Carol Vorderman on Liam, Robbie and Being Single Again

07-03-2007 14:04

Can you imagine making your brain do almost double the work it does now? It sounds exhausting, but flexing mental muscles can help improve our brain power and give us a major mental boost in all aspects of life: at home, the office, school; even the local pub quiz team!It takes just two weeks of mental exercising to boost our brain’s capacity and help it reach its peak, according to new research by Dr Chamorro-Premuzic. His intensive study found that a mental exercise routine helps improve our BFI – or Brain Fitness Index – and is just as important as our Body Mass Index (BMI) for general wellbeing.The thinking man’s dream woman, Carol Vorderman, is set to get the nation’s grey matter into tip-top condition through a new series of mental exercises. Carol Vorderman’s Mind Aerobics is a mental workout created with Sky that’s designed to have the same effect on our BFI as a daily trip to the gym has on our BMI. Keeping the mind agile helps us stay motivated and increases our confidence in carrying out our daily tasks, whether that’s managing a company, looking after a home or doing our homework.Unlike a vigorous trip to the gym, there’s no need to shower after doing Carol’s mental exercises which can be done online, via a mobile or through interactive TV.First caught up with the Countdown Maestro to reveal how she keeps her brain in such great shape.Why is brain fitness important?

Well we’re launching Carole Voderman’s mind aerobics, which is a way of testing your brain everyday, and training it so that you open up your mind to all sorts of different things. Through research with the University of London we’ve found that the people who have been doing it – our human guinea pigs, have been able to concentrate better on everything in their lives, their relationships have improved, their verbal abilities have gone up and they’re got greater self confidence, all things that all of us want. So that’s why you should train your brain.

How do the exercises work?

Well what we’ve done is we’ve basically chopped your brain up into five main bits. The chunk that deals with the creative side of your life, one that deals with the logic, one that deals with attention, another with memory and another with perception. Now when I look at puzzle pages I tend to look at number puzzles and sudoku and that sort of thing. You’re probably not too surprised at that. But what I have done over the years is I’ve started to close down my mind to other games and puzzles which are available. Now with mind aerobics, you’re not allowed to do that. You have to practise with them all and you have to be tested with them all. At the end of each test you are given what we call your brain fitness index, which is a number between 1 and 100. You want that to be as high as possible. After two weeks, our human guinea pigs found that they were able to up their BMI by 80%, which is fantastic. It shows that their minds were opening up and the benefits – they’re not only great games to play, but also that their lives were improving too.

Can anyone start doing the exercises?

Anyone can do these exercises, no matter what sex or age you are. Your nana can do, women like myself – working mums with kids can do it. Men with careers can and students can do it. If students do it, they do find that they’re better with their studies.

What other brain tips can you offer people?

You can also make sure that you’re feeding your brain and your body with the right things. I’m not talking about getting evangelical about never touching anything that’s not organic here. I’m just saying “everything in moderation” But don’t overload with the McDonalds and the doughnuts, because what you will find is that your sugar levels are up and down and that does have an affect on your brain and your energy, and also on your attitude to life generally.