory. Attentional control is a higher level brain function called an executive function.If you have good attentional control, you can sustain focus on a task and filter out things that don’t relate to the task at hand. You are also able to cleanly move your attention from one task to another without the previous task distracting you from doing the new task. The ability to do this is based on the strength of your neural pathways that make these actions possible.So with anxiety and depression, these nerve pathways are disrupted or not functioning properly. This makes you unable to filter information and let go of the thoughts that cause you distress.Something that shows real promise for helping you get more control over your thoughts is brain training games or cognitive training. These specialized exercises, boost attentional control and improve your working memory. That improvement in your executive function has positive effects on your emotional functioning.The brain training exercises are not just something used by researchers. There are commercially available options that can be used on a self-help basis. One such company is called Cognifit. They have a version available for clinicians and educators, but they also have a version for personal use. You’re able to take a cognitive assessment to see what your weaknesses are, then choose the games that can help you build up your skills.On this issues of brain training, take a look at this video I did talking about learning to play a musical instrument to improve your mental capacity and brain plasticity https://youtu.be/AHgjZJKfGhs. It’s just another tool in your arsenal to improve your mental health.References
Stefanopoulou E, Hirsch CR, Hayes S, Adlam A, Coker S. Are attentional control resources reduced by worry in generalized anxiety disorder?. J Abnorm Psychol. 2014;123(2):330-335.Luo X, Zhang L, Wang J. The Benefits of Working Memory Capacity on Attentional Control under Pressure. Front Psychol. 2017;8:1105. Published 2017 Jul 10.Scholten H, Malmberg M, Lobel A, Engels RC, Granic I. A Randomized Controlled Trial to Test the Effectiveness of an Immersive 3D Video Game for Anxiety Prevention among Adolescents. PLoS One. 2016;11(1):e0147763. Published 2016 Jan 27.Beloe, Patricia & Derakshan, Nazanin. (2019). Adaptive working memory training can reduce anxiety and depression vulnerability in adolescents. Developmental Science. 23. e12831. 10.1111/desc.12831.Want to know more about mental health and self-improvement? On this channel I discuss topics such as bipolar disorder, major depression, anxiety disorders, attention deficit disorder (ADHD), relationships and personal development/self-improvement. I upload weekly. If you don’t want to miss a video, click here to subscribe. https://goo.gl/DFfT33Disclaimer: All of the information on this channel is for educational purposes and not intended to be specific/personal medical advice from me to you. Watching the videos or getting answers to comments/question, does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. If you have your own doctor, perhaps these videos can help prepare you for your discussion with your doctor.
Speaking English – How to talk about STRESS
http://www.engvid.com/ Want to practice your conversational English? In this lesson we’ll talk about stress! Do you stress out about school? Work? Public speaking? Or do you thrive in stressful situations? Today, you’ll learn vocabulary and expressions to describe stress and the situations that cause stress. I’ll also share my tips to cope with stress. Whether at work, school, or at home, we often talk about stress. Watch this lesson and don’t let speaking English stress you out! http://www.engvid.com/speaking-english-stress/TRANSCRIPTHi. This is Gill at www.engvid.com, and today we’re going to look at a particular type of thing that happens to people in their lives and also to look at the kind of way we describe it in the English language. Okay? So, we’re saying: “Don’t get stressed out!” Right? Now, getting stressed out is, with modern life, there are so many demands; we have to do things quickly, we have to survive, have somewhere to live, enough food to eat, somewhere to work, all of these things, and it causes a lot of stress. Okay? So this word “stress” is when you’re feeling very… Very upset and agitated, and worried because of everything that you have to do and everything that’s happening, and whether you can cope with it or not. So, modern life has a lot of stresses and strains. “Strains” are the same idea, really, things sort of pulling you around, making you do this and that, and you feel all the time you’re having to do what other people want you to do, and you have no control over what you’re doing, all of that kind of thing. And it can be quite upsetting if you don’t feel you’re in control of the situation.So… So we’re saying: “Don’t get stressed out!” This is maybe a little bit of advice in here, along with the way of expressing it, about how to cope with stress if you’re feeling stressed. Okay? So there’s lots of pressure in the modern world, it can be traumatic, it can cause you a lot of anxiety. We’re always being bombarded by information, advertising: “Buy this. Do this. You should be doing this.” And there’s a lot of pressure on people to do things that maybe they don’t really want to do or they don’t see the point of doing, but other people are pressurizing them to do it. Okay?So… So what someone might say if they’re in a job that is very, what we’d say highly pressured, a job that is very busy with a lot of responsibilities, somebody might say: “I can’t take the stress of this job!” Meaning: “I can’t… I can’t do it. I can’t keep having all this stress every day. It’s too much.” Okay? So: “I can’t take the stress of this job!” All right?One of the terms we use for when you’re more comfortable with what you’re doing is that you’re in your “comfort zone”. It’s like a zone, it’s an area where you’re comfortable. The things that you’re happy doing, the things that you are confident doing, that’s in your comfort zone. So maybe being at home, watching television is in your comfort zone. Maybe going and playing some sports, going swimming which you enjoy, going out with friends may all be in your comfort zone where you are comfortable. Okay? So you stay inside your comfort zone if you don’t really want to try new things.But sometimes, it’s a good idea to go outside your comfort zone or step outside your comfort zone just to test what you might be capable of doing. Okay? Just try a little something that’s different to see how it goes. So it’s not always a good idea to stay within your comfort zone all the time. Try to step outside it occasionally. I often try to try something new, see how it goes, and if it’s successful, then you feel great. “I’ve learnt something new, here”, and then you feel good about yourself. Okay? So, this term also: “Pushing the envelope” is another way of saying “going outside your comfort zone”, “stepping outside”. The idea of being inside an envelope, you have a letter inside, but the envelope is closed. But if you push the envelope, you’re sort of pushing outside it, trying something new, something different. Okay? So trying new things.