Keeping your body healthy is crucial. You must exercise regularly, eat the right foods, and, when you feel that something is wrong and you’re sick, you must seek medical help. If you can do all of this, at least most of the time, you’ll stay healthy. However, what about your mind? Mental health is just as important as physical health, and just because you can’t see a mental health problem like you could see an injury, for example, that doesn’t mean it can be ignored. With that in mind, here are some great ways to keep your mind healthy and ensure you take the best care of yourself.

Stimulate Your Brain

The best way to keep your mind healthy is to remind yourself that your brain is a muscle, just like any other in your body – forget that it is an important element of life and simply focus on its core function. When you do that, you’ll be able to keep it stimulated and exercised very easily. There are so many ways to do this, and it simply entails ensuring you are not bored. Some examples of how to stimulate the mind include:

• Taking an online class to learn something new
• Reading
• Watching a documentary
• Getting tickets to see something exciting at Madison Square Garden
• Cooking
• Gardening

Any of these things – and any other hobby or interest you can think of – will keep your brain working and therefore keep it healthy.

Meditation

Although the above might make it sound as though you need to be busy at all times to not be bored and to ensure your brain is as healthy as possible, you also need to make sure you rest at times. It would help if you had a good balance between activity and inactivity. It can be hard to slow down and ‘stop’ thinking for a while, but practicing meditation will help you a great deal.

Meditation means removing everything from your thoughts except for the actual moment you are in. This is difficult, especially when you are busy, but it is worthwhile pursuing and getting better at it because it is ideal as a form of brain strengthening. It is also extremely relaxing, so you’ll be less likely to suffer from stress and anxiety too, keeping your mental and physical health in peak condition.

Sleep Well

Surely when you’re asleep, your brain is not being stimulated or kept healthy in any way? Actually, the opposite is true; when you sleep, you allow your brain (and the rest of your body) to rejuvenate and become healthier and stronger. Sleep is the time when your energy can be targeted into doing this, rather than anything else you might need it to do.

This is why getting enough good sleep is so important. Enough sleep means around seven to nine hours for an adult, although some people need much more than this, and some function perfectly well on less. If you find you can’t sleep, you should try herbal teas, a warm bath, or listening to soothing sounds or music. If the problem is ongoing, it’s wise to see a doctor.