Everyone of us has a maximum potential intelligence IQ, 80% of earth's population never reaches the maximum potential, you will now probably ask yourself why?
The main reason is the 1 domain concentration activity. You get a job in lets say sales, you become better and better in that domain but you don't get other information from other domains, maybe very little from friends that work in other areas or from TV, Internet.
This is the reason why the brain becomes dull and this is the point where you can loose for some time your creativity, because you don't challenge the brain anymore with exciting new things.
The human brain/body are wonderful creations that need to be challenged, pushed to the limit every now and then so "we can feel that we live". And guess what, the brain/body, will most of the time (92%), adapt or surpass the limit you impose to him.
There are known people that in extreme situations, like accidents were able to lift a car that was crushing their loved ones, or people that are so intelligent that surpass even a computer in calculations (they are called savant).
Why are these things possible? It is known scientifically that humans used 2-5% of their brain capacity in the last century and now their capacity increased to 2-14%. We can currently use a small fraction of our potential intelligence, imagine a human that can use 100% of his brain.
As for our bodies, we can use 20% of our strength. The brain limits our strength in order to prevent muscular rupture, damage. This is the reason why people that train all their life can lift 1 tone or become incredibly agile(shaolin monks), break bricks with their fists and so on.
Hoping that i didn't bored you until know, i will share with you the 7 steps that can increase your intelligence near your maximum potential.
Step 1: Brain Nutrition
The most important thing is to sustain the work that your brain executes everyday with vitamins that he needs, otherwise: you will feel tired, irascible, bored, lifeless.
The brain evolves, regenerates and feed on these nutrients below (they are amino acids):
- pantothenic acid (for memory improvement)
- choline
- Glycine (prevents epilepsy)
- Histamine (sensory integration and reaction improvement)
- Serotonin (induces sleep)
- glutamine (improves concentration)
Now lets see Minerals&Vitamins:
- B2, B3, and especially B12 Vitamins that increases the speed of electrical impulses.
- copper and manganese adds to the information's transport speed.
- potassium, magnesium, zinc, vitamin C(general improvement of the brain)
- lecithin ( we all know this is a great nutrient for the brain's memory and reaction)
Step 2: Reduce Sugar Quantity
When high sugar drinks or candys are consumed, the pancreas, told by the brain's hypothalamus, releases insulin. The insulin signals all body cells to take sugar from the blood. Usually, the brain cells use 50% of all the sugar(glucose) in the bloodstream and the other organs will burn fat.
Since the brain is such a small percentage of body weight, with insulin present it must compete with the other organs and muscles which weigh 50 times as much as the brain, for blood sugar (glucose). This results in too little fuel to the brain, and is intensified if there is not enough chromium to bind insulin with the cellular membrane. The results are low energy, and a craving for even more sugar.
Interestingly, a healthy non-diabetic person's circulating blood contains less than one teaspoon of sugar. With a modern high sugar diet, to pour twenty teaspoons of simple sugar into the bloodstream is easy at one sitting! Hypoglycemia, diabetes, mental confusion, and behavioral problems are at epidemic proportions and are the outcome of unsuitable blood-sugar levels.
Complex carbohydrates, vegetables, grains, legumes, and nuts are a timed-release form of sugar not requiring a large release of insulin to the system, not forcing the brain to compete with other organs for sufficient energy and oxygen.
Step 3: Work Your Brain
Exactly like your muscles, your brain needs exercise, otherwise will get dull, inefficient, lazy, slow.
Here are some ways to exercise your brain:
- Inform yourself from different domains, science, biology, learn about the universe, zoology there are tons of articles waiting to be discovered, some of them will be appealing for you I'm sure.
- Learn what you like, don't read things that bore you, you will make your brain uninterested and you'll quickly want to do something else.
- Change your learning domains often (2-3 months intervals).
- Surround yourself with smart people so you can have interesting discussions everyday/week.
- When you have time watch documentaries on Discovery Chanel/Science or on National Geographic. This is a great way to increase your knowledge because is fun to do it, and much easier to assimilate information, rather then reading.
- Take IQ quizzes as they are composed from many domains and give a pretty good workout to the brain.
- Play word games, as they test your memory and creativity very much. (word games= games like WordRacer from Yahoo Messenger)
- Se how much you can remember from one look. Put a number of words on a page, lets say 30-50 words, look at them once for 5 seconds and then try to remember as many as you can. Repeat the process until you remember at least 60%. Change the words everytime.
This exercise works wonderful for the memory access time.
- Try to name as many cities,animals, companies, mountains or any other thing that starts with a random letter you think of. This improves the long term(deep memory) memory
Step 4: Argue, argue, ague!
Did you noticed that everytime you argue with someone, he states something, you counter with another argument, he thinks of ways to impose his opinion, you try to bring your opinion in the light in various ways.
This is a great workout for the brain, as long as you don't argue about drinking beer or wine, in which case the brain will reject you and go to sleep.
Step 5: Sleep
Don't Neglect sleep it's very important for your sanity and general mood. many guys yell on the internet that they can sleep 20 minutes awake for 1 hour then go back to sleep 20 minutes and so on or guys that say they can learn more by sleeping only 3-4 hours a night, BULLSHIT!
You try what they say for a week and see if you can resist a week, of course the brain will adapt after a certain time but that doesn't mean it's good for him. Lack of sleep can cause mental instability, delirium, body shutdown(the sensation of fever only it's not real fever, it's the tired body urging for sleep which will installs after 1-2 hours from the fever apparition).
- Sleep at least 6 hours a night
- When you have to stay all night sleep more in another day when you have more time to recover.
- If you can't sleep without awakening 2-3 time a night(very common) or have insomnia go to a gym or exercise at home 3-4 times a week to stabilize your metabolism and after just a few days you'll sleep like a baby(of course if you really workout and you don't go to the gym to watch others work)
Step 6: Exercise your body
This is the biggest mistake a person can make and it makes it out of laziness. Because of the kind of thinking: " why should i go to the gym when i can eat something or play something on my pc", many persons become obese or with health problems.
What has this to do with the brain? When you have a damaged liver or a deficient lung, the general mood of the brain will decrease and you will have to take medicines that ALWAYS have side effects over the body and the brain. Not to say about some toxins that can't be eliminated unless you sweat. Cumulated toxins will make you skin rash sometimes, zips, headaches, lack of concentration, irritability.
Ideal is to exercise 3-4 days a week because it will exponentially optimize your brain oxygenation, eliminate toxins, improve your self worth, imporve your blood circulation to vital organs and brain.
Step 7: Relaxation
Some people respect the steps above but make another fatal mistake for the health of the brain. They never give it a rest. The best way to relax your brain is to travel out of your city at least once at 1-2 months. Mountains hiking is the best because of the fresh, clean air.
A brain can work in harsh conditions but remember to give him time to recover or else you'll damage him more then you can imagine.
By Hsin-Yi Cohen
Source About Intelligence
