Well, if you’re interested in oiling up your mental trap, there are a multitude of things you can do.

Some of the most beneficial things you can do to improve your memory will sound very familiar: Exercise regularly, get plenty of sleep, and eat right.

Exercise increases circulation, which increases the brain’s efficiency. Sleep boosts your mental powers as well through its restorative properties. And as far as the diet is concerned, studies show that fruits and vegetables that contain antioxidants do the same, as do omega-3 fatty acids. Eating fewer, smaller meals also has been shown to enhance mental capacity.

Exercise, too, shouldn’t be confined to merely physical exercise. Perhaps you’ve heard before that “the brain is a muscle”, and that if you want it to stay strong, you’ve got to work it out. That seems right, but is it?

As far as we can tell, yes: Studies show that people who participate in mentally-engaging activities like puzzles, chess, and other logic games respond more quickly to stimuli and are more likely to give detailed accounts of events.

And there also may be some truth to the old adage “mind over matter”: Convincing yourself that your memory is poor will only be a self-fulfilling prophecy. You are then more likely to feel dejected about your memory, which will in turn inhibit your concentration and therefore your ability to recount specific instances throughout your day.

Concentration, in fact, is the key to observation. After all, how are you to remember something if you weren’t really looking at it in the first place? If you are able to think more consciously about noticing specific, concrete details as things are happening, and try to avoid distractions (which can be devastating to your short-term memory), you’ll be much more able to remember them later.

These are all some great, basic common-sense ways to get your brain firing on all cylinders. But if you are wondering how to improve your memory, you’re probably thinking, “Is there anything else I can do?”

Indeed there is: There are a few extremely effective herbal products we found, that contain ingredients that have actually been clinically-proven to help increase memory.  At the top of the heap is something better than a memory pill; it’s an herbal tincture called Cognihance. Cognihance has been shown in pre-clinical trials to significantly boost memory retention rates and retention skill as well.

Cognihance contains several ingredients which work synergistically to help you improve your memory, including celastrus seed, brahmi, gingko, gotu kola, and stevia.

There are several reasons to give Cognihance a try: It’s safe (all of the herbs used in the proprietary formula are “generally regarded as safe” by the FDA, hence their GRS status), inexpensive, easy to take, and your satisfaction is guaranteed.  With such a generous offer, there’s no reason not to at least give it a try!

Of all the herbal memory enhancement remedies we’ve encountered, none actually come close to Cognihance. Folks here are used to taking Gingko biloba as a natural memory aid, and although many feel as though they can feel a tangible effect from it, not everyone on staff agrees it helps. Gingko is widely known as an herbal memory enhancer, but we’ve found it to not be nearly as effective as we wish it was.

Cognihance on the other hand…we couldn’t wait to review it!  Gingko reportedly typically takes about a week to start to feel the clearer thinking effects, but we found Cognihance worked, and quite noticeably, within just 1-2 days.  The ability of Cognihance to work so quickly opens a whole new world of possibilities for everything from those suffering with memory loss, to students hoping to increase their performance on tests and exams.

We don’t believe in magic “memory pills”, and we’ve tried them all (at least the natural ones).  It’s exciting to be able to offer a positive review of a product that’s as easy as a pill to take, but absorbs faster than a typical pill ever could.  Cognihance is supposed soon be available in a liquigel form as well, but as of this writing, there’s only a liquid tincture.

If you click the link above, you will see it’s a direct link and that we get no commission from any sales we direct to Cognihance.  We’re just thrilled to finally have something all-natural available to us to help increase our concentration, to help with focusing when we really need it, and to give us a notable increase in our clarity of thought.  It something we all thought might be a great idea to use whenever we posted to the blog, especially since it’s been clinically-proven to be both effective and safe.

Please feel free to comment about your experiences with Cognihance here as well; we want to know what others think about this exciting new product, including any other products people feel are effective for helping to act as an herbal medicine for memory and concentration.

When one thinks of the kind of studying that relies heaviest on memory, one can begin early, with our practice of getting grade-schoolers to memorize the names and order of American Presidents, or of state capitals. Educators will introduce mnemonic devices to help these students study more effectively with their memory. Likewise, these grade schoolers who decide to grow up and pursue medicine will find themselves memorizing the names of organic chemical compounds, and the entire human anatomical system. Clearly, these are places where memory plays a massive role in studying. For these students, and adults in similar professional situations, eating right, exercising, and finding the right mixture of herbal supplements to aide memory is very important.

In other fields, however, studying is an entirely different beast, one which doesn’t adhere so closely to the study-equals-memory mold. In these fields, importance is placed less on the acquisition and retention of words and numbers, and much more on a certain skill or way of thinking. Take, for instance, the field of philosophy. Here, while studying does mean memorizing, perhaps, different philosophers and what they said, to study philosophy focuses mainly on the act of thinking logically and taking an argument and understanding it enough to come up with a counter argument. In this case, to study is more than to use your memory.

For many students, much of the process of studying comes down to rote memorization. For them, to study is to remember, and it is a process that relies on sheer repetition of lists and facts, poring over the same paragraphs time and time again, vacuuming out those useful bits of information and storing them away in memory, hoping desperately that they will still be up there when it comes time to take the test.

When one thinks of the kind of studying that relies heaviest on memory, one can begin early, with our practice of getting grade-schoolers to memorize the names and order of American Presidents, or of state capitals. Educators will introduce mnemonic devices to help these students study more effectively with their memory. Likewise, these grade schoolers who decide to grow up and pursue medicine will find themselves memorizing the names of organic chemical compounds, and the entire human anatomical system. Clearly, these are places where memory plays a massive role in studying. For these students, and adults in similar professional situations, eating right, exercising, and finding the right mixture of herbal supplements to aide memory is very important.

In other fields, however, studying is an entirely different beast, one which doesn’t adhere so closely to the study-equals-memory mold. In these fields, importance is placed less on the acquisition and retention of words and numbers, and much more on a certain skill or way of thinking. Take, for instance, the field of philosophy. Here, while studying does mean memorizing, perhaps, different philosophers and what they said, to study philosophy focuses mainly on the act of thinking logically and taking an argument and understanding it enough to come up with a counter argument. In this case, to study is more than to use your memory.

These questions explain the popularity of the power study. What student in their right mind would turn down the chance to optimize their studying habits? One angle of approach to the power study is the self-help book, which aims to deliver practical advice to the average student. Study Power, for instance, by William R. Lucki, Ph.D., and Wood Smethurst, has become a oft-cited source for students looking to get an edge. The book is full of simple advice, like what part of class is most likely to contain information that will be on the tests (the last 10 minutes), and how long to read when trying to absorb exam information (20 minutes at a time), along with help with note taking, managing your anxiety, oral presentations, and much more.

The other alternative for power study is through herbal supplements that enhance brain function at times when students need it most. The most important thing when taking this route is not falling victim to the empty promises of untested products. Instead, use some of your research skills to investigate which products have performed well in clinical trials, and have proved safe for both students and aging customers alike.

The Power Study is a recently developed concept based on emerging techniques of information acquisition and memory enhancement. For too many students, studying for tests is a task of overwhelming mystery, a long, dark, winding road bordered on both sides by sheer cliffs. How do you know you’re studying the right things? How can you make sure the important information lands in your memory? How can you filter through the unimportant details? And what about concentration? Today’s student is constantly assaulted by distractions from every angle. How can they focus their attention on the topic at hand with all the background noise of our modern world?

These questions explain the popularity of the power study. What student in their right mind would turn down the chance to optimize their studying habits? One angle of approach to the power study is the self-help book, which aims to deliver practical advice to the average student. Study Power, for instance, by William R. Lucki, Ph.D., and Wood Smethurst, has become a oft-cited source for students looking to get an edge. The book is full of simple advice, like what part of class is most likely to contain information that will be on the tests (the last 10 minutes), and how long to read when trying to absorb exam information (20 minutes at a time), along with help with note taking, managing your anxiety, oral presentations, and much more.

The other alternative for power study is through herbal supplements that enhance brain function at times when students need it most. The most important thing when taking this route is not falling victim to the empty promises of untested products. Instead, use some of your research skills to investigate which products have performed well in clinical trials, and have proved safe for both students and aging customers alike.

In general terms, “mind” refers to the aspects of intellect and consciousness as they appear as combinations of thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and will and imagination. Also included is perhaps the most crucial of or identifying mental activities, memory. So, mind is memory, and memory is mind, along with all of the brain’s conscious processes, often thought of as the thought process of reason. It is reason, as the undergrad philosophy major will tell you, that Kant believed separated man from all other beasts, and likewise provided the basis for our notion of right and wrong.

But the earliest theories of mind and memory and how the two are distinguished from the actual physical nuts and bolts of the brain (neurons, cell, gray matter and brain stems…) were pre-scientific. Which means their notions of memory and mind weren’t informed by cellular knowledge. Instead, they based mind and memory on thoughts of theology, and the relationship between the mind and the soul. Thus, part of our “memory” was of a realm beyond the mere physical, something to transcend the earth on which we walked. Today, science has taken up the call to understand the mind / body duality, with some of our greatest minds and bodies devoting their lives to the pursuit.

The more science understands about memory, the closer they come to a skill-based paradigm for understanding how it works. Like other skills, memory is a task at which some people naturally excel more than others. Surely we all know a person who seems to be a natural at remembering. On the flip side, though, the skill of memory can also be learned and improved upon, like any other skill or trade, with hard work and proper training. Research has shown that of all the higher mental processes that fall under the category of “reason” or “thought,” memory is one of the most trainable. Since much of remembering boils down to the manner in which we program the memory into our minds, this skill of programming is something we can make conscious effort to improve. And, just as other skills are made easier by physical preparation (stretching for a run, putting on gloves to carry blocks of ice), so too is the memory skill improved by health and treatment of the body. This includes the use of herbal supplements, which have been clinically shown to improve brain functions, memory among them.

Consider the evolution of the world wide web, and how it has drastically altered the way we search for and request help. In the nineties, as the internet was spreading into homes via now-archaic dial-up connections, no one could say for sure what would come of this emergent hub of personal interaction. Would it be a hub of pornography alone? Would anyone really use it, beyond computer geeks and role-playing gamers? And sure enough, the last twenty years has seen the way we communicate with each other change drastically with respect to speed, depth of conversation, and our willingness to request help from new, sometimes unknown, sources.

So, too, has technology directly contributed help to our memories. E-mail applications now come bundled with calendar software to remind us of events and responsibilities, also synchronizing with our cellular phones. And we should be grateful for the vast array of memory help we have today, because as technology advances, we more and more often find out lives overrun with information, and the expectation that decisions will be made and obligations met at ever-increasing speeds.

Thus, while we have more external help these days than ever before, we still find increasing demands on our memory. It may well be that our best option, then, will be internal memory help, whether in the form of skillful encoding of memories or through herbal supplements that give our brains the boost they need to remember accurately.

How apt, then, to use this language when discussing concepts of improving our own focus. We humans are an easily distracted species of beast. We spread ourselves thinly across a range of responsibilities and expectations. We have five exams to juggle and friends’ to remember, children to pick up from soccer practice or ballet, and, later, a small army of grandchildren whose birthdays (and even names, sometimes!) often seem to escape us. As the world gets more harried, these distractions get more numerous, and retaining focus on the task at hand becomes more and more difficult?

So, how are we to improve our focus? There are several options, and the most effective will be your own combination of these. The first is through herbal supplements that have been clinically shown to improve brain functioning, including a marked improvement in moment-to-moment and sustained focus. The second major option is to improve focus by practice and training, like most other skills. Treated as a kind of meditation, if we can simplify our lives enough, our minds can find solace and ultimate focus, whether in an external object, a memory, a thought, or a smell. Combined, an interior (herbal supplement) and exterior (personal effort) approach will lead to a noticeably improved focus and mental clarity.

Many of today’s programs of brain enhancement revolve around the time-tested notion of the IQ, or “intelligence quotient.” This well-known numeral value, which takes 100 as the “average” based on bell-curve designs, is derived from one the several different standardized tests designed to measure intelligence. There is much debate, however, over how accurate numerical IQ scores are when it comes to measuring actual brain power. Opponents of the standardized test have argued for years that the test is biased toward specific social and economic, and potentially ethnic, groups. And, as with all standardizd tests, it is possible to “train” an examinee specifically for the test, thereby increasing scores without necessarily increasing brain power. In this sense, using IQ as a basis for brain enhancement would seem to be a less than ideal measurement.

We can be sure, though, that memory is a vital component of brain activity. Thus, an improvement in one’s memory would absolutely register as a form of meaningful and useful brain enhancement. Of the methods available for this nature of enhancement, the most effective appears to be a combination of memory “exercises” designed to train the brain to encode information in a more efficient manner, and herbal supplements designed to aide the neurons as they both encode and recall information.

There is a growing number of Celastrus fans who swear by this remarkable extract as a study aid, regardless of their academic level.  Reports vary widely, from college students taking Celastrus as they cram for finals to doctors who use it to assist them in studying for medical board exams to future lawyers who employ it as they are trying to pass the bar.

This plant has massive untapped potential as an effective study aid, and we hope to see its popularity grow in all areas – not just limited to memory.  In addition to showing results with enhancing memory and helping out as a study aid, Celastrus has reportedly also shown good results in lab studies for the treatment of mental depression and the process of learning and memory. It also showed excellent potential in treating hysteria without any side effects. Who can get more hysterical than a student cramming for finals?

An herbal product that has been proven to increase the retention of new information in laboratory tests to help a student retain information more effectively when studying for a test. Gingko has been long revered for its cognitive enhancing properties, but research to support this claim has been sketchy at best, unlike Celastrus, which has seen documented success in more than one clinical trial. Pre-clinical studies of the plant’s seed extract have conclusively shown an improvement in learning and memory in both physical and mental paradigms.

Numerous memory retention and enhancement studies demonstrating that the cognitive-enhancing properties of Celastrus are now being financed by the big pharmaceutical companies. This is usually a good indicator that there is validity to claims, because the big pharmaceutical companies are greedy and can smell money. It may only be a matter of time before a prescription “smart pill” appears on the market which is really just a tablet containing Celastrus. It is far more effective than the well-known Gingko biloba that has been used for many years as a mental aid for memory and clarity of thought.

What does the near-future hold? One can let their imagination run wild. Celastrus drinks might become a staple on college campuses around the world, and Celastrus booths might begin to pop up alongside kava lounges, oxygen bars and massage stations on random corners and in health food stores.