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Try Doing One Simple Thing This Afternoon To Give Your Brain A Boost

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If you’re feeling a twinge of midweek fatigue setting in (along with a thickening brain haze), you’ll be interested to know that a simple bio-hack can make a big difference in alertness. Its power lives right outside the office window and doesn’t require tossing back another venti Café Americano to enjoy.

Just follow these instructions: (1) Get up, (2) walk to the building entrance, (3) continue walking outside and (4) keep walking a little while longer or, if you prefer, just stand there for a few minutes basking in the rays.

As long as the sun is shining, this hack should flood your brain with enough sunlight to trigger a neurochemical reaction and juice up your alertness.

A new video from the American Chemical Society called “How to Stay Awake (Without Caffeine)” discusses how a bit of afternoon exposure to bright light triggers the release of a neuropeptide called hypocretin (aka orexin) that promotes alertness. Hypocretin plays a role in triggering the release of other chemicals in the brain, like dopamine and norepinephrine, which in turn stabilize wakefulness and keep you from drooling on your keyboard. (People with narcolepsy suffer from a depletion of hypocretin.)

If you decide to walk outside instead of just standing there, all the better, since recent research indicates that walking is also quite good for the brain.

Another simple hack discussed on the video is making sure you drink water throughout the day. Research published in 2013 suggests that drinking three cups of water increases mental reaction times by up to 14%, compared to drinking no water. Even a small amount of dehydration can impair cognitive performance, not to mention give you a headache and put you in a bad mood.

And while we’re talking about water and the brain, one of my all-time favorite bio-hacks is drinking 8 to 16 ounces of water immediately after waking up every morning. The science as to why this helps wake you up faster isn’t entirely clear, but it may simply be that your brain experiences mild dehydration while sleeping and a few ounces of water recharges the neural batteries.

The American Chemical Society video is available on YouTube.

You can find David DiSalvo on Twitter @neuronarrative and at his website daviddisalvo.org.

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