In this article, I’ll show eight things that’ll increase your IQ. You should try to do as many of these suggestions as possible and maximize the effort you put into them.
If you want to have a handsome life, you need to be intelligent. Remember, knowledge is power and in order to use the knowledge, you need the intelligence.
Exercising
The first thing I can suggest that will increase your intelligence is exercising. Contrary to popular belief, people who exercise tend to have higher IQ scores than people who don’t.
In fact, fitter individuals in high school are more likely to go to college and do well there. This is because exercise can stimulate brain cell growth through a process called neurogenesis and flood the brain with pleasurable neurotransmitters like dopamine, which can improve your mood.
Exercising can bring fresher blood and oxygen to the brain to give it more energy.
A study at the University of Georgia experimented with children in regards to exercising and IQ. They found that their mental capacity improved when exercising.
There are many ways to stay active, this can be long-distance running, weight resistant training, or even just a simple walk. Each way seems to affect the brain a different way and at different amounts.
For example, resistance strength training helps with concentration while stretching your muscle helps you mentally process things quicker.
Also, keep in mind that this will vary person to person, meaning one type of activity will be more beneficial to some over another.
Meditation
The second thing that can increase your IQ is meditation.
Meditation is really an effective way to achieve higher intelligence because the actual practice involves focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotional calm state.
The benefits of meditation specifically are stress reduction, anxiety control, better attention span, prevention of memory loss, improve sleep quality, addiction relief, increasing of the brain size, and even controlling pain.
There are multiple studies out there that demonstrate how effective meditation can be to an individual.
Now, you don’t have to spend many hours to meditate. Just do at least 20 minutes per day; that should be enough to see something.
Learning a new skill or language
The third thing that can increase your intelligence is learning a new skill or language.
The skill can be playing instrument, cooking new foods in different ways, participating in physical activities you’ve never done before, or even just reading and writing.
There are benefits of learning new skills that will help the brain.
One is the increase of density of myelin, the white matter in the brain. This will change the brain to help it learn things better over time.
This can also speed up learning new things because by stimulating neurons in the brain, more neural pathways are formed and electrical impulses travel faster across them as you attempt to process new information. It’s a similar story with learning a new language.
Learning a new foreign language means your brain has to cope with the languages complexities as it makes sense of and absorbs various new patterns.
Memory is improved due to being required to recall vocabulary that you just learned. It also helps you understand how your first primary language works.
Overall, learning a new skill or language will help you become a more interesting person than a person who does not.
So, why not try something new?
Gaining new experiences
Just as learning new things can help the brain as I mentioned in the previous point, experiencing things in life can help as well.
What I mean is that you are subconsciously learning things as you experience them. When you do the same thing day in and day out, your brain goes into an autopilot like state. It stops processing stimuli it’s comfortable on.
When you have a new experience though, the brain actively scans for new information.
For example, you vacation at a foreign country.
When you arrive and spend time there, you feed your curiosity with fun tours that will teach you about how the natives live off the land.
You also feel emotionally well and ignore the stress factors that happen back at home. That particular vacation could even change your life view.
Another example is driving the new sports car you bought. After driving around for a while, you learn how to control a fast-moving object while other people watch and react in admiration or jealousy.
You realize that there are many things behind the scenes that no one really talks about, such as maintaining your car’s health, keeping it safe from malicious people, or even how to avoid legal trouble while on the road.
When you interact with another person who owns a sports car, you understand what they’re going through.
Even reading this article right now for the first time is a new experience. You’re learning some new information from this article’s content, either consciously or subconsciously.
Eating Healthy
The fifth thing that can potentially increase your IQ is eating healthy. By consuming healthy food, your brain can power more efficiently and be in a healthy state.
Foods high in protein, such as fish, eggs, and chicken, can increase your brain’s productivity of neurotransmitters and increases norepinephrine and dopamine levels in turn- all of which increase your alertness and problem-solving skills.
Foods that contain omega-3, like salmon or mackerel, are great for brain development and mood stability, and prevent mental health problems down the line.
Foods with vitamin B increase blood flow to the brain. You can find vitamin B in green, leafy vegetables whole-wheat, meat, eggs, and cheese. There are foods that you should avoid like processed and junk food.
Specifically, excessive sugar and trans fat, both can hamper your mental state while damaging your body.
Trans fat, in particular, can cause cellular destruction, wreck havoc on the hormone production, and adversely affect your memory.
Overall, the simplest way I can put this is eat the foods that are healthy for you and are naturally produce while eliminating processed garbage. Doing all this will increase your intelligence.
Playing puzzle games
The sixth thing is playing puzzle games. This can be board games or video games.
Solving puzzles help reinforce existing connections between our brain cells. It also increases generations of new relationships. This, in turn, helps improve our mental speed and thought processes.
The particular benefits are improved memory, better problem-solving skills, improved coordination, provides more education opportunities, increased attention to details, stable moods, lower stress level, and even increase productivity.
Keep in mind that not all board games and video games are beneficial and that each benefit varies from game to game. Plus, the game can be addicting, but any game that can challenge your brain is a good asset. So, choose a good game wisely.
Reading
The seventh helpful thing that could potentially increase your intelligence is reading. There’s a saying I remember hearing as a child, “reading is the window to opportunities.” That saying is true because it can increase your vocabulary.
A study from the University of California, Berkeley found that children’s book exposes kids to 50% more words than primetime TV or even a conversation between college students.
Reading can also slow down the aging process of the brain and fight Alzheimer’s disease due to exercising the brain. Books help you sleep better when you read it before going to bed.
The caveat is you have to read an actual book, not an e-book, the benefits get canceled out when you’re reading from screen because the brain uses less processing power when deciphering the words.
Getting more sleep
The eighth thing that’s beneficial to your IQ is getting more sleep.
Sleep is important to a number of functions in the brain, including how neurons communicate with each other.
Without sleep, you can’t form or maintain the pathways in your brain that lets you learn or create new memories, and it’s harder to concentrate and respond quickly.
Sleep can also reduce the risk of depression. This is why it’s important to get as many hours needed for sleeping at night.
These are eight things that can increase your intelligence. If you haven’t figured out yet from the two articles I made, your IQ is constantly increasing or decreasing with anything you do.
So be careful what you do because it could affect you for the rest of your life.
Do you do any of these things mentioned? Did it help you? Is there anything more to add?
