By: Steve Gillman

Introductory comments by Royane Real

Author of  "How You Can Be Smarter - Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better and Be More Creative "

Do you think you have an amazing brain?  If you believe that your brain is amazing, you have to use your brain to think these thoughts.  That’s amazing too, isn’t it?

Your brain somehow thinks about these things and your brain somehow plans and organizes and creates new thoughts. Your brain is somehow tied into the amazing being that is YOU! 

Yet we don’t really know how that happens.  We don’t know everything about the brain works.

As you can learn in the following article by Steve Gillman, your brain really is amazing. 

When your brain is healthy and functioning properly, you can use it to think all kinds of thoughts and create the kind of life you want. 

When your brain is injured by some kind of accident or because of some kind of illness or degenerative disease associated with old age, then you experience a loss of brain power.  You can’t think straight, you can’t be creative, and you might even have a personality change.  When your brain is really damaged, you might even forget who you are!

Whether or not your brain is bigger than normal or smaller than normal doesn’t really have much influence on how smart you are.  Other factors play a big part in how well your brain functions. 

You can improve the way your brain works by keeping your body healthy in general.  When you get lots of exercise you help your brain get more of the oxygen it needs every time you take a breath.

When you make an effort to learn new things, you help your brain cells make new connections with each other.  The kinds of connections your brain cells make with each other will have a big influence on how smart you can be.  You can increase the number of brain cell connections by learning new things, eating well, exercising, and avoiding too much long term stress.

You can find a lot more information on this website that will help you learn how to improve your brain power. Be sure to read the many fine articles that can help you become a better you.

(The above comments were written by Royane Real, author of  “How You Can Be Smarter - Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better and Be More Creative"  Download it today to learn more brain boosting techniques. )

Feature article:

Ten Amazing Brain Facts

By: Steve Gillman

What part of you is only 1% to 3% of your body's mass, yet uses 20% of all the oxygen you breathe? Your brain!

Here are ten more brain facts:

- Your brain needs a continuous supply of oxygen. A 10 minute loss of oxygen will usually cause significant neural damage. Cold can lengthen this time, which is why cold-water drowning victims have been revived after as much as 40 minutes - without brain damage.

- Your brain uses a fifth of all your blood. It needs it to keep up with the heavy metabolic demands of its neurons.  It needs not only the glucose that is delivered, but of course, the oxygen.

- Your brain feels no pain. There are no nerves that register pain within the brain itself. Because of this, neurosurgeons can probe the brain while a patient is conscious (what fun!). By doing this, they can use feedback from the patient to identify important regions, such as those used for speech, or visualization.

- The cerebellum is sometimes called the "little brain," and weighs about 150 grams (a little over five ounces). Found at the lower back side of your brain, you need your cerebellum to maintain posture, to walk, and to perform any coordinated movements. It may also play a role in your sense of smell.

- The human brain weighs an average of a little over three pounds, or 1.4 kilograms. Albert Einstein's brain may have been smaller than yours, because he was smaller than average. There is a general correlation between body size and the size of our brains.

- An elephant's brain is huge - about six times as large as a human brain. However, in relation to body size, humans have the largest brain of all the animals, averaging about 2% of body weight.  A cat's brain? It weighs about one ounce, a little over 1% of body weight.

- There are about 100,000 miles of blood vessels in the brain. If they were stretched out (there's a nice thought!) they would circle the earth more than four times.

- If you have an average sized brain, you have about 100 billion neurons up there. You'll be happy about that after reading the next item.

- Approximately 85,000 neocortical neurons are lost each day in your brain. Fortunately, his goes unnoticed due to the built-in redundancies and the fact that even after three years this loss adds up to less than 1% of the total. Oh, and look at the next item.

- Recent research proves that your brain continues to produce new neurons throughout your life. It also proves that it does so in response to stimulation (do those brainpower exercises ). Scientists refer to this as brain plasticity or neuro-plasticity. You may find this one the most encouraging of these brain facts.

Article source:  http://www.articledashboard.com

Copyright Steve Gillman. For more on How To Increase Brain Power, and to get the Brain Power Newsletter and other free gifts, visit: www.IncreaseBrainPower.com