Updated on Sat, October 16, 2010 by
Anne
via Flickr’s CaseyJ
Regular sex, especially the tantalizing, catch-me-if-you-can kind, may improve your memory and even make you smarter.
Studies show that intense stimulation, like the kind creative sex provides, can produce brain chemicals that stimulate cells to grow new dendrites — the filaments attached to nerve cells. Dendrites allow neurons to communicate with one another.
The more dendrites you have, explains now-deceased Lawrence Katz, Ph.D., former professor of neurobiology at the Duke University Medical Center, the better you learn and the more you remember.
Routine-Deadened Dendrites
Dendrites act as a communication interstate in our brain, allowing you to move from one place to another efficiently, without getting lost.
A map of your brain is filled with everything that matters in your life: your office, the dog sitter, your favorite shopping center; the kid’s school, your church, the kitchen — including the location of the silverware drawer.
Like many minivan moms, you drive a regular route daily, not even needing your brain map.
Perfect Alignment Lives
Routines are the fabric of our lives. 21st century women are champion multi-taskers, proud of our ability to execute fundamental tasks on autopilot.
In reality, routines may be efficient, but our bored brains take a snooze.
Familiarity can decrease stress, bringing order to the daily chaos of kids, football practice, piano lessons and the French tutor, PLUS the power point presentation due for work in the morning.
Critical as they seem to our wellbeing, these routines don’t nourish our brains. Routines depress neurotrophins, a family of proteins that induce the survival, development and function of neurons.
Orderly Habits
All of your personal habits — a quick shower, never a soothing bumble bath; wearing the same perfume for 10 years, not one single spritz of a new fragrance tempting your wrist; shopping at the same grocery store and never the local farmer’s market — every habitual activity contributes to an avoidable loss of brain power.
To activate neuron production and dendrite growth, we must not only change our routine, but break away from familiarity in a significant way.
Click to read more ...