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Top Nutrition Habits to Boost Learning
Jul 4, 2023Tap to summarizeMental clarity is a crucial component of our daily lives. Our brains are constantly processing information and performing complex tasks, making it the most energy-intensive organ in our bodies. For lifelong learners, brain health can help boost our memory, build discipline, and achieve previously out-of-reach goals. So, it is essential to ensure that our diets include nutrients that support optimal cognitive function. Let’s explore some of the best foods to improve memory and boost cognitive performance. After that, we’ll survey some of the best supplements for brain health—especially for every high-functioning learner. Foods for Boosting our Brain While we’ll get to supplements in a minute, at Mission to Learn, we’re advocates of meeting your nutritional needs with real food to the greatest extent possible. Here are some of the top dietary choices to help boost learning. Fatty Fish Fatty fish such as salmon, tuna, and sardines are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential for brain health. Omega-3s are critical components of the cell membranes in our brains, which play a role in communication between brain cells. Research has shown that omega-3 fatty acids can improve memory, mood, and cognitive function. While omega-3s tend to be most bio-available in marine sources like fatty fish, other include walnuts, flaxseed, and chia seeds. (More on fish as a brain food here.) Blueberries Blueberries contain antioxidants, which can protect the brain from stress and inflammation. Clinical trials suggest that treating blueberries as a dietary supplement can improve memory and cognitive function, especially in older adults. And for those who enjoy an occasional fruit salad, other sources of antioxidants include strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries. Leafy Greens Leafy greens such as spinach, kale, collard greens, asparagus, and broccoli are rich in vitamins and minerals. Among their many benefits, these vegetables contain folate, a kind of B vitamin essential for mental clarity. While a folate deficiency has been linked to a variety of illnesses, incorporating these veggies into your diet will be sure to boost mental performance. Nuts and Seeds Nuts and seeds can be a great treat for maintaining a healthy brain. As good sources of vitamin E, they also contain an antioxidant that protects the brain from oxidative stress—a fancy term for cell damage. As such, snacking on almonds, sunflower seeds, and hazelnuts can be a great way to improve mental clarity. Whole Grains Whole grains such as oats, quinoa, and brown rice are a good source of complex carbohydrates, in addition to other nutrients. These carbohydrates provide a steady supply of glucose to the brain, a primary source of energy. A review of numerous studies even revealed the nutrients within whole grains have played a significant role in boosting cognitive performance and protecting against neurological disease. How About Vitamins for Brain Health? In addition to a healthy diet, certain vitamins can improve memory and mental clarity and – by extension – boost learning. While there’s mixed evidence that supplements impact our cognitive performance, it’s still helpful to know how they function—and, ideally, aim to get them from the foods we eat. Vitamin B6 Vitamin B6 is essential for brain health as it is involved in the production of neurotransmitters, making it acutely fascinating to researchers interested in how to improve memory and mental clarity. As a vitamin responsible for a variety of physiological and neurological health benefits, it plays a crucial role in reducing the risk of cognitive decline. Vitamin B12 Vitamin B12 is another essential vitamin for brain health. It is involved in the production of myelin, which is the insulation around nerve fibers and one of the key sources of long-term memory. Research has shown that a deficiency in vitamin B12 can lead to cognitive impairment and dementia, making it a crucial component of high-functioning cognition. Vitamin D Vitamin D is essential for cognitive performance as it helps regulate the absorption of calcium, which is critical for the function of nerve cells. What’s more, the vitamin has been studied for its positive influence on neurological health, especially with the formation of new memories. While we all know that getting some sun on our skin is a great source of Vitamin D, what you may not have considered is that this same vitamin is one of the best supplements for a healthy mind. Nurturing Our Brains for Lifelong Learning The research is still evolving on which kinds of nutrition, supplements, and other lifestyle changes are best for brain health. And yet there seems to be conclusive evidence that a few age-old maxims still hold true for staying in peak mental shape: Eat your veggies. Be sure to seek out protein. And whole grain bread is always better than that bleached white Wonder Bread we all see at the grocery store. The only crucial piece of advice that’s missing here is the other indispensable maxim that exercise plays a crucial role in staying fit – and can also be a powerful aid to learning. Image by the5th from Pixabay Looking for the perfect holiday gift for the lifelong learners in your life? Be sure to also check out 10 Ways to Be a Better Learner from Mission to Learn founder Jeff Cobb. The post Top Nutrition Habits to Boost Learning appeared first on Mission to Learn - Lifelong Learning Blog.
Transcribe →Are you ready to enter the Shift Age?
Mar 21, 2013Tap to summarizeWhat’s the future hold? No matter what the answer to that question, active lifelong learners will be the ones best prepared to handle it. That’s just one of the perspectives that emerges in a recent interview I did with futurist David Houle on the Learning Revolution podcast. David is the author Entering the Shift Age, a new book that discusses the major trends that are pushing humanity into a whole new era and provides a detailed vision of the future. He also happens to be the son of Cy Houle, one of the pioneering figures in adult lifelong learning, and he shares his father’s conviction that lifelong learning will be the central concept of education going forward. You can listen to the interview here or subscribe on Tunes , but I also encourage you to check out the show notes and links on the Learning Revolution site. Listen to the Podcast [audio:https://media.blubrry.com/learningrevolution/content.blubrry.com/learningrevolution/david-houle-shift-age.mp3] Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Subscribe on Tunes | Stitcher Radio Other Great Interviews and Tools If you are interested in creating podcasts and other Web-based learning experiences, be sure to check out the Learning Revolutionary’s Toolbox section on the Learning Revolution site. Also, here are some other podcast interviews that may be of interest: Easily Publish and Sell Online Courses – An Interview with Pathwright’s Paul Johnson How to Build a Passionate Community of Learners – A Conversation with Leo Babauta (Zen Habits) Are you ready to MOOC? A conversation with George Siemens Exploring How We Learn with Monisha Pasupathi (Teaching Company) Telling Ain’t Training with Harold Stolovitch Enjoy! Jeff Looking for the perfect holiday gift for the lifelong learners in your life? Be sure to also check out 10 Ways to Be a Better Learner from Mission to Learn founder Jeff Cobb. The post Are you ready to enter the Shift Age? appeared first on Mission to Learn - Lifelong Learning Blog.
Transcribe →How We Learn – A Conversation with Monisha Pasupathi
Nov 15, 2012Tap to summarizeDr. Monisha Pasupathi, a psychology professor at the University of Utah and star of the Teaching Company course How We Learn, was one of the people I interviewed as part of writing Leading the Learning Revolution (a book about how to start or grow an education business). I’ve turned those interviews into podcasts, and I thought this one would be of particular interest to Mission to Learn readers. It’s also a good companion to 10 Ways to Be a Better Learner. In our conversation we cover some common myths about learning, talk about how well prepared we are (or aren’t) to deal with a hyper-connected, information-flooded world, and consider the role of the lecture as a form of learning delivery. Have a listen, and be sure to comment and share your thoughts. I’ve also included show notes below. Listen to the Podcast [audio:https://media.blubrry.com/learningrevolution/p/content.blubrry.com/learningrevolution/Monisha-Pasupathi-How-We-Learn-Interview.mp3] Podcast: Play in new window | Download | iTunes How We Learn Show Notes 00:30: Hope you caught the last two episodes, focused on the marketing side of the equation. 1:37: Introduction of Dr. Monisha Pasupathi of the University of Utah. 2:08 – Props to Monisha’s Teaching Company course How We Learn. Was this a natural path for her, or did the Teaching Company scout her out and convince her? 3:46 – Myths about learning and how adults learn. What are some of the fundamental misunderstandings? 5:27 – How does living in such a highly-connected world impact learning? How well prepared are most people to learn effectively? 6:50 – Two things make assessing the flood of information difficult. 7:53 – We’re not as good at verifying and remembering the sources of information as we are at learning content 10:00 – Lectures, in spite of all the criticism they get these days, are actually efficient ways of helping people learn. 13:00 – We may have lost the capacity to experience lectures as interactive. Book Excerpt Here’s a quote from Monisha that I used in Leading the Learning Revolution: Good lectures can take people through an expert’s thought process in a way that doesn’t happen when you’re very interactive. They are really organized, really structured, and really digestible ways to get quite a bit of information in a relatively short time. To acquire the same level of learning from interactive models often will require considerably more time. It often takes considerably more expertise on the part of the teacher or the instructor, because you have to know how to get a group of non-expert people from Point A to Point B. You have to know where they typically hit a wall in their understanding; what kinds of misconceptions they bring to the table. The other thought I always have when people talk about being more interactive is that we may have lost the capacity to experience lectures as interactive. I remember a really interesting experience I had in Germany where I went to a talk, and it was given in German. And my German wasn’t terrific at the time, so I had a hard time pro- cessing this lecture, but what I noticed about it was that it was a very old-fashioned lecture. It was given by a professor who had been there before the wall had come down in the former Eastern Bloc, and he spoke in fully articulated sentences for something like forty minutes in beautiful, erudite German. What I think we don’t experience anymore is that kind of lengthy oration. I suspect there was a time when we used to have better skills for this type of experience and for feeling engaged with lectures. We may be going too far into interactivity in such a way that it is actually undermining people’s skill at listening to lectures. Because it is, to some extent, something that we learn how to do, and I’d hate to see us unlearn that in favor of new instructional methods that have their own value, but also have their own flaws. 15:10 – BUT, there are certainly many boring lectures out there! What can subject matter experts do to deliver more engaging, effective lectures? 18:40 – And what about webinars? Any way to make those better? What about bringing a “storytelling” approach to it? 22:30 – What are some emerging developments Dr. Pasupathi finds really exciting in the world of learning right now? 25:56 – The attraction of being able to learn so much post-career 26:50 – Sign off [audio:https://media.blubrry.com/learningrevolution/p/content.blubrry.com/learningrevolution/Monisha-Pasupathi-How-We-Learn-Interview.mp3] Podcast: Play in new window | Download | iTunes The theme music for Learning Revolution is The Information Age by Anthony Fiumano, available on the Podsafe Music Network. Image copyright: lightwise / 123RF Stock Photo Looking for the perfect holiday gift for the lifelong learners in your life? Be sure to also check out 10 Ways to Be a Better Learner from Mission to Learn founder Jeff Cobb. The post How We Learn – A Conversation with Monisha Pasupathi appeared first on Mission to Learn - Lifelong Learning Blog.
Transcribe →Iluminate Your Mind with Jonathan Mead – Podcast
Nov 24, 2009Tap to summarizeI’m very pleased to be joined by Jonathan Mead for this round of the Radio Free Learning podcast. Jonathan is an entrepreneur, author of the highly popular eBook Reclaim Your Dreams, and founder of the Illuminated Mind blog. He also writes frequently for Zen Habits, and in general, is a rising star of the self development world. In the podcast, Jonathan and I discuss the path that led him to renounce the conventional world of 9 to 5, launch Illuminated Mind, and go on to reclaim his own dreams. We also touch on the concept of the zero hour work week – the title of Jonathan’s latest free eBook. As you might expect, “learning” factors heavily into Jonathan’s story and into our discussion. Here’s the MP3 file link (23:45) in case you do not see the audio player below (or, if viewing by e-mail or RSS reader, click through to the original blog post). [audio:https://media.libsyn.com/media/m2l/Jonathan-Mead-112409.mp3] Subscribe to the Radio Free Learning podcast: Subscribe using RSS Subscribe using iTunes The theme music for the podcast is The Information Age by Anthony Fiumano, available on the Podsafe Music Network Jeff P.S. – If you like the interview with Jonathan, you may also enjoy the Zen Learning Habits series here on Mission to Learn. Looking for the perfect holiday gift for the lifelong learners in your life? Be sure to also check out 10 Ways to Be a Better Learner from Mission to Learn founder Jeff Cobb. The post Iluminate Your Mind with Jonathan Mead – Podcast appeared first on Mission to Learn - Lifelong Learning Blog.
Transcribe →About Memory, Part II – Podcast with Fiona McPherson
Sep 23, 2009Tap to summarizeThis is the second installment of a Radio Free Learning podcast with Dr. Fiona McPherson, author of The Memory Key and curator of the About Memory Web site. In the first installment we discussed some of the keys to memory and why most memory courses don’t result in long-term memory improvement. In this second episode we discuss the brain training craze, how the brain changes as we age, and why effective note-taking (the topic of a recent book by Fiona) is so important. Here’s the MP3 file link (17:29 minutes long) in case you do not see the audio player below (or click through to the original blog post). Subscribe to the Radio Free Learning podcast: Subscribe using RSSSubscribe using iTunes Jeff See also: How to Use the Method of Loci – The 2500-Year-Old Memory Hack P.S. – Follow Mission to Learn on Twitter at https://twitter.com/missiontolearn Looking for the perfect holiday gift for the lifelong learners in your life? Be sure to also check out 10 Ways to Be a Better Learner from Mission to Learn founder Jeff Cobb. The post About Memory, Part II – Podcast with Fiona McPherson appeared first on Mission to Learn - Lifelong Learning Blog.
Transcribe →About Memory, Part I – Podcast with Fiona McPherson
Sep 21, 2009Tap to summarizeIn this episode of the Radio Free Learning podcast, I talk with Dr. Fiona McPherson, author of The Memory Key and curator of the About Memory Web site. I came across Fiona’s work recently when I was writing 5 Key Paths to Improving Memory, and found her Web site to be one of the most thorough, well organized sites on memory out there. So, naturally, I contacted her to see if she would share some of her expertise with listeners here. Our conversation lasted long enough that I decided to break it into two episodes. In this first one, we find out a little about Fiona’s background and what sparked her deep interest in memory. We then talk about some of the keys to memory and why most memory courses don’t result in long-term memory improvement. In the second episode (out later this week) we discuss topics like the brain training craze and why effective note-taking (the topic of a recent book by Fiona) is so important. Here’s the MP3 file link (19:17 minutes long) in case you do not see the audio player below (or click through to the original blog post). Subscribe to the Radio Free Learning podcast: Subscribe using RSSSubscribe using iTunes See also: How to Use the Method of Loci – The 2500-Year-Old Memory Hack Jeff P.S. – Follow Mission to Learn on Twitter at https://twitter.com/missiontolearn Looking for the perfect holiday gift for the lifelong learners in your life? Be sure to also check out 10 Ways to Be a Better Learner from Mission to Learn founder Jeff Cobb. The post About Memory, Part I – Podcast with Fiona McPherson appeared first on Mission to Learn - Lifelong Learning Blog.
Transcribe →Open Education, Open World – Podcast with Curtis Bonk
Aug 26, 2009Tap to summarizeThe World is Open The World is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education, a new book from Jossey Bass, offers one of the most comprehensive overviews I have seen to date of how open education and Web 2.0 technologies are transforming our world. Recently I had the opportunity to talk with the book’s author, Curtis Bonk, and capture some his insights about how things have changed and what the long term on impact on humanity is likely to be. This interview is a bit longer than earlier podcasts (around 30 minutes), but it is well worth the time. Here’s the MP3 file link (29:47) in case you do not see the audio player below (or click through to the original blog post). [audio:https://media.libsyn.com/media/m2l/Open-World-Bonk.mp3] Subscribe to the Radio Free Learning podcast: Subscribe using RSS Subscribe using iTunes Note also that in the podcast we refer to a set “openers” defined in the book – the 10 major shifts that have opened up the world of education. In the book, Curt organizes these into a framework – WE-ALL-LEARN – that serves as a mnemonic device for remembering the openers. The ten openers are below. I also encourage you to visit the Web site for the book, worldisopen.com to learn more about the openers and to access other resources – including a free eBook coming soon. Ten Openers: (WE-ALL-LEARN) 1. Web Searching in the World of e-Books 2. E-Learning and Blended Learning 3. Availability of Open Source and Free Software 4. Leveraged Resources and OpenCourseWare 5. Learning Object Repositories and Portals 6. Learner Participation in Open Information Communities 7. Electronic Collaboration 8. Alternate Reality Learning 9. Real-Time Mobility and Portability 10. Networks of Personalized Learning Jeff Cobb Mission to Learn P.S. If you enjoy what you read here on Mission to Learn, I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed or use the e-mail subscription form at the top right side of this page. Looking for the perfect holiday gift for the lifelong learners in your life? Be sure to also check out 10 Ways to Be a Better Learner from Mission to Learn founder Jeff Cobb. The post Open Education, Open World – Podcast with Curtis Bonk appeared first on Mission to Learn - Lifelong Learning Blog.
Transcribe →Podcast with Mindbites' Jason Reneau
Apr 7, 2009Tap to summarizeNearly two years ago a friend introduced me to Jason Reneau, who at the time was in the process of getting his new company, MindBites, off the ground. Since then, I’ve watched as MindBites and a number of other “teach-learn-share” sites, as I tend to think of them, have sprouted and grown. Some of these sites are free. Some -as is the case with MindBites – offer a commercial marketplace where teachers and learners connect. Nearly all of of them, in my opinion, are great examples of how increased bandwidth, the tools of the social Web, and more usable, affordable authoring tools have revolutionized access to learning. Recently, I dropped Jason a line to see if he would be willing to chat on the Radio Free Learning podcast. In our conversation we talk about what MindBites offers, but more importantly, we talk about some of the ways in which the Web has changed how we approach lifelong learning. Here’s the MP3 file link in case you do not see the audio player below (or click through to the original blog post). [audio:https://media.libsyn.com/media/m2l/MindBites-Jason-Reneau-040209.mp3] Download MP3 file (25.48 minutes/11.8 MB) And be sure to check out the Baby Sign Language series with Laura Berg that Jason refers to in the interview Transcript coming soon Subscribe to the Radio Free Learning podcast: Subscribe using RSS Subscribe using iTunes Jeff Cobb Mission to Learn P.S. If you enjoy what you read here on Mission to Learn, I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed or use the e-mail subscription form at the top right side of this page. Looking for the perfect holiday gift for the lifelong learners in your life? Be sure to also check out 10 Ways to Be a Better Learner from Mission to Learn founder Jeff Cobb. The post Podcast with Mindbites' Jason Reneau appeared first on Mission to Learn - Lifelong Learning Blog.
Transcribe →