6 Surprising Things That Can Lower Your IQ
Mar 29, 2018

Glenda Jacobs
Core Spirit member since Dec 24, 2020
Reading time 2 min.

Even if you can easily complete the daily crossword puzzle and regularly trounce your pals in Words With Friends—classic ways to keep your mind sharp—there may be other everyday habits chipping away at your intellect, sabotaging your precious neurons in surprising ways. Here are 6 things that top experts say could be harming your true brainpower.

1. You’re stressed out

Fretting about finances, worrying over work projects, and trying to maintain a semblance of a social life can create a potent stew of stress hormones. “High stress levels are not only associated with poorer brain functioning but may even link to an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease,” says Brendan Kelley, MD, neurologist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio. Hormonal changes linked to stress are believed to be behind this.

2. You can’t fit into your jeans

As if you need more incentive to stay slim, research shows mid-life obesity can result in poorer cognitive performance and an increased risk of dementia later on, says Kelley. A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology shows a link between obesity and low intellectual ability in adolescence and adulthood. “Obesity is a complex medical problem, however,” says Kelley. It’s not easy to disentangle whether this is because of some of the medical issues that may result from obesity or from obesity itself, he says.

3. You’re living the sweet life

Sugar not only adds inches to your waistline, but in high doses, it could affect your brain cells, says Allen Towfigh, MD, a sleep medicine doctor and neurologist affiliated with Weill Cornell Medical Center/New York Presbyterian Hospital. “Diabetics have higher incidences of dementia,” notes Towfigh. The negative impact of sugar on the brain may be because of increased inflammation, according to an animal study from the University of Southern California. High sugar diets were found to affect brain cell functioning and cognitive ability.

4. You’re the master multi-tasker

Composing an email while having a discussion with your co-worker and eating lunch at the same time—sound familiar? This kind of juggling act can jam up your brain processing, says Towfigh. “Our frontal lobes are the main engines directing our attention, and they only have a finite amount of processing power.” If you try to exceed what your brain can reasonably do, your mind may stall out from time to time, similar to how your computer freezes up when you try to open multiple programs.

5. You spend time with a friend who smokes

Even if you don’t light up, inhaling second-hand cigarette smoke subjects the brain to a cocktail of toxic substances, says Towfigh. “Prolonged exposure to smoke increases carbon monoxide in the body, which displaces vital oxygen our brains and bodies need.” Damage to blood vessels and neurons disrupt the ability of brain cells to communicate effectively and retain information properly.

6. You’re always up the air

Chronic jet lag from a busy travel schedule can affect learning and memory for up to a month after you’ve returned home, according to research from the University of California, Berkeley. Traveling through different time zones disrupts your body’s normal circadian rhythm, says Elizabeth Lombardo, PhD, a psychologist and author of Better than Perfect: 7 Strategies to Crush Your Inner Critic and Create a Life You Love. “In addition to problems with sleeping, eating, and hormone regulation (all of which can also influence memory and learning), it serves as a significant source of stress on your body.”


Leave your comments / questions for this practitioner

To write a comment please
or
Services
Category filter
Concern filter
Type filter
Sort
 

All categories

Brain Hacking
$120 USD
mentorship session
Online Brain Fitness Coaching

This service consists on helping you to find the equilibrium of your brain energetic stages, so you are able to achieve more meaningful results by improving your inner executive brain resources, such as focus, attention, creativity, planning, and decision making, both at work and in your personal life.

Such service consists of a series of guided coaching sessions that will lead you to an efficient brain fitness optimization that will improve the quality of your life.

The objective of the coaching sessions is to assist you on finding and working your very own best inner potential, from your inside to your outside, to enhance your brain capacities, be able to achieve more meaningful results, and improve your well being.

Proper Brain Fitness will help you on achieving the following:

1. Resignify old toxic conditioned paradigms that are currently limiting your potential.
2. Balance your mental, emotional, physical and spiritual energetic stages present in the brain.
3. Optimize your quality of life habits, by enhancing proper brain nutrition and brain fitness based on physical activity.
4.Discover and design your own routines to consciously maintain your brain fitness.
5. Rewire and re-program your brain with new set of values, and beliefs to stick and practice based on their own desired experience and quality of life.

Price is set for individual session hours, however, discounts will apply according to previously agreed number of pre set sessions.

Service available also for Spanish and Portuguese speakers.

Johann Strerath
Brain Hacking
$1000 USD
therapy session
Welcome to Eden by Lilas

REBIRTH. TRANSFORMATION ENERGIES AND SOUL

SACRED TANTRA OF THE TRINITY

LilasEdenLove

Related Articles

View All
Brain Hacking
Jan 18 2021
Here is how Buddhist monks improve their memory

Since I started studying buddhist texts in a more thorough and general way I’ve been curious about the traditional methods of learning and pedagogics used by monks, and how efficient they might be.

Certain practices may seem overly traditional, too slow …

Demi Powell
Brain Hacking
Sep 26 2019
Data Science Book: Profit Driven Business Analytics

Verbeke, Baesens and Bravo have written a data science book focusing on profit. Instead of the typical statistical or programming point of view, Profit Driven Business Analytics has a self-proclaimed value-centric perspective.

This means the book approac…

Demi Powell
Brain Hacking
Mar 15 2021
Device to Have A Psychedelic Experience [No Drugs]

Virtual Reality tech had to branch out into the world of psychedelics sooner or later. A hallucination machine developed by a British university makes it possible to trip out without taking illegal drugs.

Instead of experimenting with LSD and magic mushr…

Demi Powell
Brain Hacking
Feb 8 2021
You can actually erase memories from your brain

There’s an old saying in neuroscience: “neurons that fire together wire together.”

This means the more you run a neuro-circuit in your brain, the stronger that circuit becomes. This is why, to quote another old saw, “practice makes perfect”. The more you…

Demi Powell
Registered individuals enjoy all the possibilities of Core Spirit.