
Six Ways to Boost Brainpower: Exercise, Diet, Stimulants, Video Games, Music, & Meditation - robg
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=six-ways-to-boost-brainpower&print=true
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baltoo
> Luckily for babies, breast milk is 50 percent fat.

My memory and Wikipedia
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_milk#Composition>) disagree. It about a
magnitude lower than that. (In humans that is, of course. Not that breast milk
is therefore bad.)

And that is so easy to check. Wonder what other tidbits of facts are wrong?
Not that the gist of the article is therefore bad, but I think it better not
to mention facts rather then mentioning wrong ones.

~~~
xiaoma
Usually when people state that a food is X% fat, they are talking about its
nutritional information values, and your link does in fact confirm that about
50% of the calories derived from breast milk come from fat:

 _"Human milk contains 0.8% to 0.9% protein, 3% to 5% fat, 6.9% to 7.2%
carbohydrates"_

Excluding alcohol, essentially 100% of the calories of any food come from
those three macronutrients-- 4Kcal per gram of protein or carbohydrate and
9Kcal per gram of fat.

9(3 to 5) / (9(3 to 5)+4((.8 to .9) + (6.9 to 7.2))) = 45% to 59%

Assuming the data in the wiki you linked to is correct, 45% to 59% of breast
milk is fat, in nutritionist lingo.

~~~
mmmurf
You are correct. One example that makes it obvious:

Take 100 calories of lettuce (which is quite a lot).

Now take 100 calories of oil (which is not much at all).

Combine the two into a salad, which contains 200 calories and 50% of calories
from fat.

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pxlpshr
I made an iPhone application for me cause most exercise apps are for gym rats,
overly complicated and I just don't have time for a gym nor interested in
looking bulky and lifting weights. I was inspired after using HundredPushups.

I'm blogging the progress of the "Hacker Workout" — speaking of, today I'm
suppose to workout!

Week 1 results <http://saltlicklabs.com/pow-3-week-challenge/>

Week 2 <http://saltlicklabs.com/pow-3-week-challenge-2/>

~~~
blackguardx
XML Parsing Error: syntax error Location: <http://saltlicklabs.com/pow-3-week-
challenge/> Line Number 1, Column 1:4ffc ^

~~~
pxlpshr
hmmm that's weird. it's not doing it for me in Safari or FF. Try this:

<http://saltlicklabs.com/pow-3-week-challenge/?flush=1>

~~~
blackguardx
It works in IE, but not in firefox. That is strange.

~~~
pxlpshr
Indeed, I use SilverStripe CMS which is a relatively new open source CMS that
is pretty awesome... but buggy at times. Eagerly awaiting 2.3.
<http://silverstripe.org>

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old-gregg
Can anyone suggest a good resource to read up on meditation? (besides
wikipedia). I'm just having a hard time believing that meditation is any
different from just sitting idle bored, so I'm naturally curious and excited
to prove myself wrong.

~~~
dood
Mindfulness in Plain English: <http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html>

A good place to start.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
Kusula Bishku's podcast is pretty good, too!

~~~
nihilocrat
Friendly correction: it's Bhikshu

You can find it here: <http://zencast.wordpress.com/category/kusala-bhikshu/>

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jackchristopher
We hear a lot about the benefits of antioxidants, but I get the sense that
people think they're only found in special foods.

Here's an overview of antioxidants, and foods high in them:
[http://www.ific.org/publications/factsheets/antioxidantfs.cf...](http://www.ific.org/publications/factsheets/antioxidantfs.cfm)

And a well-cited list of the benefits of many common foods:
<http://www.whfoods.com/foodstoc.php>

~~~
gravitycop
_We hear a lot about the benefits of antioxidants, but I get the sense that
people think they're only found in special foods._

Antioxidants are found in high levels in hundreds of different culinary herbs
and spices. The point, throughout human history, of adding herbs and spices to
foods, besides flavoring those foods, was to preserve.

~~~
silentbicycle
Also, one of the biggest sources of antioxidants in the foods Americans
commonly eat is _coffee_. (<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9105892/>)

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electromagnetic
I love the video game section: I just love it when people blame the video
games for becoming violent and not the kids. I mean the first sign of a serial
killer used to be the abuse of small animals, which is usually why the police
take some kid shooting a cat with a BB gun seriously because they want the
kids DNA and finger prints before he goes pro.

I prefer to play strategy/god games, RPG's and, where I can find them, a good
physics applet. You can do cruel things in them, especially ones like Black &
White, but I always associate it more with burning ants because I _know_
there's no one real on the other side. I dislike FPS primarily because there
_is_ someone on the other side, so when I play them I nearly always play
single player or co-op.

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Mystalic
Anything that promotes health or provides active or interactive stimulus to
the mind fits. Sci Am just picked out six from a giant bucket. Crosswords,
reading Hacker News, and (trying to) solve P = NP all have similar effect.

~~~
robg
But that big bucket is sort of like the old axiom about filling a jar with
stones. First you have to put in the biggest ones. And here I think they've
ranked them pretty well in the list. Exercise and nutrition come first and are
easy to forget especially with classical notions of Reason and what our daily
demands are.

They did forget sleep however.

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chadgeidel
From the section on coffee: "Try to limit yourself to fewer than 100 cups a
day."

Ok, I'll _try_. 8*D

~~~
yan
The thing with drinking that much coffee, most people like sugar in theirs.
That much sugar is not good for anyone.

~~~
icey
That's 25 quarts (6.25 GALLONS) of coffee in one day (assuming an 8 ounce cup
of coffee). I'm not sure if it's even physically possible to drink that much
coffee in a day.

~~~
wallflower
> I'm not sure if it's even physically possible to drink that much coffee in a
> day.

Comedian/Filmmaker Mark Malkoff attempts to visit 171 Starbucks stores in
Manhattan in one day...

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwYxuV2dVzw>

It's quite motivating and scary at the same time.

~~~
icey
He's just drinking part of the coffee, not the whole thing.

~~~
wallflower
Yes, it was to point out that it is not possible to drink 100 cups of coffee
in a day but it is entertaining nonethless.

However, some drinking world records are beyond the realm of health and
sanity:

"As the plane arrived in London, Walters raised his 44th can to his lips and
drained it as thought it were his fourth. From all accounts, he wasn’t in bad
shape. not if you consider he’d had 44 beers at high altitude and a couple of
unofficial palate cleansers during the stopovers. He was all right just says
O’Keeffe. He was lighting cigarettes filter-first. I guess that’s all right.
You can do that sober."

<http://www.thefanatics.com/content.php?id=330>

~~~
icey
Doh, I'm sorry; that's what I get for not watching the whole thing.

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nihilocrat
_Video games activate the brain’s reward circuits but do so much more in men
than in women, according to a new study. Researchers hooked men and women up
to functional MRI machines while the participants played a video game designed
for the study._

I wonder if a video game could be designed that would have the opposite
effect; women would feel more compelled by the rewards system in place versus
men.

~~~
JMiao
<http://www.pogo.com>

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chris11
There is some research out that says that the Dual n Back test can increase
fluid intelligence.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-back_task> So that's
another way to increase your brainpower. Cognitive fun has a good free
version. <http://cognitivefun.net/test/8>

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enra
I wish it had more depth and some actual references. Especially the diet
section is quite lame and inaccurate.

~~~
dominik
I found the Hacker's Diet a useful reference for both diet and exercise. I
found its engineering-minded explanation of how the body uses food resonated
with me. (I lost about 50 lbs. in 6 months). Link:
<http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/>

There's also a small section on practical daily exercises that can be done
quickly, without need for equipment. I'll link directly to that:
<http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/exercise.html>

The key to both diet and exercise, however, lies in consistency -- you have to
apply yourself every day.

~~~
enra
Thanks for the links. I appriciate the exercise advice since it's something
that I'm still working on.

My diet homever is in a quite good shape, its mostly paleo/low carb. For
almost a year I have completely opted-out grains and sugar and moderating
carbs, prosessed foods and omega6. Keeping insulin levels low is linked to
longevity and greater neural processing
[http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16482-eat-a-little-
les...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16482-eat-a-little-less-
remember-more.html)
[http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read/2008/01/13/5617/insulin-l...](http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read/2008/01/13/5617/insulin-
leptin-diabetes-and-aging-not-so-strange-bedfellows/)

I have never been overweight so I'm just trying to maximize my current health,
cognitive performance and longevity. With my current diet, I seem to have more
clearer mind, can eat less often and don't have desire for snacks or sugar.
Green tea seems to have relaxing effect(it's also measured that l-theanine
increases alphawaves) on me and alcar+ala has a slight energizing effect.

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anovaskulk
> Of course, all this research does nothing to help explain dumb jocks.

Wasn't expecting to see that there :-)

~~~
lallysingh
I'd account for dumb jocks under my 'understimulated brain' column.

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critic
I knew all that killing and blowing things up wasn't for nothing!

