1. Get Moving, Feed Your Brain and Let It Rest
The care and maintenance of your brain

2. Exercise is good for your brain
Get Moving, Get Smarter
Exercise is good for your brain

3. Good Reasons to Get Moving
Makes your brain work more efficiently
You will do better in class and on tests
It reduces your risk for strokes and Alzheimer’s as you get older and makes you smarter right now.

4. Good Reasons to Get Moving
In one study, elementary school kids jogged 2 to 3 times a week for 30 minutes. After 12 weeks, their test scores improved, and when they stopped the exercise program, their scores went back to their previous lower levels. It doesn’t even take that much exercise to get good brain benefits.

5. Good Reasons to Get Moving
Better food and oxygen delivery to the brain
More blood vessels means more oxygen
Oxygen mops up free radicals which are bad
Changing position increases blood flow to your brain. In fact, standing up increases blood flow to your brain up to 30%!

6. Brain Get Moving Strategies
Move every 10 minutes or so when doing homework-get a burst of oxygen!
Play sports.
Play active video games
Walk your dog/play with a pet
Mow the lawn or vacuum or clean your room (your parents will love it)
Ride your bike to a friend’s house
Swim, dance, throw a ball…
Just get going! It’s the smart move.

7. Feed Your Brain
It’s an energy hog!

8. Feed Your Brain: A Few Facts
Although it only weighs around 3 pounds, the brain uses nearly 25% of the body’s resources.
Does that mean the other organs think it’s an energy hog? Maybe the other organs don’t mind so much. After all, without your brain you aren’t human, or even alive.

9. Feed Your Brain: More Facts
Thinking is more difficult when you are hungry
Your brain needs enough glucose to take care of all of the vital things it does plus have enough energy to deal with more complex functions.
Skipping breakfast reduces fluency and problem solving ability.

10. Feed Your Brain: Some Strategies
If you want to do better in school, eat something in the morning.
Try something with protein and complex carbohydrates because they give you a more constant and long-lasting level of energy than a sugary cereal or donut.
A snack at 10-minute break might be just what you need to be more focused in your 5th period class.

11. Let Your Brain Rest
Your brain can’t function well without enough sleep

12. Sleep and Your Brain Scientists don’t know exactly why we sleep
They do know that going without sleep at all for a long period of time can actually make you slip into a coma and die.
Your brain does important work while you sleep…It goes through all of the many things you learned and experienced throughout the day and consolidates, deletes and stores those memories.

13. Sleep and Your Brain
Many studies show that we remember more of what we learn when we get enough sleep

14. Sleep and Your Brain
Unfortunately, most teenagers don’t get nearly enough sleep. One of the best ways for you to improve in school is to get the sleep your brain needs (9-11 hours for someone your age).

15. Sleep Strategies
Turn off your electronics. (Light from your computer or video game screen tricks your body into thinking that it isn’t time to sleep.)
Turn off your phone. If it wakes you every time you get a text, you won’t get enough sleep in a row (it’s called REM sleep and it is vital for healthy brain function.)
Reduce caffeine during the day