Improve your mind by being kind (EP23)

<p>Today’s <strong>Brain Booster</strong> is: <strong>Improve your mind by being kind.</strong></p><p>Being kind to YOURSELF lowers stress hormones, and lights up the brain’s reward centres to improve brain function and overall well-being. </p><p>The brain’s reward system is a network of brain structures designed to ensure our survival. When we do something beneficial — like exercising, socialising, or practising self-kindness — this network is activated, and releases neurotransmitters that improve the workings of our brain. </p><p>For example, one of the neurotransmitters that plays a key role in the reward system is <strong>dopamine</strong>. Apart from motivating us to do pleasurable things, dopamine acts as an internal spotlight. It signals to your <strong>prefrontal cortex</strong> (your decision-making and planning centre) that your current activity is highly valuable. This clears away mental fog, and helps you focus intensely on the task at hand.</p><p>Dopamine also instructs the <strong>hippocampus</strong> (our learning hub) to ‘save this file.’ This means the connections between brain cells are strengthened, which makes it easier to absorb and retain new information. </p><p>So whatever you’re doing, treat yourself with kindness while you’re doing it. </p><p>What does that look like?</p><p>Talk to yourself the same way you’d talk to your best friend, and remind yourself that not getting everything right, is simply being human. No one can always be on top of their game. No one always makes the best decisions. And on one executes every plan perfectly. </p><p>But<strong> nothing is failure — if we regard it as feedback. </strong></p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Today’s <strong>Health Headline </strong>is: <strong>Disease is a normal response  to an abnormal world. </strong></p><p>Most people have come to regard chronic disease as one of the unfortunate facts of life. High blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, autoimmune conditions, chronic pain, depression, anxiety, digestive disorders, obesity, cardiovascular disease and cancer, have become so common that we almost expect them. </p><p>But that does NOT mean there’s anything wrong with our bodies. </p><p>Chronic disease is our body’s <strong>normal response to an abnormal world</strong>. </p><p>It’s a normal response to the speed and the speed and stress of our lives, air and soil pollution, social disconnection, desk jobs that cut us off from nature, a toxic food environment, and suppression of our emotions.</p><p