Of course, there are many excellent types of food and ingredients for your brain. But which ones are totally natural and easily available?

Let’s cover  five of the brain healthiest foods, starting with… wild salmon! We all know the benefits of salmon, especially wild as opposed to farm-raised salmon. It is a great source of essential fatty acids like omega-3 and is low in saturated fat. It can help you improve your mood, your brain matter, your synaptic connections, your arteries and reduce your risk of stroke and dementia.

At number 2, … Cacao beans! No, sorry, we didn’t say chocolate, just minimally processed cacao beans which can be found in 100% organic non-alkalized cocoa powder or high cacao percentage dark chocolate bars with at least 75% cacao content or even better: 85% and more. Cacao beans help you shape up your brain power, greatly improve your mood and generally make you feel happy!

Now, ever heard of Matcha? Well, if you haven’t, it is a type of finely-powdered Gyokuru green tea, which has absolutely nothing to do with your supermarket tea bags! Drinking Matcha is like consuming the green tea leaf itself and all its health benefits: antioxidants, catechins, vitamins, Fluoride and L-Theanine.

Also discover the acai berry and all the health benefits of blueberries a.k.a. the brain berry! The acai is a South American berry that is high in protein, contains essential fatty acids, antioxidants, vitamins and is generally highly benefiting for the brain!

Last but not least… coffee beans! You may have read that coffee has been shown to reduce the risk of mental decline and diseases like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Coffee beans are very rich with antioxidants, amino acids, vitamins and minerals and freshly-ground roasted coffee bean powder has many brain and body health benefits. Just like cacao beans, however, coffee is best consumed in a pure form like pure espresso.

That’s the brain food roundup for today. Eat well and keep up with your brain workouts!

Source: Brain Ready.com

We have launched the latest brain training exercise book, Protein Shakes for the Brain, developed by founders Michel  Noir, Ph.D and Bernard Croisile,  MD Neurology, Ph.D. & HAPPYneruron’s Chief Scientist. Discover 90 new games and exercises to train your brain over the summer months on the go.

Protein Shakes for the Brain, is packed full of exercises for every ability - Just Starting Out (Easy), Getting Fit (Medium), and Iron Man (Hard). In each area there’s a great variety to provide that cross training exposure your brain craves. Here’s a game of logical reasoning from the Iron Man section. Try it out. Take as long as you need. Here’s how it works: Of the nine words listed below, place six of them in the star. The arrows indicate the direction of the word in the star. Can you do it?

How did you do?

Check out the answer on Sunday July 19th at  Writing in the Stars Answer.

Want to practice this game some more? Login today and play it online.

Not just one, but two recent studies have shown that increases in caffeine caused significant decreases in abnormal levels of proteins  linked to Alzheimer’s Disease. The scientists believe that the discoveries could lead to caffeine being a treatment in the future as well as defensive strategy to the disease.  Pour another cup of coffee and read more about it at Medical News Today.

According to a new, long-term research study by neurological experts at the Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Rush University Medical Center, both African-American and white older patients with Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment have an increased risk of mortality.  Research results were published in the June 2009 issue of Archives of Neurology.

Alzheimer’s disease has emerged as a leading cause of death in the United States, and it substantially reduces life expectancy in those diagnosed with the disease. To date, there have been relatively few population-based studies of survival rates in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and its precursor, mild cognitive impairment.  Because these studies have primarily focused on the disease and its impact on white persons, little is known about survival rates in African Americans.

The results of the study conducted by Rush suggest that compared to people without cognitive impairment, risk of death was increased by about 50 percent among those with mild cognitive impairment and was nearly three-fold greater among those with Alzheimer’s disease. These effects were seen among African Americans and whites and did not differ by race. Read more about the study here….

The Alzheimer’s Association recently published an article on the 10 signs of Alzheimer’s disease. The first sign is occasional memory loss, like not being able to remember important dates or events, further signs are difficulties in planning or solving problems, completing everyday tasks, confusing time and place and not knowing how and why you arrived to a particular location. You can read about the different types of memory loss here and learn more about the 10 signs of Alzheimer’s disease here…

In recent years scientists have become intensely interested in what could be called a super memory club. At a retirement community in Southern California fewer than one in 200 persons out of 20,000 are living past 90 without a trace of dementia. It is a group that, for the first time, is large enough to provide a glimpse into the lucid brain at the furthest reach of human life, and to help researchers tease apart what is essential in preserving mental sharpness to the very end. Read this fascinating article at the New York Times online

As baby boomers approach retirement age, the field of cognitive fitness has begun to gain more prominence. In this interview with health blogger, David William, I speak about the magnitude of the economic impact of Alzheimer’s and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), the strategies that can be used to slow mental decline, and how HAPPYneuron is helping to educate the industry. Read here or Listen here….

There are many memory disorders and it can be difficult to understand the differences. I am asked the question all the time “What are the different type of memory loss?” Let me offer a very brief summary here…..

• Normal memory loss: Everybody’s brain ages. As the connections and chemicals in the brain alter with time, many people forget things like names, keys or what the they went in the next room for. This is fairly normal, and does not automatically lead to deterioration if a person is leading a brain healthy lifestyle overall.
• Mild cognitive impairment (MCI): Problems with memory, language, or other problem solving functions may be noticeable to others but they may not yet interfere with daily life activities. For example, a person continually loses their keys and forget a neighbor’s names however, they can still pay bills and do their regular shopping. The presence of MCI often shows up on professionally administered screening tests. It is thought that 1 in 5 people over 70 have MCI.  Some develop Alzheimer’s disease later on and others do not.
• Early stage Alzheimer’s disease: In addition to pronounced memory problems (perhaps forgetting what happened yesterday or forgetting major news events), there can be cognitive troubles such as the inability count backward by 7s, becoming confused while planning meals or managing finances or occasionally even getting lost in the neighborhood. This condition can be diagnosed through testing and a complete medical exam to rule out other potential problems.
• Mid and Late Alzheimer’s disease: This always follows in progression after early-stage Alzheimer’s disease. Unfortunately, there are no improvements known, only periods of stabilization with remediation and gradual decline.
• Early-Onset Alzheimer’s disease: This is different from early-stage Alzheimer’s disease. Early-onset Alzheimer’s starts before age 65, thus the name.
• Dementia: Dementia is not a disease itself, but a set of symptoms including memory loss, cognitive problems, and other effects of deteriorating brain function. Alzheimer’s disease is one form of dementia. Other forms include vascular dementia (caused by very small strokes) and Lewy Body Dementia (of which Parkinson’s Disease Dementia is a subset).
• Senile dementia: This is an old fashioned term that usually refers to what we now call Alzheimer’s disease.

It is also important to note that there can be other causes of memory loss, some of which may just be temporary: These include depression, stress, insomnia, alcoholism, brain tumors, medications, or many other conditions.

Last week I spoke with Adrian Berg of the Longevity Club Radio Show about the HAPPYneuron cross training program, the history of brain science, the impact of technology on the effectiveness of the program and the resulting cognitive health benefits for life.  Listen on (about 5 minutes into the show).

Interestingly, the Mayo Clinic researchers reported that men are 1.5 times more likely than women to have memory problems. You may wonder then, how it can also be true that more women develop and die from Alzheimer’s Disease?

The kind of memory loss in the study is called mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Scientists theorize that in men, there’s more of a delayed progression from MCI to dementias like Alzheimer’s. Conversely, possibly dementia in women progresses faster.  Nobody’s sure. Read more about it at Medical News Today.